Paris-Based Broadcaster Canal+ Gears Up with Wirecast Gear for Event-Based Live Streaming Channels

Telestream, a leading provider of digital media tools and workflow solutions, has announced an order for its Wirecast Gear live streaming production system from French national cable and satellite broadcaster, Canal+. The Paris-based broadcaster has bought eight Wirecast Gear systems for use for live streaming during their live broadcast productions.

The systems started being deployed in May 2017. Canal+, a major producer of news, sports and current affairs programmes in France, saw a need to extend its live streaming capabilities to make them more flexible and capable of covering specific events at short notice. The broadcaster selected Wirecast Gear because of its high-quality output, intuitive operation and simple set up.

“Our intention in acquiring Wirecast Gear is to enable each of our TV production teams to create event-based live streaming channels, particularly on social media platforms such as Dailymotion, Facebook and YouTube. Whether it’s a major news story, a sporting or cultural event, we need to be able to react to production opportunities and start live streaming more or less immediately,” explained Charles Lesoil Head of Content Engineering at Canal+.

“Also, we needed more than a simple streamer- we have to be able to remove ads that are present in a broadcast feed, or insert ads and promos that are designed for our live social media channels. Wirecast gives us all these production tools, and its integration with the major social media platforms is flawless.

“Wirecast is so simple to use and produces really stunning professional-quality live productions. It enables us to put live streaming capabilities in the hands of non-technical creative staff: all they need is 10 minutes training in order to become a fully proficient Wirecast streamer,” explained Lesoil.

Already, Canal+ has used Wirecast Gear to stream live action from a range of major cultural and sporting events, including the Festival de Cannes 2017 where all the action was streamed to Dailymotion, and the America’s Cup Sailing Race Series plus soccer’s Champion’s League Final where live action was streamed to Facebook. “These fast moving events are perfect for the creative power that Wirecast brings,” explained Charles Lesoil. “With no technical support, our production teams can very quickly create a live stream whenever a newsworthy event happens. Whether it’s an election, a motor race or a music concert, we are able to deliver live content to our viewers on any platform.”

“When we started researching live streaming options we had a wish list and Wirecast Gear ticked all the boxes with such ease. So much so, that after the demonstration for the first time at our offices we told them to leave it in situ and we ordered a further seven systems for immediate delivery,” commented Charles Lesoil. “Wirecast empowers our teams with an elegant and intuitive streaming system, which integrates so tightly with Facebook Live and other social networks.”

Wirecast Gear
Wirecast Gear is a portable computer workstation fully configured for live event production and streaming. The easy-to-use system allows anyone to broadcast professional live productions in a matter of minutes with a fully configured solution built for live event streaming. Wirecast Gear is pre-installed with Wirecast Pro live streaming production software.

Wirecast Gear comes with four professional video input ports with options for either HDMI or SDI, housed in a compact, powerful hardware system. At only 9.85 inches deep and taking up 1.3 rack units (RU), the Wirecast Gear workstation can be inserted into a laptop case or fitted with the included rubber feet and placed on a desktop. Solid state drives, as opposed to traditional spinning hard drives, makes Wirecast Gear ideal for transport, less prone to failure and guarantees maximum performance.

Wirecast Gear is built on a Windows 10 Pro 64bit platform with i7 Intel processors, 16GB of memory and a 250GB system drive. The unit includes multiple network connectors, USB-C ports, as well as digital display outputs to create an optimal production environment. 

Powerful live production features
With Wirecast Pro pre-installed on Wirecast Gear, users can start streaming the moment it comes out of the box using Wirecast’s powerful production features, including:

• Multi-camera live switching
• Mixing live camera sources as well as video, images, computer desktops and more
• Instant replay
• Playlists
• Built-in titles
• Chroma key support
• Virtual sets
• Live scoreboards and more

Wirecast’s built-in encoding engine allows users to stream high-quality H.264 video and AAC audio over RTMP, RTP and Windows Media protocols for maximum flexibility. Users can stream directly to 30-built-in destinations including Facebook Live, YouTube Live, Microsoft Azure, Akamai, DaCast, Wowza, as well as to record a version for later use.