Vidblaster Vs Wirecast

[AndrewSeabrook]

OK. So lets separate the fact from the opinion. Yes Wirecast does have its own encoder as Joe says. But Vidblaster, and Vmix, whilst natively supporting FMLE can use ANY encoder. Including Wirecast, or FFMPEG which are both x.264 solutions. When there are critisicms of the encoding on both VB and VMix, the author is really criticizing Adobe.

VB will allow you to record in multiple formats. If you want .wmv for example it is there in v2 builds. Understand that the current build supports MPEG recording only AT THIS STAGE, but as with other functionality the developer has indicated that there are intentions to expand the codec support. It is quite a common practice to offload the recording to another machine (irrespective of whether you use Wirecast or VB or any other switching software) so this part of the debate is somewhat irrelevant.

All of the Switchers are very different products. You will find things that you like in each and things you don't like. For me I like the intuitive nature of VB and for broadcasting Sports I find it the best switching solution of all of the products I have tried. Can you broadcast sports with other switchers? Of course, but for me, and I stress me, VB works. I love vMix's desktop capture and the Web Interface. Both free and there well before Wirecast's offerings. I like the cleanness of the the Wirecast interface and the composition tools. That is an indication of the size of the Telestream development team.

The price on all of the tools is pretty normal when you compare them against other niche or enterprise toolsets. A tool such as SAP for example will cost over $2000.00 per user and then an ongoing maintenance charge of between 15% and 25% RRP per annum. We should think ourselves lucky that the manufacturers of our products do not charge in the same way.....

[joedemax]

Andrew,

You make some good points. However I am not sure that I agree with your perspective. Your comment about the "Size of the Telestream development team" is certainly not correct. The WC development team consists of 2 people (according to the WC blog).

I am not sure that I would choose to broadcast sports with VidBlaster, considering I am yet to see someone sustain 720p60 or 1080i60 with VidBlaster with multiple cameras, however I would love to see any videos of this done.

As for the pricing thing, I don't know that I can agree with this. VidBlaster desktop license @ $6k seems very high considering WC starts at $500 (anyone can operate). Of course it's probably worth mentioning that you could also get a NewTek TriCaster for that price, at which point you get the hardware bundled and anyone can operate it. I'm not sure that we should considering ourselves lucky, considering it only seems to be VidBlaster that charges that much for the SW.

[AndrewSeabrook]

Joe, You keep harping on about 1080p etc. This misses the point. Most sports venues cannot provide the connectivity to stream at that resolution anyway, so most broadcaster do not try to do it. Yes the Premier League clubs can but that is not the audience of the software switcher developers. So as a broadcaster, I look for other things than simply the maximum resolution and frame rate that the tool supports. Also most of the people who use VB/vMix/Xsplit etc do not purchase the high end licences. And even with VB I would expect there be very few Broadcaster licences sold in comparison to the Pro licence which is the equivalent to the WC licence you keep referencing. As for the licencing model, yes you can disagree with how it is presented, but it is the Manufacturer's decision and you either accept the condition or you don't. As I said, it is comparable to what happens in the business world with specialist line of business applications. These are bespoke applications with a limited audience. By default their pricing will be very much higher than we see with tools such as Office etc. I would love to see you raise the same line of argument with Adobe re. their pricing for the CC Suite and see where you get! Would I like to pay less? Sure! But am I going to sway any of the manufacturers as the purchaser of 1 licence. No. So get over it.

By the way I own licences for all of the tools. Do you?

[Amnon]

And even with VB I would expect there be very few Broadcaster licences sold in comparison to the Pro licence which is the equivalent to the WC licence you keep referencing.

Hi Andrew, this caught my attention. I don't think that statement is correct. The WC license does not limit you to just so many "modules" or shots, and anybody can operate it :-) The cost is same, you are right, but you get more for your money I think. Am I right? I use wirecast for encoding now, so I don't know much about the rest of it.
I know you know your stuff, so I was wondering about this statement.

[joedemax]

Andrew,

The live streamed delivery of the production can be a very small piece of the puzzle. Sometimes you may need to deliver a program feed (or a separate mix) to a screen etc, at this point the resolution and framerate is very important. The media often needs to be reused, and of course for that reason it must look great.

