Wirecast or not for live production?

[Craig Seeman]

[jeff heywood] “I’m bouncing between wirecast built system and blackmagic stuff. To me it seems on the positive, wirecast is much more flexible on the sources. To the negative, a lot rides on your computer performing well.
“

Wirecast works with Blackmagic stuff.
You still need a computer to perform well with Blackmagic.

[jeff heywood] “At it’s simplest I’m looking at live-streaming public lectures. Generally one cam, one PPT output, and a feed off a mixing board. “

Which Wirecast can handle easily.

[jeff heywood] “More complex I could see bringing in other sources IP cams are a possibility and occasionally using it for multi-camera google hangout setups.”

Which Wirecast can do.

[jeff heywood] “We’ll be live streaming to youtube. Does wirecast make sense for us?”

Google seems to think so.
https://www.telestream.net/wirecastforyoutube/cb-landing.htm
They mention it specifically. After all there’s a version specific to them including Wirecast Play for YouTube which is free
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2907883?hl=en

[jeff heywood] “I can see all the features but I imagine some of it is hardware limited. “

Or to put it another way. Software itself is not limited. Get the hardware you want and expand as needed.

[jeff heywood] “Also I need to know if I have video coming from one camera, and audio coming from a mixing board, will sync be an issue?”

It depends on the sources (signal path, video decoding). Wirecast Pro has audio sync delay of up to one second.