To learn more about Telestream desktop products, click here.
Right now, the need for live streaming and the ability to be able to meet remotely is at an all-time high. Musicians are streaming live from their homes, teachers are presenting lectures, friends are doing on-line happy hours and the list goes on. But an important question to be asking is, what is the best way to get the information to your audience both now and in the future?
There are tons of great options for remote meetings, one, in particular, that is especially popular right now is Zoom (and yes, Wirecast integrates with Zoom). If you don’t already know, Zoom is a video conferencing software that allows people to either phone or video into an online meeting room. Once in the meeting room, people can conduct an online video conference call. It’s great for taking the place of everyday meetings while working remotely.
COVID-19 has created a need for workers to be able to communicate effectively while remote and the need arose almost immediately. The virus created a forced disruption of office culture, and while Zoom fits most people’s needs for the basics of office life, as remote work continues, people and companies may find themselves looking for more capabilities and different ways to reach their audiences.
Let’s use a real-life analogy from personal experience. A while back, I had a dishwasher that one day, mid-cycle, popped open. I needed the dishwasher to finish so water wasn’t just sitting in it, so we grabbed a mop, stuck it under the handle of the dishwasher and jammed it against the island forcing the door closed. I hate to admit, but this went on for much longer than it should have but it got the job done, it was a lot more cost-effective than replacing the dishwasher, but it was a bit annoying and definitely an eyesore. After months of using the ‘ol mop trick, we caved and bought a new dishwasher.
For some, you may be way smarter and be able to fix the dishwasher yourself or maybe you like the quirkiness of the mop. But for others, the time will come when you know there is something more for you out there.
That’s where Wirecast comes in. It’ll work for your needs now, whether you’re a teacher, House of Worship, artist, non-profit, government agency, broadcaster… you name it but will also scale up and meet your needs in the future. For example, national and local governments are using Wirecast for daily social media and online briefings for their citizens. The communications folks at these government entities wanted to have the extra production capabilities you get with Wirecast, so their broadcasts are more interesting and could contain graphics and titles.
To understand the functionality of Wirecast, it’s important to think of live-production broadcast in three parts:
- Pre-production
- Live production
- Distribution
Pre-production
Pre-production is exactly what it sounds like. It’s everything that goes on before you go live. Our most common tool used in pre-production is ScreenFlow. ScreenFlow lets you pre-record content – be it slides, your desktop, a video clip, etc… and then edit it and export as an mp4 to be used later in the live production stage
Live Production
Here’s where it gets exciting. You can bring in your previously recorded content from ScreenFlow into Wirecast. From here you can use all of Wirecast’s features but you now have an extra piece of pre-edited content. Once you’re in Wirecast you’ll be able to handle all the production and encoding. You plug in your cameras and live microphones and recorded videos and mix them all within Wirecast. From there, all of that information is sent to the distribution platform.
Distribution
Distribution is how you actually get your live video to the world. With Wirecast, you can stream to Facebook Live, Youtube Live, On24, your website, and countless other destinations.
If you want to see a brief video of Wirecast and ScreenFlow workflows and how we create webinars using both, check out this video.
Wirecast gives users the ability to live stream anywhere but has the added benefit of looking really professional. You can tailor it to meet your specific needs be it storytime for your students, a customer-facing webinar or a church service. It’s a great way to keep things moving as usual in a time of uncertainty but as you get more familiar with the product, you’ll see the options are truly endless for the types of live content you can create.
You may find yourselves continuing to broadcast town-hall meetings, providing extra storytime and online resources to your students, acoustic music streams and whatever else you can imagine. People are looking for constant content. They want more than just the one concert and Wirecast lets you and your audience build a better, always-on relationship. The world we live in is expanding more and more into the online realm. Why not be there now and later?
To learn more about Telestream desktop products, click here.