As always, product mentions are not exhaustive but rather are representative of products in that category. If your product isn’t mentioned, please feel free to add it via a comment on the web version of this article. These are video mixers that you install on your computer. Products in this category include Telestream Wirecast (Mac/Windows), VMix (Windows), and the open-source Open Broadcaster Software (OBS, Mac/Windows/Linux). These products tend to be affordable or free, and very well featured as compared to entry-level standalone appliances. This simplifies adding text and graphics, and pulling together a “shot” that combines background graphics and multiple sources in a picture-in-picture. Wirecast (Rendezvous) and Vmix (Call) both provide a conferencing function that allows you to record and stream remote interviews at very high quality. The flip side of this flexibility is the ease of use while these programs don’t require a computer science degree to operate, you wouldn’t want to hand off operation to a marketing intern or church volunteer without several hours of training.īoth can also accept input from computers and phones on the same network, adding significant production flexibility. The other issue is audio/video input, which you need to supply and can get problematic.
If you try to input four cameras via dongles on a MacBookPro, you’re almost certainly going to run into problems.
