NDI and Live Titling

Titling and Wirecast

Telestream Wirecast is a live video-switching software program that offers two versions: Studio ($495) and Pro ($994). Both share basic 2D title creation capabilities with lots of templates to get you started, plus an excellent Twitter integration function that makes it simple to add a Twitter feed to your videos (Figure 3, below). The new version 7.0, which was announced in late June 2016, also offers the ability to type text directly into the live feed, to display a text file that automatically updates when changed, and to display an RSS feed. It also allows crawling and scrolling titles with enhanced alignment, justification, and font support.

Figure 3. Feeling the Bern with Wirecast 7.0

To enhance these capabilities with motion and 3D titles, you can integrate one of four versions of the NewBlue titling software directly into Wirecast for increasing levels of design and display functionality, including Titler Live Express ($99), Titler Live ($299), Titler Live Advance ($499), and Titler Live Broadcast ($1,499). Once installed, you can access templates or even design titles from within Wirecast and immediately display them as overlays in your productions (Figure 4, below).

Figure 4. Creating a title in Titler Pro Live from within Wirecast. Click the image to see it at full size.

You can also create a playlist of titles in the Titler product and import that into Wirecast. The playlist will update automatically each time you display and remove the title. If you have four guests on a show, you can create the title playlist with four entries in Titler and import that title into Wirecast. The names will update each time you display the title. If you buy the Titler Live Broadcast version, you can create your titles on a separate computer and transmit them to Wirecast via NDI.

Note that the initial release of Wirecast 7.0 doesn’t have full NDI support. It’s designed specifically to import titles from Titler Live Broadcast, so you may not be able to input sources of content from other NDI-compatible products. However, Telestream plans to include full support for NDI in a near-term future release.

Get in the Game

Wirecast is very popular for broadcasting high school and college sporting events. The Pro version comes with integrated scoreboard capability that you can use to manually update the score, but it doesn’t have a clock function. In addition, the Pro version can link directly with Sportzcast’s universal scoreboard interface to automatically pull live scoring data off the facility’s scoreboard into the live stream. However, scoreboard presentation, and the associated effects, are basic.

J.D. Fox is operations manager at Stretch Internet, a unique sports-oriented CDN that proactively monitors all feeds during games to optimize quality and quickly resolve any problems. When clients ask about an advanced scoreboard solution, Fox recommends NewBlue Titler Live Advance, or Titler Live Broadcast, usually for integration with Wirecast, but also for TriCaster for larger schools.

If the school doesn’t have a link to Sportzcast, the Titler Live version includes two live game clocks: One is for tracking game time, while the other is for ancillary timers, such as 24-second shot clocks or 30-second play clocks. You’ll have to start and stop them manually, but this is better than not having a clock at all. With the Sportzcast package, of course, the user has automatic access to all data displayed on the clock.

In terms of appearance, according to Fox, “The Live Advance version contains very high-quality templates, including stat and halftime graphics and scoreboards with much greater configurability, animation, and other effects than Wirecast alone.” Titler Live Broadcast also includes up to 16 channels of NDI output support, allowing it to send the scoreboard to TriCaster and other NDI-compatible systems, plus the ability to import and export CSV files to integrate that data within the titles.

Titling and vMix

vMix live production software comes in six different versions ranging in price from the free SD version to Pro ($1,200), which is 4K-compatible and enables instant replays from up to four camera sources. All versions come with a built-in titler with templates and the ability to design and add your own. You can update the text in all titles in real time during your production. Alternately, you can populate a single title with multiple text strings and switch between them during the production via right-click commands. This is a nice way to add multiple titles without cluttering up your interface. The Web Controller is another useful feature that lets you edit titles from a separate device with a web browser, such as a separate computer or even a tablet.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, vMix fully supports NDI version 17 and even produced its own desktop capture software that can capture a screen on a Mac or Windows computer and allow you to use that screen in a vMix production. This should also work with other NDI-compatible live mixers. Figure 5 (below) shows how NDI enables vMix to input the title created in After Effects shown on the bottom in Figure 1. In Figure 1, I’m using the free demo version, hence the logo overlay. The overlay will disappear if you opt for the $9.99 monthly subscription price.

Figure 5. vMix recognizes multiple sources from different NDI-compatible programs from different computers.

vMix also shows inputs from Titler Pro Live running on the same system, plus screens from an HP notebook from vMix desktop capture software. If you scrolled upward in the screen, you would also see input from Titler Pro Live running on a separate Mac on my office LAN.

Overall, NDI has done a fabulous job integrating content creation packages and live streaming software programs. Before buying a product in either class, you should make sure that it’s NDI-compatible.