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Telestream Wirecast is a full-featured and well-respected desktop video mixer with one traditional Achilles' heel: CPU utilization is generally higher than competitive products on similarly configured computers. Although Telestream has narrowed the gap in recent Wirecast releases, successfully using all Wirecast features requires a powerful, finely tuned computer. To help Wirecast users acquire such a system, Telestream recently released its own bundled systems under the brand name Wirecast Gear (Figure 1). In this review, we put a test system through its paces.
Gearing Up
By way of background, there are three Gear versions: 110 ($4,995), 210 ($5,995), and 220 ($7,995), which vary by capture card and software offering. I tested the 210 version, which included a four-port Magewell HD-SDI Pro Capture board, 250GB system drive, a 500GB SSD drive, and the software listed in Figure 2 on page 94.
All three come in a 1.3RU chassis which can fit into a 19" rackmount or sit atop a desk or table on rubber pads. My test system came with an Intel Í7-6700 CPU running at 3.4 GHz, with 16GB of RAM running Windows 10. The motherboard was a Gigabyte GA-Z170N-WIFI running an Intel Z170 Express Chipset with integrated HD graphics, with a DVI-D graphics port with a maximum resolution of 1920x1200, and two version 1.4 HDMI ports capable of 4K output at 24 fps.
To save you some time, I priced the CPU (~$300); motherboard (~$140); RAM (~$120); case, power supply, and CPU fan (~$250); Magewell Pro Capture Quad SDI (~$900); and system (~$100) and storage (~$150) SSD drives; and got a total hardware cost of about $1,960. To this, you have to add Wirecast Pro ($995) and the upgrade to NewBlue Titler Live Advance ($499) for a total system cost of about $3,454, which...