The first revolution in live television came in 1956 when Ampex introduced the first practical videotape system for television. The long-to-develop film was no longer required and speed to market was greatly increased. From this innovation the ENG news team was born bringing us real-time news.

The second revolution came in 1990 when Newtek introduced the Video Toaster bringing the cost of several hundred thousand dollar studios into the reach of mere mortals. This was a truly revolutionary machine that ran atop the Amiga platform. Simply insert a card into your Amiga, add a few genlocked sources and WHAM you have a TV studio! Never before had creating live content or even adding effects to your edited content been so easy or affordable. An entire market of low-end professionals and professional consumers (prosumers) was born from this innovation. Heck, even the pros used this tool.

While 2007 was the year of live flash broadcasting it wouldn't be until March 4th, 2008 that the third revolution in live video came to be -- CamTwist Studio.

Many who do live broadcasting on sites like UStream.tv already know of CamTwist which at the time of this writing is sitting at version 1.6. For those who don't know, CamTwist is a way to add special effects to your live video stream as well as a way to show your desktop, movies or still pictures. CamTwist was not a video switcher or live production tool.

Until now.

Later tonight Steve Green will release a free upgrade to CamTwist bringing the version number to 1.7. While this may seem like a minor point update it is actually a huge revolution of not only the application itself but also all live online video production. CamTwist 1.7 features a new studio function that will allow multi-camera switching, layering of effects and graphics in real time, and full program/preview functions for live broadcasting. Steve has built a television studio in a box.

There have been other solutions that allow for live switching of cameras, DDRs, stills and external sources. Newtek Video Toaster [5], Newtek Tricaster, Sony Anycast Station, Varasoft Wirecast and a few others are available but none offer a virtual video driver and certainly none of these are free. While CamTwist Studio is in its early stages and still has some optimization to go it is the only product I know of that offers not only full switching but also a virtualized device driver to allow me to directly stream that video to sites such as Ustream.tv. CamTwist Studio 1.7 is the only product that does everything you need for a full broadcast from top to bottom.

CamTwist builds upon the foundation of Mac OS X and as such there is no Windows or Linux version available. At this time there are no plans to port the software to any other platform, so if you want to be a part of the revolution you will need a Mac. The faster the better.

Plans can change but at this time CamTwist is scheduled for launch later tonight. Check the CamTwist page for further download details and to tide you over while you wait for the release you can watch the quick start videos.

UPDATE: CamTwist 1.7 has been officially released.
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