- Hey it's Justin Brown here from Primalvideo
Wirecast and OBS or Open Broadcast Software
are probably the two most popular live streaming programs
that will allow you to create
really professional looking live streams
and send them to places like YouTube Live or Facebook Live.
We've done a heap of videos on this channel
talking about how to do it
or running through had a do it with Wirecast
We always get a lot of questions
from people asking about OBS as well
so in this video cover everything you need to know
about Wirecast and OBS to help you make the best decision
and work out which one is right for you.
Alright, so to start with there is a lot of common ground
between the two programs.
Both of them will let you live stream
to YouTube Live, Facebook Live, Twitch,
and a heap of other live streaming platforms.
They both let you use things like chromakey
or green screen.
They both let you apply effects
and resize, control your output image,
put colour effects on also let you monitor
and adjust your audio levels, have multiple camera inputs,
and multiple screen sharing options as well.
Whether you just wanna share a whole screen
or crop down to a specific area or window on your screen.
So there's a lot of common ground or common features
between the two programs.
But probably the biggest difference,
Not probably, the biggest difference between the two
is the pricetag.
OBS is open source or it's free.
Costs you nothing.
Wirecast Studio will cost you $495 US for the studio version
for the pro version it up around $999.
So that alone is a huge difference.
Now what we're going to focus on in this video
is Wirecast Studio, so the $495 version,
not Wirecast Professional, Wirecast Studio Pro,
which is the $995 version.
And the reason that we're not going
to talk about the free version of Wirecast, Wirecast Play
is because it's limited to YouTube only
and there's a heap of features that are missing
from that version as well.
So we're going to compare professional versions
or platforms you could use
to produce professional live streams
to both Facebook and YouTube
and a heap of other platforms.
So we're focused on Wirecast Studio and OBS.
So what we're gonna run through here
is eight things in total.
Four things you need to know about OBS
and four things you need to know about Wirecast Studio
to help you make the best decision for you.
So we'll start with OBS first
and the first point is that OBS doesn't have
any built-in presets for live streaming.
Which means you really have to know what you're doing
or look at other tutorials around online
to find the correct settings for the live stream
that you wanna produce.
So YouTube Live and Facebook Live
both have their own ideal quality settings
or live streaming settings for the different resolutions
that you're going to be broadcasting at.
So the settings and the bit rates
for 720p streams gonna be totally different
to a 1080p stream.
So what this really means is not just a beginner,
entry-level, open the software, choose YouTube,
or choose Facebook and hit go live.
You will need to understand the things like the bit rate,
the resolution, the key framing,
your audio quality settings
in order to get the best result through for your system
for your internet connection,
and for the platform that you're streaming to.
Wirecast on the other hand has
a heap of live streaming presets built-in.
So once you pick either Facebook or YouTube
the next step is picking your quality settings.
There is just presets for everything
and you can only pick settings are recommended by YouTube
or by Facebook for example.
So for someone new
coming into live streaming through Wirecast
is much easier to get up and running without needing to go
and research the correct bit rates and resolutions
and everything to get great results.
Number two for OBS is that it's not CPU intensive
which means not a real resource hog on your system.
You can run it on older or less powerful systems
or you can maximise the power
and do other things like a lot of people use OBS
for live streaming their gaming
and gaming is very computer intensive task,
so having the ability to live stream that
with a program that's not can take up
a heap of those resources from the gaming
is a pretty powerful thing.
Wirecast on the other hand is typically a very CPU,
GPU as well, intensive program.
So if you're going to be live streaming
on a less powerful computer
or if you can be doing a lot of things
on your computer at the same time as live streaming
like gaming or maybe even running through
some 4K video editing tutorials while you're live,
then that may be better suited,
depending on your system and your set up,
for OBS over Wirecast.
Number three for OBS is the plugins.
There are a heap of additional plugins you can get
to really add some cool new features
and functionality to Open Broadcast Software.
So while OBS is a complete live streaming solution
straight out of the box or straight after installing,
having the ability to install plugins
and really customize the software to suit you
is a really powerful thing
and obviously because it's open source software
and because it's a popular program
there are lots of people writing plugins for it.
Number four for OBS is something
I think is pretty powerful.
it's a new feature this come in fairly recently
and it allows you to click and drag
and scale and crop all of your graphic elements
or your live stream elements, or your cameras,
or your screen shares, any text,
right from the preview monitor,
or from the preview window.
