Today, live streaming has become as popular as sharing prerecorded shows and videos. While live streaming is the most popular in the gaming industry, slowly and surely, even normal video creators are adopting live streams as it creates far more intimate connection with the viewers. However, creating live streams is not as easy as uploading a pre-edited video. One of the biggest problems with live stream is that natively you cannot go live on multiple platforms.
That becomes a big problem if you have build-up your audience on different platforms. Well, in this situation, you have two options. You can either go live one by one for each platform, or you can use a tool like Castr which allows you to easily live stream your content on multiple platforms with just a click of the button. So, if I have piqued your interest, let us see what this service has to offer us and is it worth its asking price:
Key Features
1. Stream Live on Multiple Platforms at Once
The biggest feature of Castr is that the service allows you to share your live stream on multiple platforms at once. And I am not just talking about the popular platforms like YouTube and Twitch. In fact, Castr supports live streaming content to more than 30 different websites including Facebook, Vimeo, Periscope, Steam, Smashcast, Ustream, and more. Basically, no matter which platform you have your audience on, you will be able to reach all of them with just a click.
2. Support for Live Chat
When you are using Castr to live stream your content on multiple platforms, you can also monitor all your audience comments in a single place using Castr’s built-in chat overlay. Any comment that you receive from your audiences is delivered right into Castr’s chat window and you can easily monitor them in real-time. That way, you will be able to respond to comments for all your platforms without having to open them in multiple windows and switching between them.
3. Co-streaming and Custom Streaming
Castr also allows users to join forces with other streamers and deliver the same content to both your audiences. This makes it really easy to collaborate with others as both you and your collaborator will be able to stream content to your platforms. Not only that, Castr also allows you to stream content to private servers or platforms which are not compatible with Castr. It does that by using custom RMTP packages which you can use to stream your content anywhere.
4. Excellent Mobile Apps
Castr also has mobile apps for both Android and iOS platforms, allowing you to easily stream content directly from your smartphone. So, whether you want to stream behind the scenes videos or show your mobile gaming skills, Castr gives you an opportunity to easily do that.
5. IP Camera Re-streaming & Cloud Storage
One of the more interesting features of Castr is its ability to re-stream IP cameras as the service supports IP Cameras and can record the cameras in the cloud. The service supports full RTSP ingest thus providing you the ability to stream IP cameras to multiple platforms. Using RTSP ingest, you can basically pull RTSP URLs directly to Castr’s servers and then re-stream it to multiple platforms. This is a feature that is missing in other such streaming services and definitely gives Castr a leg up above its competitors.
User Interface
Castr’s user interface is pretty nice and everything that needs to be accessed can be accessed pretty easily. The Dashboard is the place where you will spend most of the time when you have configured your preferences and connected different accounts, so let’s take a look at that. As you can see in the picture below, the Dashboard shows you the list of platforms that you have already added and can stream content to. If you want to add more platforms, just click on the “Add Platform” button and proceed from there.
The right side of the page shows a small window where you can see the content that you are streaming. You can use the webcam option to directly stream your video or connect your open broadcasting software or OBS to pull the stream from there. I also love the dark theme the service is using as it is quite easier on the eyes. Overall, I find the user interface to be pretty nice and utilitarian.
Ease of Use
Castr is pretty easy to use once you have set up all your platforms. Setting up the platforms can be a little tricky if you have never done that before, however, can be done with a little research. All you need to do is enter the streaming server and Key of different platforms to Castr. Once authorized, the only thing that you need to do is flick the switch next to the platform to allow or disallow streaming to that specific platform.
The only problem that I encountered while setting up streaming on Castr was obtaining the streaming Key for different platforms as they all keep that in different places. Once you identify your streaming keys, it’s just a simple matter for copy and pasting. Overall, it’s one of the easiest streaming software to use and I think no one will find it hard to use.
Price and Availability
Castr is a subscription-based service which offers both free and paid plans. The free plans allow you to carry out one single stream on five different platforms. If you want more power, you will have to subscribe to their paid plans which start at $9.99/month. For the service it is offering, the pricing makes a lot of sense to me. It is basically giving superpowers to streamers and if you also want those powers, you should definitely check this out.
Pros:
- Stream on multiple platforms with a click
- Supports more than 30 different publishing platforms along with private servers
- Awesome mobile apps
- Co-streaming works flawlessly
Cons:
- If you have never live stream before, initial set up would seem a little hard
Stream Content Like a Pro with Castr
Since I have tested this software, I have fallen in love with its feature and ease of use. Once set up, everything works buttery smooth and I didn’t encounter any problems or crash whatsoever. Whether you are a budding streamer or a pro, this is a service that you should certainly add to your arsenal.
Check out Castr here
