Zoom Acquires Broadcast Tools for Professional Virtual Events

Zoom has acquired the Zoom-based broadcast tools created by the startup Liminal, along with two of the company’s co-founders.

As per a blog post by Zoom, Liminal’s add-ons, ZoomOSC and ZoomISO, are built for creating professional virtual events, which Zoom will likely natively integrate into its software as part of the acquisition.

As noted on Liminal’s site, ZoomOSC is designed to enhance professional meetings and events using the Open Sound Control (OSC) protocol, enabling you to integrate Zoom with third-party software, hardware controllers, and media servers. Meanwhile, ZoomISO allows you to export each participants’ video feed as a separate output to professional production hardware, five of which you can choose to output in HD.

By acquiring these assets from Liminal, Zoom said it will help the platform “bridge” the gap between “emerging” and “traditional” forms of event control tools, which should come in handy for broadcast studios, theatres, and other organisations that want to create professional streams.

The platform took the dive into large-scale virtual events when it first announced its Events feature in May and officially rolled it out in July. With Events, organisers can create event hubs, sell tickets, and create multiple livestream sessions throughout the day.

Zoom spokesperson Candace Dean told The Verge that Liminal’s existing tools will remain available through Liminal’s site, however, as Zoom expands on those tools and builds something similar into the platform, there will no longer be a need for them as separate add-ons.