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Use cases

One studio, five kinds of show.

Watercourse composes your camera, your screen, your guests and your branding into a single scene, then records it, streams it, or hands it to a meeting as a webcam. What that is worth depends on what you are making.

Podcasting

Record a video podcast with remote guests

Guests on screen, a recording that looks composed rather than like a call, and audio an editor can actually work with.

  • Up to four remote guests, with a green room before anyone appears
  • Guests hear each other, without hearing themselves echo
  • Microphone and system audio saved as separate tracks
  • Mark moments with a key press, timestamped beside the file

Teaching and online courses

Record lessons without editing them twice

The time sink is not the recording. It is redoing the same framing and branding, lesson after lesson.

  • Save a scene once, return to it for every lesson
  • Eight layouts, switched mid-take without stopping
  • A teleprompter that never reaches the recording
  • Match the shared screen exactly, so code stays sharp

Product demos

Show software without losing your face

A screen share on its own is a wall of interface. What sells a demo is the person walking through it.

  • Screen and camera in one frame, dragged into place on the preview
  • Cut between up to four cameras with a key press
  • Name badges and a ticker drawn into the frame
  • On macOS, hand the whole scene to Zoom or Meet as a webcam

Webinars

Run a session that looks like a broadcast

Webinar platforms give you their layout, their branding and their recording. Build the picture before it leaves your machine.

  • Your backgrounds, logo, name badges and ticker in every frame
  • Stream to several destinations, each one toggled on its own
  • Bitrate and encoder health per destination, not one green light
  • The local recording lands at the same time

Solo streaming

Produce a stream without a second operator

Everything a producer would do falls to you, while you are also the one talking.

  • Single keys, no modifiers, so you never look down
  • Scenes switch instantly, with no gap in the output
  • Twitch and YouTube chat merged into one on-screen feed
  • A phone becomes a second camera by scanning a QR code

Three things worth knowing first

Every use case above assumes the parts that are genuinely zero setup. These are the ones that are not, and it is better to find out here than halfway through planning a session.

Guests need a server you run
A small rendezvous service, plus a TURN server for guests outside your network. It ships in the repository, and no audio or video passes through it.
The virtual camera is macOS only
It installs a camera extension macOS asks you to approve once, and the app has to be in your Applications folder. Recording and streaming run on all three platforms.
A phone camera needs the same wifi
Nothing to install and nothing leaves your network, but it is not a way to bring in someone holding a phone in another city. That is what guests are for.
See every feature

Be among the first

Watercourse is in development. Join the waitlist for early access and updates as it gets closer to release.

  • No subscription: great features free, go pro with a one-time purchase
  • No account, no cloud storage, no upload queue
  • Your recordings stay in a folder you control
  • macOS, Windows and Linux

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