graphics, overlays, scoreboard solution for live video

Hi all -

Been live streaming since 2006, and more clients are asking for high-end titling, graphics, etc.

We have tried: laptop and a scan converter = really poor quality

VidBlaster = massive resource hog, even with i7 Quad Core processor and 12Gb of RAM

Wirecast = really poor quality on video with movement, such as sports. FMLE blows it out of the water for quality.

Chyron ChyTV Display Titler = it needs a hardwire connection in order to dial home and be able to update live, so it failed in the field.

Anyone out there using a lower priced solution that has decent quality?

All suggestions highly appreciated
CS

And I know a slew of people using Wirecast for sports ranging from baseball to hockey and they haven't had any issues. Wirecast Pro has Scoreboard features and there's a couple of third parties that give away their own custom scoreboards for free. Wirecast 4 Flash encoder is built from FMLE SDK and uses the same MainConcept codec as well.

[Carly Smith] "We have tried doing 11 live events with Wirecast, and it crashes EVERY time. (and this was after a month of testing)"

It sounds like there may be an issue with your system since it's not doing that for most people. You may want to invest time in trouble shooting this.

[Carly Smith] "The recorded files are also VERY pixellated, something I never had using FMLE."

Wirecast is based on FMLE SDK and even uses the same MainConcept codec. It depends on your settings. It also depends on what you're asking the system to do. FMLE is not a real time switcher compositor nor do I believe it can access the GPU for encoding like Wirecast.

[Carly Smith] "Telestream support does respond to the issues, but their response is along the lines of "we're looking into it, and don't why its happening"."

Are you following their trouble shooting suggestions? If they don't know why it's happening it may not be a common problem. This is why it sounds like it may be specific to your config.

[Carly Smith] "I asked for help and was told to not use my pro-level equipment to test, but to use a webcam."

That would be a good suggestion. It's how you might discover if there's a third party incompatibility with video input cards for example or maybe a bad port in the computer. Wirecast would have to look at all input sources simultaneously which is radically different than FMLE which only looks at the single source you assign to it.


[Carly Smith] "My boss would LOVE to see this working, but we don't know what to do anymore, since it won't work and we can't get concrete assistance."

Follow Telestream's instructions and answer their questions.

When you test with a single simple reliable source you'd know whether it's source specific or maybe decoder specific or encoder specific issue. From there they'd be able to head in the right direction.