Telestream acquires screencast/webcast company Vara

Telestream, known for Flip4Mac, Episode, and FlipFactory, announced its acquisition of Vara Software, a company specialized in live production and streaming content products. Telestream has previously retained a focus on encoding-based solutions for media businesses. This acquisition will allow expansion of its services to include real-time content, while appealing to a broader customer base.

Vara Software won two Apple Design Awards at the 2008 WWDC for ScreenFlow, a screencasting app that lets users capture video, audio, and screen simultaneously. The editing features include zoom, pan, picture-in-picture, callouts, shadows, and more. Another application, Videocue, enables users to produce speeches with video of the presenter, visual script presentation, and other rich media content.

Vara's Wirecast app can be used to webcast real-time or saved presentations that can include audio, multiple video cameras, movies, desktop content, images, and titles. Telestream noted that Wirecast was used for MSN.com's Live Earth, which attained an audience of over 10 million viewers.

With the addition of Vara's assets, Telestream is preparing itself to satisfy the growing demand for broadband products and services. "Internet-based content delivery is experiencing explosive growth." said CEO Dan Castles. "We believe the live element is going to be even more important going forward." He claimed Vara's technology will be easily adapted for expanded business capability.

Vara Software products are available for download from www.flip4mac.com. Wirecast is priced from $450-$550. Screenflow is available for $100, and Videocue for $90.

Filed under: software, enterprise, Graphics/Web Design