Vidblaster Vs Wirecast

[AndrewSeabrook]

Ammon...WC has two licence points essentially. http://www.telestream.net/wirecast/compare.htm The $500.00 has limits on the feature sets. Some of the things that you can do in the $500 version of VB you can't do in WC Studio and visa versa. VB has 4 price points. The feature sets available are limited by the level of licence you buy. Essentially it a similar approach. Where the difference is that VB also is offered as a named user licence or a concurrent model and wirecast is simply concurrent. I am not certain on the upper limit of shots in WC. I haven't seen them but the Studio version does not allow scoreboards, IP cameras, virtual sets etc that you can do in VB Pro.

WC then charges a yearly fee for "premium" support. VB doesn't.

When you say that you are using WC to encode you are really saying that you have stopped using FMLE. You are still using VB to output to WC.

The vMix model is similar to VB in that there are restrictions on the Inputs(modules) and resolution at the different price points. The product however is much cheaper at each price point than both VB and WC.

[JackWarner]

Ammon...WC has two licence points essentially. http://www.telestream.net/wirecast/compare.htm The $500.00 has limits on the feature sets. Some of the things that you can do in the $500 version of VB you can't do in WC Studio and visa versa. VB has 4 price points. The feature sets available are limited by the level of licence you buy. Essentially it a similar approach. Where the difference is that VB also is offered as a named user licence or a concurrent model and wirecast is simply concurrent. I am not certain on the upper limit of shots in WC. I haven't seen them but the Studio version does not allow scoreboards, IP cameras, virtual sets etc that you can do in VB Pro.

WC then charges a yearly fee for "premium" support. VB doesn't.

When you say that you are using WC to encode you are really saying that you have stopped using FMLE. You are still using VB to output to WC.

The vMix model is similar to VB in that there are restrictions on the Inputs(modules) and resolution at the different price points. The product however is much cheaper at each price point than both VB and WC.

Andrew.... i don't think you understand what you're talking about. Going into a forum and being banned and yelled at is not support. The virtual set thing is not true either. VB has no support for virtual set at all, where as in WC (even studio) you can build a virtual set with layers.

[oscarmartz]

Andrew The "Premium" support is for phone call support. I do not see how that is a negative.. Does Vidblaster offer the ability to call and get one on one support?

[cseeman]

Clarifying a few things regarding Wirecast.

You can have Wirecast actively licensed on two systems at the same time. You can easily move the licenses from machine to machine as needed (wait about 15 minutes for deactivation/reactivation)
This means you can have a backup system up and running at the same time if one system should go down. For some this is a must in a professional streaming environment.
Also these two system can even be different OSs, one on Mac one on Windows at the same time.
This also allows you to take advantage of OS specific features. For example, on Mac you can record to Apple ProRes which is good for post workflow. On Windows you can record to WMV and stream MMS.
VidBlaster limits upload to 1mbps unless one goes to Broadcast version (30mbps) which is nearly $2K for Single license and nearly $6K for Desktop License. Wirecast has no limit even at $495 (and see licensing above). This also means it's easy to do a 720 stream in Wirecast in the base priced version.
Note that Ustream and YouTube have Wirecast versions that are limited to their services at much lower prices starting at free.
As per Joe's comments yes, even if you're only streaming at a standard def frame size you may be recording at 720 or 1080 for post workflow for VOD use.
Wirecast streams to multiple servers with the $495 version whereas VidBlaster requires Broadcast.
You'll probably see more features at the same price points when Wirecast 5 arrives very soon.
Premium support is an optional addition which not only includes phone support but remote access so support can login to your system to help troubleshoot. Email support is also expedited.
Regarding sports, Wirecast Windows can integrate with Xos Digital Thundercloud live scoreboard service.
There's no "module" limit. As many shots as your system can handle each can be 7 layers deep and with 5 additional Master Layers.
Don't underestimate the important of built in x264 encoding and its ability to customize so you can use a single computer for both switching and live streaming without overrunning the CPU resources.

[Amnon]

Andrew The "Premium" support is for phone call support. I do not see how that is a negative.. Does Vidblaster offer the ability to call and get one on one support?

Tom Sinclair offers that to those who buy from him. But that is by no means a "company" policy.

[AndrewSeabrook]

Brian, so where have I said that any of this is a negative? If you don't like the product, don't buy or use it. It is as simple as that.

My intention with my comments is to lower the personal nature of the debate and stick to more objective and observable fact. As I said above all of the tools are fine. Each has its strengths and weaknesses. I use all of them for different purposes and love that fact that they will all inter-operate. I have had excellent support on each forum and have had excellent support from each company./ Let us get the tenor of the discussion away from the abusive and destructive personal rants about individuals and instead concentrate on improving our production values in the product we are all producing. The switcher software we use, whilst important, is in reality only one small part of that puzzle.

