What's New in Wirecast 3
HDV camera Support. A first for a live solution, Wirecast 3 adds native support for the latest HDV (1) cameras and decks. Connect your camera via FireWire and Wirecast will automatically recognize and configure it. Supporting both 1080i (with deinterlacing) and 720p in 16:9 aspect ratios, Wirecast's support for HDV cameras brings affordable High Definition quality to everyone. As you'd expect, Wirecast continues its support for multiple simultaneous cameras, enabling live HDV switching on a personal computer for the first time.
Desktop Presenter. A common workflow is the webcasting of presentations and lectures, which until now, had involved using extra hardware to bring the output of another machine into Wirecast. To solve this problem, Wirecast 3 introduces the Desktop Presenter. The Desktop Presenter is a small application, running on either Mac or Windows, that transmits the screen of the computer, over the local network (2), to Wirecast in real time. The data sent from the Desktop Presenter is automatically compressed, so you can continue to use images, animations and video on your machine. Presenter discovery is handled automatically by Bonjour networking (3), making configuration easy. The Desktop Presenter allows you to select a particular monitor or region of the screen, and can even focus on an individual window.
Built-in Streaming Server. Setting up a Streaming Server for small webcasts has always been a chore, so Wirecast 3 now builds the industry standard Darwin Streaming Server directly in. There are now no system services to install, no XML configuration files to maintain and no hassles; just a couple of clicks and your webcast is live. When it comes time to scale your webcasts up, the same powerful broadcasting controls are still available.
Chroma Key enhancements. Wirecast 3 improves upon the great real time performance and quality of the original Chroma Key. The algorithm has been upgraded to include a proprietary dynamic spill suppression algorithm that automatically delivers significantly higher fidelity. The end product being better results with higher performance.
Windows® Scripting Support. Automating and controlling Wirecast from external applications was exclusive to Mac OS X until now. Wirecast for Windows® now has a full scripting Software Development Kit (SDK), including example code in Perl, Visual Basic and C#. Starting and stopping broadcasting, querying properties, even switching shots can now all be controlled from your favorite programming environment.
Real time stream hinting. Hinting is the process of adding special tracks to the QuickTime movie archive of your webcast. These hint tracks allow QuickTime Streaming Server to deliver the archived movie on demand to your viewers. Wirecast 3 can now hint the movie as it records to disk, removing a slow post-processing operation that required additional software.
Performance Improvements. Wirecast 3 offers significant increases in performance across the board on Windows®. New PNG & JPEG image decoders, support for VMR-9 mixing (4) of capture devices, smarter texture managements and significantly better throughput on NVIDIA graphics hardware. The Mac OS X version receives better ATI Radeon® encoding performance and a host of minor performance improvements.
Media reassignment user interface. Wirecast 3 eliminates common problems with the media in your presentation changing. What if you have created your document, then realize you want to use a different camera when you take it to the studio? With Wirecast 3, you now have a full range of controls to reassign references from one camera to the other, or one piece of media of media to another. This makes it much simpler to resolve missing or changed assets.Further new features and changes »
- HDV camera support requires additional purchase.
- The Desktop Presenter is built to offer high quality video on a local network, and isn't suitable for usage over the public Internet.
- Taking advantage of Bonjour networking requires an additional download on the Windows® platform.
- Requires Windows® XP Service Pack 2 or better.