Wirecast

Guide

ISO Best Practices Guide

Introduction

ISO (or Isolated Output) is a Wirecast Pro feature that allows you to create clean recordings of

your system devices (cameras, capture cards, or mics) even when they are not being displayed in

the Live canvas window. This is often helpful when you want to edit together a video-on-demand

version of your live show – you can have recordings of all your cameras even when they weren’t

live in your broadcast.

2. The Shot ISO capability lets you record any “shot” that is on your Main Shot Display. This lets

you mix two or more sources into a single shot and record that. It also lets you ISO record

sources that are not available in the Capture Source ISO option such as WebRTC sources

(Rendezvous and Wirecast Go), NDI, Webstream, or Elgato capture sources.

Conguring Your ISO Recordings

• Select “Congure” from the Replay+ISO

main navigation.

• Click on “Add ISO”.

Capture Source ISO

Capture Source ISO lets you ISO record an individual

plugin sources, or Wirecast Go sources will not show

up as available Capture Source sources. To record

these, you should use Shot ISO.

which media tracks are included from your single source.

• If you want to record audio that is coming from a separate source (like from a separate micro-

phone), you can either set up another Capture Source ISO for that audio separately, OR you

can place your chosen video and audio sources into a single SHOT on the Main Shot Display

and use Shot ISO to record that shot.

Note: Documents created prior to Wirecast version 14.1 that had ISO congured that includ-

ed video and audio from two dierent sources will be split into two separate source recordings

(one for Audio, one for Video).

Shot ISO

Shot ISO lets you ISO record any shot on the Main

will have the option to include which media tracks

are included from the shot.

• Shot ISO recordings will produce video at the canvas resolution and frame rate. (This can be

adjusted in Preferences>Canvas) Audio will match our internal mixer which is stereo, 32-bit

float, 48 kHz.

• Note:

Any animated graphic or media file contained in your shot will not play as part of a Shot

ISO recording. So, if you don’t want a static image where your media is, you should place that

source in a different shot on a different layer.

• Audio-Only Recordings: In Wirecast versions prior to 14.1, it was not possible make audio-

(next to the corresponding video/audio media track checkboxes).

Format and Quality:

Wirecast oers the ability to encode your les using ProRes or x264 on both Mac and Windows.

Format

• QuickTime: ProRes Video + Uncompressed Audio:

- ProRes is better suited for NLE work. Also, color space information is less ambiguous.

• QuickTime: x264 Video + Uncompressed Audio:

- x264 is a compressed video le that results in signicantly smaller le sizes.

- x264 recordings are still placed in QuickTime les and still paired with uncompressed audio.

Uncompressed audio oers top quality and minimal CPU drain for archival purposes.

begins with 1 and is incremented when you create a new ISO conguration. For example, the rst

ISO will be named “ISO 1”, the second will be named “ISO 2”, third “ISO 3”, and so on. Likewise,

lenames given will be “iso_01”, “iso_02”, “iso_03”, and so on. (Savvy users will appreciate that

name-sorted listings of recordings on disk will remain in order beyond the 9th ISO conguration.)

You can always choose another name for the les, but that will not aect the sequencing. So if

you rename “ISO 1” to “Names Don’t Matter”, the next ISO will still be named “ISO 2” by default.

Folder

Wirecast will remember the last folder you assigned to an ISO recording conguration and use

that folder as the default for the next conguration that you create. This setting is app-wide so it

will transfer between projects.

space. When the user chooses the “Single le” option, what you’re really choosing is the

maxed-out 12-hour le duration.

• New File every X time-period: This will ensure you don’t have les that are so big you run out

of disk space. If you have a long broadcast or have limited space, you may want to limit your

le sizes with this option. This will break the recordings up and start a new le at the increment

you specify.

S

tarting your ISO Recording

When you finish configuring your ISO recordings, you’re ready to start recording. There are a

couple of ways to start your ISO recordings.

E

rror Reporting

When starting ISO recordings, Wirecast will send any number of specific error messages to the

user-log and present you with a very generic modal dialog that reads: “Avrecording failed to

start.” “View the user log for details and edit the Replay+ISO configuration to resolve issues.” The

dialog contains an Edit button which opens the ISO configuration dialog.

Also be aware that many ISO recording errors occur after you start recording and some occur

soon after. These asynchronous errors are reported only in the 'Notifications' window (accessed

from the Window menu item in the main navigation window) and no modal dialog is shown.

Conguration Errors and Warnings

Wirecast tries to catch a number of conguration errors and potential problems while you are

Warnings are shown in the dialog as warning icons next to the conguration elds. If you hover

for the selected conguration.

warning icon if it has a problem. Below is a list of the conguration problems we currently detect.

• The recording uses the same source/shot as another recording.

• No media tracks are enabled for recording.

• The source does not produce media that matches the enabled tracks.

• The selected output le is the same as another recording.

• The le duration must be between 10 seconds and 12 hours.

A Note about Resources

Keep in mind that this feature is very resource intensive. Because you are recording individual

• and an SSD for recording

Something similar to our Wirecast Gear 420 system would do.