CseeMan. Your explanation on the background of Wirecast was interesting. I hadn't realized that WC had been around as long as it has. It also supported my comment that Telestream provides a much larger team for the development of the product, and for those who will quickly chime in that there are only two developers, don't underestimate the graphic designers, testers, support people etc that the broader Telestream supplies. That is why they are more able to work with external companies to develop interfaces and functionallity than a single person team.

Quick restatement about streaming...VB and vMIx use FMLE as the default encoder. You can stream to multiple CDN's using FMLE and you can stream at multiple bitrates. FMLE can achieve the same result as the WC encoder, but it does it differently. Both VB and vMix can use other encoders...WC for example or FFMEG....or hardware encoders. Please let us stop confusing the encoding question with the switcher.

Backup systems. In WC/VB/vMix you are able to have a second copy of the software installed on a backup machine. In all cases, only one copy may be operated at any one time.

Streaming settings. Yes VB has restrictions on the upload stream if you are using the inbuilt interface to FMLE, but you can input directly to FMLE and bypass this restriction on all versions of VB.

Recording and streaming at different resolutions. You can do this with all three products. As I said before there are different ways of achieving this result.

Yes, VB and vMIx are resticted to windowsOS's, but you can run them on Macs using a Windows install on that hardware. I have also been able to run them, and WC, in virtual machines on WindowsOS.

Recording Codecs. What most miss in the discussion about codecs is that they, in the main, have to be licenced, and therefore add to the cost of the product. Also as the codecs are updated, so there is an increased resource load on the development teams to test and modify their code to support the new codecs. Each of the companies makes a commercial decision about the codecs that they will bundle and support into their product.

Your point about CPU use is valid. WC and vMix take a lot of advantage of the GPU, whilst VB primarily targets the CPU. The VB chromakey module uses both CPU and GPU resources.

[thetechbuzz]

I agree with what you said, just one small correction, Wirecast will allow 2 computers to operate off 1 serial at the same time. But other then that, agree 100 percent

[cseeman]

Andrew, I'm not sure if or why you want to limit discussion to switchers when, in Wirecast's case, it includes an encoder as a key feature.

I'm willing to be educated but Adobe FMLE, at least through the GUI, has a destination and backup destination URL server points. Are there more I'm not seeing? Wirecast is not limited to two.
Adobe FMLE can use VP6 and MainConcept H.264. Wirecast can use VP6, MainConcept H.264, x264 (which is better quality efficiency than MainConcept), WMV (on Windows), Quicktime. Yes there's license fees involved and they are factored into the cost of the product and that's one reason we compare cost and features (including the encoder).
Adobe FMLE allows up to three bit rates. Wirecast can use any number of bit rates even using different codecs going to different servers.
Adobe FMLE does support multibitrate Dynamic Streaming whereas Wirecast doesn't yet sync the keyframes to do that.
So while the switchers can stream to external encoders both software and hardware, Wirecast has a much more flexible built in encoder than others dependent on Adobe FMLE.
Wirecast does have a built in DSS for Quicktime streaming although the demand for that is relatively small these days.

Wirecast's encoder is more flexible than Adobe FMLE. Of course one can use Wirecast's encoder with other programs including VidBlaster (and some have done that) but that certainly speaks to the importance of developing a good encoder. Given that, for VB to use Wirecast's encoder it's an additional purchase of course. For Wirecast to use Adobe FMLE is no additional cost.

I'm honestly not sure why VB would limit bit rate to 1mbps in all but Broadcast if it's so easy to work around (and free). I'm open to hearing an explanation.
Granted Wirecast is also pursuing its encoder as a desirable feature even if one isn't using the switcher whereas VidBlaster is not. I do think that's worthy of comparison though.

Yes Telestream has greatly expanded support for the original Varasoft Wirecast team which is why I suggest that Mike V and CombiTech consider looking for partner. Some might consider having a QA team and a Customer Support team important features.

After all this forum thread is "VidBlaster vs Wirecast" so we are participating to make comparisons.

[JackWarner]

Andrew - Can you link to a recording of your show? i would really like to see the results you get out of VB. I will put money on the fact that there are loads of dropped frames in your recording.

[AndrewSeabrook]

Jack...and what will that show really? That my cameras are outputting at the wrong settings? That my capture cards and their drivers are dodgy, that the recording tool that I use has issues? By the way I record on a separate device to lower the system requirements on my switching machine....irrespective of the switching software. The point being that frames drops can be generated in a number of places in the chain and why they is generated are dependent on a number of factors. The switching software being only one of these. That is why NewTek has designed the Tricaster in the way it did, matching dedicated hardware and software to optimise performance of both.

Using an audio analogy. If I hear clipping on my audio does that automatically mean that it is my microphone at fault? My mixer? My recording device? My Audio streamer? My CDN? My audio client? Or is it a combination of all of those and how I have configured and calibrated them to work together?