In Wirecast you've got similar features
but in order to get full control over your shot,
you're doing everything manually with sliders
instead of just being able to click and drag
or click and crop your video elements
to get them how you want them to look.
So not having to rely on sliders
and advanced tools just to make some basic changes
to the way that your live stream is going to look
is a pretty powerful tool in OBS.
Alright, so there were the four things you need to know
from OBS.
Now we're going to look at the four things you need to know
for Wirecast.
And the first is having the ability to output
to multiple sources.
Now this is a really really powerful thing.
Not only will give you the ability to do things like
live stream to Facebook and YouTube at the same time,
even if you're just looking to output to one source
like YouTube,
it means that you can add a second source to YouTube,
like a backup stream,
so that you're actually pushing out two live streams
in case something happened to one of them
you can send a backup stream as well.
So even if not interested in broadcasting live
to multiple online platforms
like Facebook Live or YouTube Live
you can also set up multiple output options
for local disc recording as well
which means you could record your live stream
in a really high quality for a backup
or for archive.
You can also push out a lower quality
or specific settings
that you're gonna release your videos later
on another platform.
So that's pretty powerful
and that's something that I use all the time
with a lot of my government live streams.
I'll record one as a really high quality version
for archival, for backup,
and I'll also say that the lower quality MP4 file
exactly to their requirements
so they can then use immediately after the live stream
for their local intranet.
So that feature alone is really invaluable
as far as I'm concerned
because as it really renders and saves everything
on the fly.
Number 2 for Wirecast is the level of control
that you have over your entire live stream
and all of your video assets as well.
Just simple things like if you are adding in a video file
you can set it to start at a certain point.
you can set it to loop once that file is finished.
You can set it to disappear once the file is played.
You can set an outpoint so that when it hits there,
it loops back around to the end point.
You can really get so much control over your video assets
and over everything to do with your live stream.
While you can do some of those things in OBS
there is nowhere near the same amount of control
that you will have in Wirecast.
Number 3 for Wirecast
and if you've ever used Wirecast and OBS
then I'm sure you're with me on this one
but Wirecast is much easier to set up
and use straight out of the box.
If you've never used either one before
and someone gave you OBS,
and someone gave you Wirecast,
you would be to get up and running much quicker
without having to Google things
or look in help with Wirecast.
It's so much more intuitive the interface
is much easier to use
and as far as I'm concerned,
it's in a much more logical layout.
In OBS you gotta create a heap of scenes
you've got to manually add everything in
and control everything.
In Wirecast,
while you still have to do that to some degree,
it's much easier much simpler process.
So where I feel this really comes into play
is if something went wrong while you're live
which is worst-case.
So say you switch from one camera to another camera
and for whatever reason
you're not getting any audio through,
it's much easier to pinpoint the problem
and quickly fix the problem in my opinion
in Wirecast than it is in OBS.
But really if you set everything up
and have a procedure for your live stream,
and you test everything before you go live,
then hopefully you won't have any issues,
but if you do have issues, much easier to fix
and to pinpoint in Wirecast, in my opinion.
Number four for Wirecast is the virtual camera output
and virtual microphone output option.
This is a really really powerful feature
that allows you to output everything
from Wirecast as if it was going live
into a virtual web cam.
That virtual web can you can set up
and activate as if it was an actual webcam
or actual microphone you plugged into your computer.
So what this means you can use an app like Skype
but instead of just having a webcam
you're having everything that you are pushing through
from Wirecast.
If you want to take your Skype calls
or Skype interviews to the next level
and bring in screen sharing, and bring in titles,
and animations, and other video clips,
you can do all that
and control it all from Wirecast
but you're outputting through Skype
instead of a live stream.
So that's not just limited to Skype
you can use that on any application
where you can use a web cam.
So that is an awesome tool
and awesome feature as far as I'm concerned.
So there's eight things you need to know about Wirecast
and OBS to help you make the best decision
to work out which one is right for you.
Grab the 30 day trial version of Wirecast,
give it a go, compare it yourself to OBS,
and work out which one works best for your workflow.
Personally for me the answer is Wirecast,
but does come with a much higher price tag than OBS,
so you've really got to make up your own mind on that one.
If you found this video helpful,
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And if you check out the gear
that I used to live stream solo
then click the link on screen now.
I'll see ya soon.