- If you're looking to produce
professional looking live streams
then there's some great tools around these days
to help you do it.
In this video, we're going to cover
the three most popular live streaming platforms,
OBS, XSplit Broadcaster and Wirecast,
and I'm gonna share my thoughts on each of them
to help you make the best decision
for which one is right for you.
Hey, it's Justin Brown here from Primal Video.
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Let's jump into it.
Okay, so the top three live streaming platforms
are, as we said, OBS, XSplit Broadcaster and Wirecast.
Now, the three of them have a lot of similarities.
All allow you to create
professional looking broadcasts for one,
they'll also let you live stream to platforms
like Facebook Live, YouTube Live, Twitch and to an RTMP
or to a custom source.
They'll also all let you do screen recording
or local disc recording of your live stream
so you can use them as screen recorders as well
or you can create a local backup of your live stream
so that you've got it for re-upload for YouTube
or another platform.
They'll also have things like built-in color correction
and green screen effects.
So a lot of common areas between the three.
But the biggest difference between the three
is the pricing, the features and what they allow you to do,
and how easy each piece of software is
to get up and running.
Make sure you stick around to the end
because I'll share with you
which live streaming platform I use
and which new one
I think you should definitely keep an eye on.
Okay, so the first piece of software that we're gonna cover
is Wirecast studio and it sells for $495 U.S.
So it's the most expensive piece of software
that we're going to cover in this video
but it's also got the most amount of features
and the most amount of control over your live stream.
Now there is a free version of Wirecast available.
It's called Wirecast Play or Wirecast for YouTube.
It is a really, really cut down version of Wirecast,
so you're missing a heap of the important features
to be able to get professional live streams
and you can also only live stream to YouTube.
So for the purposes of this video,
and talking about software that will allow you
to create professional looking live streams,
it doesn't cut it in my opinion.
So Wirecast Studio, it's cross platform,
which means you can install it on both Mac and PC.
It's also probably the most powerful.
It gives you the largest amount of features
out of the three pieces of software.
So it's really easy to use,
it's really easy to set up and navigate
and the interface is really intuitive.
So for anyone that's just jumping in
and hasn't used any of these three programs before,
you'll be able to get up to speed quickest with Wirecast
and if something goes wrong, god forbid,
then you'll be able to find the problem,
at least in my experience, much, much quicker in Wirecast
and fix the issue, especially while you're live
than with the other two.
Wirecast also has direct integration with Facebook Live,
meaning that you can view your comments
and see how many people are on
and look at all the hearts and the thumbs up
directly from within Wirecast.
So that is huge.
And in addition to that, there's two other key features
that Wirecast has that the others don't
that really make it a stand out.
The first is that it gives you multiple output options,
so you can broadcast live to multiple platforms
and multiple RTMP streams at the same time.
So that's really powerful.
And the second is the live streaming presets
that Wirecast has built in for your output options.
So just a matter of selecting YouTube
and then you've got all the different preset options
for the different qualities and bit rates
that you can stream at.
Both of the other two, XSplit Broadcaster and OBS,
you'll have to manually key in the bit rates
and key frames and resolutions that you wanna broadcast at.
So especially for anyone new,
or even for someone that knows what they're doing,
it's so much easier just to be able to select
a pre-built template, or preset,
for the different live streaming options.
So that's a massive feature
and it's something that adds to the overall usability
and experience of using Wirecast Studio.
Okay, now onto XSplit Broadcaster,
which is quite a bit cheaper than Wirecast Studio.
This one you've got options of monthly subscription
or an annual subscription.
So technically you don't really own the software,
you're just licensing the software,
either monthly or annually,
and currently a monthly subscription
for the standard or the personal version,
is around $5 per month.
If you want the professional version,
then it's up around $8.30 per month.
XSplit Broadcaster is Windows only.
There's currently no Mac version available for it.
But what it does have
is a really, really powerful scene creation tool,
where you can easily drop your graphics
and move everything around, even your titles, in 3D space.
So you can create some really good looking scenes
and some really professional live streams
and literally drag and drop and reposition everything
to how you want it more so than the other two,
more so than Wirecast and OBS.
