The best play of the game takes about four seconds. A diving catch at the sideline. A buzzer beater. A header nobody saw coming, including the person running your camera.
Half the people watching your stream were looking somewhere else when it happened. The other half want to see it again right away. Showing it again used to mean owning a production rig, but Instant Replay for Switcher changes that using the gear you already have.
If you're producing a Friday night game with a couple of phones and a volunteer in the press box, this was the piece you were missing. And if you've got the budget for a full production setup but would rather not haul one to every away game, this is probably the better answer anyway.
Instant Replay for Switcher captures the last 10, 20, or 30 seconds of your live stream and plays it back during the broadcast, with one tap. It's built into the Switcher app, so it's part of the same production you're already running.
Switcher holds those seconds continuously while you produce, so the play is already captured by the time you decide you want it. You don't arm anything or hit record ahead of the moment. You just tap.
Two things worth knowing before your first game:
The replay shows your broadcast the way your audience saw it, including whichever camera you had live at the time. It captures your program feed, not each camera separately.
When the clip runs out, it holds on its final frame. Tap another source or asset to return to the live game. The picture stays on that last frame until you switch, so it's worth practicing that hand-off once before kickoff.
You're not capturing a moment. You're always capturing, and choosing which moment to show.
Having replay and using it well are two different things. A few things worth thinking through before your first game:
Go full screen when the moment settles something: The go-ahead goal, the game-winner, the play the crowd is still reacting to. Give it the whole frame and let it breathe.
Use picture-in-picture when play is about to restart: Basketball and volleyball turn over fast, and cutting away to a full-screen replay is how you miss the next possession. Tuck the replay into a corner and keep the live game running behind it.
Decide what your commentator is doing: If someone's calling the game, drop the clip's audio underneath them so they can talk through what just happened. If nobody's on the mic, leave the crowd noise up. Cutting the sound entirely is usually the wrong call, because silence over a replay reads as a mistake.
Don't replay everything: Replay works because it tells your audience that mattered. Use it three or four times in a game and every one lands. Use it every other play and it stops meaning anything.
Bring the good one back: A replay stays available for the rest of the broadcast, so the play everyone's still talking about can return at halftime or during a lull.
None of this costs you anything mid-game. Your graphics, transitions, and text come along with every replay automatically, so you're making editorial choices, not building assets while the clock runs.
Switcher Instant Replay sits alongside the tools you're already using: multicamera switching, scoreboards and overlays, and everything else in your multimedia toolkit. It's one more source in the same app.
Want to see it in your own setup? Start a free trial and take it to your next game.
Almost nothing you don't already own. Here's the full inventory.
Switcher running on an iPhone, iPad, or Mac
Whatever phones or cameras your crew already carries, if you want more than one angle
Tip: Android phones count. They join as camera sources through the Switcher remote camera app, so you can shoot an angle on a Galaxy and replay it from your iPad.
Three things a traditional replay setup asks you to buy before it will show you anything.
A desktop production rig: A Windows computer, a capture card, a separate software license, and someone trained to run all three.
A fixed camera installation: Four figures, bolted to one gym or one field. It doesn't travel, and half your season is away games.
A post-game highlight camera: Good for clips after the whistle. Not the same as showing the play while the crowd is still reacting to it.
Instant Replay is included on every Switcher plan, starting at $45 a month billed annually, or $65 month to month. No add-on, no upgrade tier, no separate replay license.
The question was never which replay system costs the least. It's how much you have to buy before replay works at all.
For most programs, that's been a shopping list. With Switcher, it's the phone already standing on your sideline. Try Switcher free and run replay at your next game.
Do this once, in the quiet before warmups, and you won't think about it again.
Open your Instant Replay settings. You'll find them alongside your other source settings in the app.
Pick your capture length. 10, 20, or 30 seconds. Shorter windows suit fast sports like basketball and volleyball. Longer ones give you room for a full possession or a whole point.
Choose how it appears. Full screen, or picture-in-picture in the corner of your choice. Pick the one you'll reach for most.
Add your graphics and set your audio level. Whatever you choose here applies automatically every time you trigger a replay.
Run one practice replay. Trigger it, let it play out, and tap back to your live camera. That hand-off is the only part with a learning curve, and one rep is usually enough.
That's it. During the game, replay is one button.
This matters more than it sounds if you're livestreaming sports every week with whoever's available that night. The person running your stream doesn't need to learn a control surface or memorize a workflow. They need to know which button to press, and when to press it.
This is the first version, and it grows from here. We’re exploring saving replay clips as reusable assets, so a play you capture in one broadcast can come back in a later one.
Instant Replay exists because Switcher users asked for it, and the same goes for what comes after it. If there's something you need it to do, please tell us!
It's a feature in the Switcher app that captures the last 10, 20, or 30 seconds of your live stream and plays it back during your broadcast with one tap.
10, 20, or 30 seconds. You choose the length before the game, and custom durations aren't available in this version.
No. Instant Replay runs on the device you're already producing on. It's an instant replay live streaming app in the most literal sense: the whole system is the phone in your hand.
Switcher runs on iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
Yes. Android devices connect as camera sources through the Switcher remote camera app. If that camera was live when the play happened, it's in the replay.
Yes. Picture-in-picture keeps your live camera on screen with the replay in a corner.
Not in this version. Instant Replay captures your program feed, so the replay shows whichever camera you had live at the time.
Not in this version. Replays play at normal speed.
Not yet. Replays are available throughout the broadcast where you captured them. Saving clips for future streams is planned.
All of them.
Every sport has a moment worth seeing twice. Replay has been the line between a game that got filmed and a game that got broadcast, and for a long time that line was drawn by equipment budgets.
It isn't anymore. Anyone can run a Switcher stream, and so anyone can run a replay.
Update the app and you'll find it waiting in your source settings. Or start your free trial and give your next game the second look it deserves.