LiveStream, Ustream, Xsplit
October 11, 2012 By: Aaron
For participation in Extra-Life and raising more the $50 everyone got a key for XSplit which gives you 3 free months of their premium service.
So I created an XSplit account, and installed their software and was going through the paces to see how it differes from LiveStream and Ustream….. I have to say I’m kinda not impressed.
So lets start with some of the good things about the software.
It gives you the ability to set up channels and multiple input devices and gives you a real easy interface in which you can switch and toggle and mix those inputs together as you are either recording or live streaming. This is handy because you can set up your video game as input 1, a desktop screen region as input 2, your webcam as input 3, and a picture as input 4.
Then you can stream your game play and when you’re ready you can switch to your desktop or webcam and if you get up to leave for a moment you can switch to a stock image.
The other nice feature is that you can stream to multiple sites, such as Justin.tv, Ustream.tv, Livestream.com all at the same time.
Now for the bad…
It’s not an actual streaming site/service it’s a streaming software. So in order to stream you need an account for either Ustream, LiveStream, Justin.tv.
Ustream and Livestream both have their own desktop / mobile application for streaming and with my own experiance LiveStreams desktop application has better default quality than XSplit desktop application. The quality is about the same as Ustream, but Ustream has two really nice mobile apps, one that broadcasts live over just wifi or one that will do both data/wifi. The quality of Ustreams mobile apps is also pretty decent.
All in all, if the software could broadcast to LiveStream and get the same video quality as LiveStream does then the aditional options they offer in the software might be worth the price for the customization.
But, as it stands I’ll be keeping the two services I use, LiveStream for broadcasting my gameplay and Ustream if I want to broadcast any live event that I go to (which I will be starting in the near future).
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