Tutorial: Live Event Streaming and Videoconferencing with the Telestream Wirecast Gear 230
If you're producing live events at sports venues, house of worship, or any other multi-camera shoots, the Gear 230 gives you all the features and capabilities you'll need to land jobs and satisfy your clients.
What You Get With the Wirecast Gear
When you purchase the Gear 230, you get free Wirecast Pro software updates for one year included with your purchase. After that, it's just $99 a year if you always want the latest version of the software. The Gear 230 comes in a slim, 17-inch-wide case that's at home on a desktop, or in a rack or in your flight case.
Telestream ships the Gear with a generous 90-day full parts and labor warranty, which you can extend up to three years if you want, so don't be afraid to bring it with you on location.
On the back, you’ll find the standard PC ports for keyboard and mouse, networking, and audio in and out. You've got six USB 3 ports and a single USB Type-C, which are great for plugging in additional interfaces, like your TASCAM mixer or Scarlett Focusrite. You can use either of the two HDMI ports or the DVI for your display and multi-view.
For those of you who like having a physical hardware controller, X-keys makes a control surface for Wirecast, or you can use popular MIDI controllers, like the APC Mini, or the Novation Launchpad MK2. The X-keys controller for Wirecast Gear will be available for just $599.95. For local camera input, there are four HD-SDI ports.
The killer feature of these ports is that they're configurable as in or out. Say, for example, if you need an iMac projection in a venue. That, plus the ability to output an NDI feed of your program mix, has you totally covered for any production environment.
Inside, you have 2 TB of SSD storage for storing up to 40 hours of HD video. Basically, just hook up your favorite monitor, plug in your cameras, power up, and start streaming. The 230 gives you a slew of other features that are especially suited for sports. You've got audio mix control, instant replay, playlist creation for prerecorded video clips, chroma keying, virtual sets, clocks, timers, and scoreboards.
The Wirecast Gear 230 from Telestream is where it's at for live video production and streaming. With 2 TB of storage, configurable SDI ports, title and graphics software, and multicast streaming capabilities, you'll be ready to produce for any event. All Wirecast Gear models are available at videoguys.com, and this Gear 230 is just $7,995. I also recommend adding the X-keys controller for $599.95, or at least ask for special bundle pricing.
Related Articles
This tutorial details how to stream video conferences using the new Rendezvous feature introduced in Telestream Wirecast 8.
Successfully using all of the desktop mixing features in Telestream Wirecast features requires a powerful, finely tuned computer. Telestream recently released its own series of bundled systems, Wirecast Gear. In this review, we put a test system through its paces.