They'll both give you those features to some degree,
but XSplit has it hands down on scene creation.
Now in regards to the interface
and usability of the program,
it is really easy to use.
It may not be as polished or as seamless
and as intuitive as Wirecast,
but it's still really easy to use
and to navigate through
and find everything you need to get set up easily
and to have your shot looking good.
You will need to have some understanding
of bit rates and codecs
that are recommended for your internet connection
and the platform that you wanna broadcast to
in order to get the best results out of this software
because you will be manually keying them in.
There are no presets.
But that's really not a big thing to overcome
or to learn and to lock those settings down
so that you only have to do them once.
Now another really powerful and really useful feature
in XSplit Broadcaster is the Skype integration,
the connectivity with Skype
so you don't need to worry about setting up
an external monitor and screen sharing that monitor
and cropping the area down that you normally have to do
in other broadcasting software.
Having the tight integration means you can literally
just sign in with your Skype account,
when you make your calls, they're all brought directly in
as a video source to XSplit Broadcaster.
So that's really powerful and really seamless
and it makes creating live video content
or broadcasting your interviews live really, really easy.
Okay, so now onto the third piece of software,
which is OBS, or Open Broadcast software.
Now this one is the cheapest because it's free.
Now, just because it's free definitely doesn't mean
it's not capable of creating
professional looking live streams.
It's actually probably the most popular
or the most used piece of software for broadcasting live.
And it could have something to do with the price tag,
but the feature set in it is really solid
and really good as well.
Now just like Wirecast, OBS is cross platform,
which means you can get a Windows version,
a Mac version, but there's also a Linux version of OBS
available as well.
In my opinion, it's got the hardest to use
or the least intuitive interface of the three,
but it is something that once you get your head around
and get used to using,
you will be able to get quite proficient in it.
And just the same as XSplit, there are no presets built in
for your live streaming.
So when you choose the platform that you wanna go live to,
you'll then have to sort out the key framing
and your bit rates and your audio quality
in order to get the best results for your bandwidth
and for the location you're going to be broadcasting to.
Now besides the price tag of nothing,
and still having all the power and performance
to create a really professional looking live stream,
one of the key features of OBS that I like
is the plugins that are available.
There's a plugins directory on the OBS website
with a heap of plugins in there
to really help you expand functionality
and really customize OBS to work the way that you'd like.
So that's pretty powerful.
So those are the three most popular
live streaming platforms.
You've got Wirecast, which is the most expensive,
but probably has the most amount of features.
You've got XSplit, which is much, much cheaper.
It's Windows only but it's still easy to use.
And then you've got OBS, which will run on everything,
Mac, Windows and Linux.
It is the most complicated to use,
but once you get your head around it,
it's really, really powerful as well.
So the software that I personally use
and highly recommend is Wirecast Studio.
Yes, you can create great live streams in OBS and in XSplit
but Wirecast Studio is definitely worth the $495 price tag
based on everything I've just covered in this video.
Based on the fact that you have multiple output streams,
based on how easy it is to use,
how logical it is to use.
You don't have to get buried deep in menus
to find things and to fix up any issues if there are any.
For me it is the most powerful, most professional solution
for live streaming and it's definitely worth considering.
Now with live streaming currently being a rapidly growing,
rapidly changing industry with heaps of stuff going on,
one new platform or new service offering
that's definitely worth checking out is BeLive.tv.
It's currently just for Facebook Live
but if they branch out to YouTube Live as well
and to other platforms,
then this will be an absolute game changer.
All ready to create a Facebook Live stream solo
and bring in your Facebook comments
and even to bring in an interview,
to have two people live on a Facebook Live,
there's no easier way to do it
than just simply logging in to the website.
Threes no software that you need to maintain or update.
It's all done by them.
So that's a really interesting one to keep an eye on
and if you're only looking currently
to broadcast to Facebook Live, then definitely check it out.
Okay, so those are my thoughts on Wirecast
versus XSplit Broadcaster versus OBS.
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I'll talk to you soon.