Telestream, the provider of Flip4mac, Episode and FlipFactory content repurposing and workflow automation products, announced that it has completed the acquisition of European-based Vara Software Ltd., a privately-held company. The acquisition adds the products, technologies and employees of Vara Software to those of Telestream, Inc., a privately-held US-based company. Vara Software brings successful, award-winning live production and streaming products to the Telestream product family. The acquisition expands Telestream’s reach beyond encoding-based media workflow solutions for leading broadcast, media and entertainment companies to include powerful tools for real-time creation and distribution of video content over the Web for a broad range of businesses.

Vara Software provides real-time production tools, including webcasting, screencasting and rich media presentation products for entertainment, corporate communications, education and training. Webcasting allows companies to reach large, dispersed audiences by distributing content over the Internet, either live or on demand. Screencasting combines screen captures, video recordings and audio narration to provide cost-effective software training and sharing of computer desktop activity over the Internet.

“Vara Software is a highly-regarded, award-winning company that has been recognized by industry leaders such as Apple, Inc.,” said Dan Castles, CEO of Telestream. “The ability to quickly capture live events, create and distribute content for Internet-based content delivery is experiencing explosive growth. We believe the live element is going to be even more important going forward. While Vara Software products currently target individual users and departments within larger organizations, the technology is well suited to easily migrate to enterprise-level solutions.”

The acquisition moves Telestream into the real-time production end of the digital media supply chain. Vara Software products are an ideal fit for the millions of Telestream Flip4Mac Windows Media component and Episode desktop encoder users who might benefit from these powerful yet easy-to-use video production tools. Telestream is well positioned to leverage this innovation for its higher-end enterprise-level applications. The company also plans to leverage its existing technologies to add greater value to Vara Software products.

According to Frost and Sullivan’s “World Internet Media Streaming Platforms Market” study (2007), the worldwide broadband subscriber base has increased to nearly a third of a billion and is forecast to grow to well over half a billion in 2012.

“The growth of high-speed Internet connections around the world, including in small and home offices, makes it easier to access high-quality video and audio content live or on demand,” said Mukul Krishna, Global Director for Digital Media at Frost and Sullivan. “This has led to accelerated use of streaming media applications such as webcasting and screencasting. We predict that increased broadband penetration will continue to be a key driver for these applications.”

Wirecast is an advanced live webcasting application for Mac or Windows that combines multiple video cameras, movies, desktop output, audio tracks, images and titles to make striking webcasts that can be streamed live or archived for later broadcast. Live Earth, which delivered on-demand footage to more than 10 million simultaneous viewers on MSN.com in July 2007, was powered by Wirecast.

Wirecast is the most advanced live webcasting product available for your Mac or PC. You can stream multiple live video cameras, while dynamically mixing in other media (movies, images etc). Features such as Chroma Key (blue/green screen) and built-in titles merge seamlessly with Wirecast's layering system, allowing you to create beautiful, professional webcasts.

1. Shot list	3. Live Preview
2. Transition selection	4. Broadcast Controls

Wirecast introduces the unique concept of shots. You can package up your selected cameras, graphical overlays, movies and titles into a shot. Once you have built your list of shots, you can transition the broadcast between them with a single mouse click.

Multiple Layers
Controlling your broadcast in real-time is easy. With Wirecast's multiple layer support, it's simple to place a background music track or a company logo over your webcast, while changing between the cameras you want your viewers to see.

Flexibility
When it comes time to broadcast, Wirecast takes advantage of the powerful QuickTime Streaming architecture on Mac OS X, and both QuickTime and Windows Media on the Windows® platform. Using QuickTime, you can unicast or multicast to your clients. When you want to scale your webcast up, you simply send your broadcast to a Darwin or QuickTime Streaming Server. Your viewers can then watch your webcast through QuickTime Player or embedded directly into a webpage.

Windows Media supports both a push and pull model, viewers can either connect directly to your machine using the "pull" method or when you need to scale up you can "push" your broadcast to a Windows Media Server. Viewers will connect either through Windows Media Player or directly inside a webpage.

Feature Highlights

• Support for multiple cameras: Load up your system with HDV (1), DV and USB cameras. Switching between them is effortless.
  
  
• Chroma Key: A high quality, GPU accelerated real-time green and blue screen solution is now part of Wirecast.
  
  
• Multiple Broadcast Support: Wirecast can output your broadcast to any number of destinations in any number of compression formats. You can scale your broadcast from 3G cell phone all the way to DVD quality.
  
  
• Desktop Presenter: Use the small Desktop Presenter application to transmit the desktop of another computer into Wirecast for use during your webcasts. Perfect for broadcasting Powerpoint or Keynote presentations, training webcasts and software demonstrations.
  
  
• Core Image: New for Mac OS X Tiger is the GPU accelerated Core Image filter and transition library. You can apply an unlimited number of Core Image filters to any layer in your webcast, then move between your shots with beautiful transitions like Ripple and Page Curl. The best part is that you can add Image Units from 3rd party developers to expand your filter library.
  
  
• H.264: Full support for the next generation video codec, offering extremely high quality, scalable compression for your broadcasts and archives.
  
  
• Amazing 3D Graphics: Generates amazing transitions and effects in real-time, including cross-fade, 3D cube, swinging doors, sliding etc.
  
  
• Incredible Titles: Over 20 built-in professional broadcast quality titles themes. Pick your favorite, enter your text and you're done. It's just as simple as that. Wirecast takes advantage of the high-quality font rendering capabilities of Mac OS X, so you know its going to look good.
  
  
• Simple User Interface: Controlling a live broadcast can be very challenging -- not with Wirecast. You create your shots before you go live, and when its broadcast time, you simply click the one you want to take it live.
  
  
• QuickTime Streaming Server Support: Delivering your stream to a larger audience is a couple of clicks away. Send your broadcast to an industry proven QuickTime or Darwin Streaming Server. Both have the power to stream to thousands of viewers. Wirecast produces fully ISO-compliant MPEG-4 video streams, so your audience isn't tied to one platform. Creating a 3GPP webcast for mobile phone viewers is made easy too.
  
  
• Keynote Integration: Drag and drop a QuickTime movie exported by Keynote and Wirecast will automatically recognize its slide markers.
  
  
• Multiple Layers: You want an audio background track, a camera input, a title and company logo in your webcast? No problem, Wirecast makes it easy.
  
  

1. HDV decoding support requires additional purchase.

Vara Software products are available for immediate purchase at www.flip4mac.com. Wirecast is also available through Telestream’s worldwide desktop resale network.