What I do not understand is - it makes no sense to not process the video at the highest possible resolution. Pretty much any high definition camcorder you buy today is going to output 1080i50/60, so why would you not process the video at this resolution? If you do it the other way and downscale everything coming in, you have taken a big quality hit before the video even hits the switcher. By the time you have done any effects that you want to do, the video is already being scaled twice which will result in some pretty unpleasant aliasing and scaling artefacts. The goal should be that if you need to scale, you do it at the last possible point in the pipeline. Over wise the video will not look as good as it can. It's also far more efficient to deinterlace or scale the final program output, rather than processing everything coming into the switcher. The point is - if your cameras output 1080i50 - process at 1080i50. If they output 720P60 - do all your processing at 720P60. Doing it any other way does not make all that much sense.

FWIW, I own 2 Wirecast Pro licenses, 1 Wirecast Studio license as well as a license for TriCaster 8000.

[brianmonroe]

Joe,

You are correct! This is just like the same discussion that goes on in the world of still photography when discussing camera RAW versus JPEG. If you are doing pro level stuff you will always want to shoot your stuff in RAW formant and process your files in the same resolution. Only when you are done with doing your editing should you save your files as JPEG and at a lower resolution. Once you throw those bit away you can not get them back.

Things do not work like in the movies where you can just zoom on in to an area that is blurry and have it get clearer if the data has been thrown away to make the file smaller.

- Brian

[TomSinclair]

Joe,

I think you are being disingenuous when you to refer to VidBlaster as a $6k package. The equivalent to Wirecast Pro would be VidBlaster Studio retailing for $995, same as Wirecast.

[joedemax]

Tom,

There are 2 issues here. One is the feature set, and one is the licensing type. On the feature set thing, I'd say Wirecast Pro is equivalent to VidBlaster Broadcast. Wirecast Pro can pretty much do anything that VidBlaster Broadcast can do (Check the feature matrix for both products, FWIW Wirecast Studio comes pretty close to VB Broadcast). For example in Wirecast Pro I can do unlimited shots, where in VidBlaster Broadcast I am limited to 50 modules.

As for the $6k thing, as I noted in my post I am referring to the desktop license. The thing is that if you buy the single user license, if say you where at an event and suddenly you fell down some stairs and broke your neck (worse things have been known to happen) and you need someone to fill in, you'd be breaking the license agreement at which point your license could be terminated. With a Wirecast license or TriCaster anyone is free to use it, without any licensing restrictions.

Thoughts?

[brianmonroe]

Joe,

This is quite interesting. As an IT consultant and having worked in the IT industry for decades I can say that I do not get the logic behind restricting software to a user and not a system. I have seen way to many situations where people need to move software from system to system or person to person. If you look at Microsoft as an example, they do not care if an employee comes or goes but as long as the system that the software is on does not change. When it comes to site licenses, those are handled differently of course but they are still per device/computer and not restricted to a person.

Of course, any developer can chose how they want people to use their software. Either by giving it away or charging as much money as the market will allow. The thing here is that it does look to me quite shady to tie software that should be a tool to be used to a single person. This would be like Sears with their Craftsman tools saying that only one person can use a hammer and anyone else who touches the hammer has to pay more for access to that hammer. Of course that is just as insane as tying licensing to a person the way that VidBlaster has done. Just as Joe has said above, there can and will be many situations where more than one person needs to use a single copy of a software on a single install without being called a pirate.

- Brian

[TommySulivan]

I am sorry Tom but the only one being disingenuous is Mike from Vidblaster. Desktop License ? Personal License? Mike is looking to screw its customers. I have been wanting to but Vidblaster for months and his bullshit licensing and the way he talks to paying customers on his forum have made me go buy Wirecast. I will gladly spend the 1000 dollars and know I will get support and not get banned from a support group becasue i dared to ask a question.

The Truth is Vidblaster is not a good product. It may have been better then Wirecast at one point but not anymore. It can not perform at the at the level of Wirecast. Your Broadcast quality is a prime example of all that is wrong with Vidblaster. Another great example is people like Brian Brushwood and Andrew Zarian no longer using the software. Why would these two broadcasters no longer use Vidblaster after many years?