Just ordered a BM Atem Mini Pro anybody using one?

[Roger Gunkel]

After losing every wedding since February to the virus and expecting a big drop off next year, I decided to bite the bullet and start live streaming. My logic is that couples may be inclined to book smaller weddings if they can stream to their friends and family.

Being totally new to streaming and after much research, I decided to order the new Black Magic Atem Mini Pro, which will arrive at the end of this week. It will allow 4 HDMI inputs with all processing carried out on board, the ability to stream directly through a router or send the output to a laptop. Can also send a multi camera monitor signal directly to a screen, plus onboard recording and various other interesting possibilities.

Has anybody already started using one of these and can perhaps offer any advice before I start experimenting with it?

Roger

[Pete Cofrancesco]

My colleague has one and raves about it. I've used it once on a job my only advice its a little complex so obviously spend the time to learn it and maybe write cheat sheet, especially if a lot of time goes by between uses.

[Roger Gunkel]

Thanks Pete,

I have found a very full tutorial on Youtube which will help and I will spend a few weeks trying it out fully in various configurations before using it seriously.

It's the first bit of gear that I have bought for a long time that I am seriously excited about! I've got a wedding show coming up in January, so hope to demo what it can do to potential clients using pre recorded footage from old weddings, and sending it out to Youtube for them to watch the results on their phones while they are on my stand.

Roger

[Jase Tanner]

Roger, I've had my eye on the Atem. Could you share the link for the youtube tutorial? Thanks.

[Luke Miller]

Been using the non-Pro version for two productions. I'm impressed. Very powerful and stable. Still learning all it can do. I encode/record using OBS on my laptop. The ATEM Software Control Application provides a lot of additional capability including an audio mixer plus white balance and color adjustments, which is really useful for multi-camera work.

[Roger Gunkel]

Originally Posted by Jase Tanner

Roger, I've had my eye on the Atem. Could you share the link for the youtube tutorial? Thanks.

Hi Jase,

Here is the link to the Youtube tutorial

ATEM Mini Pro - In Depth Review & COMPLETE Tutorial ! - YouTube

It's a pretty comprehensive tutorial, from a quick set up to much more in depth info.

My unit was delayed so only arrived yesterday, I'm setting it up at the moment and just ordered a number of HDMI leads to connect various cameras. I've also ordered a cheap 3 input HDMI switcher so that one input to the Atem can be assigned any one of 3 cameras before fade in, giving me up to six possible cameras. There's a lot to learn so I'm going to be busy for a few days.

Roger

[Jase Tanner]

Hi Roger. Thanks for that. Looking forward to watching it. I also previously ordered a cheap HDMI switcher which I tried using with my HD60 S+ going right into my laptop. The catch was that the screen would momentarily go black during the switch. I also have another HDMI capture card and while I never got around to trying it, I speculated it would not present any glitches if I made the switch while I had a different camera up that was not on the switcher. Hopefully not.

Please keep us updated on your experience with the Atem.

Jase

[Roger Gunkel]

Here are my findings so far.

What appears to be quite a simple unit is in fact quite complex and needs a fair bit of time spent with it to master anything more than the basics. Plugging in cameras is just a matter of running an hdmi cable to any of the 4 inputs. I also have some older cams with no hdmi out, and simply took the usb out to rca connectors with the original leads. Fed those into a cheap converter to hdmii, then to the Atem input. That worked fine. I also have a Sumvision Cyclone 2 media player that I have used for years that has an hdmi output. As it will take an SD card or USB input, I have found that I can put stills, music and mp4 video clips on it to play straight into the Atem which will be very useful. They are still sold on Amazon for £30 and there is a version 4 for about £40.

Selecting inputs and fading or cutting to the output is also intuitive, particularly when using the downloadable controller software. On the subject of downloads, there is also the Atem setup software which updates the firmware and allows for a few minor tweaks. One thing I adjusted is the brightness of the buttons as they are way too bright and stop you seeing the labels on the ones that aren't switched on.

It took me a while to get the hang of overlaying images on video, which uses the downstream key facility and is very effective once you get the hang of it, as is the Chroma keying. There are many other things that can be controlled, such as an audio mixer for each audio channel with a a lot of adjustment parameters. If you have a Black Magic camera/s then they are fully controllable from within the software including pedestal level, colour balances, and just about everything that is adjustable on the camera. No good for me as I am totally panasonic.

Having spent the first few days having my computer with the controller programme linked to the mixer, I discovered today that providing the mixer and computer are on the same network, you don't need a cable connection at all. I can see that being very useful if you are running fairly short cables to the mixer, but want to hide it away and sit away from it unobtrusively to use the software controller.

On the negative side, I have only managed to get a very stuttery stream to Youtube and Facebook by using the usb out to the computer which of course means no recording to an external drive. I have yet to get the direct streaming output via cat5 to give me any YT/FB connection. I'm sure that is down to my own failings, or the limitations of my ageing laptop, although the direct output from the mixer faired no better. I'll try transferring to the editing PC over the next few days.

PLEASE NOTE THE POST ABOVE AS THIS LINE IS INCORRECT 'Finally, an external drive for recording the direct output needs to formatted to Fat 32 which Win10 doesn't make easy, offering only exFat or NTFS. You have to do it via the command line. I will try outputting to a drive this evening, to see how efficient it is'.

The tutorial that I referred to in the earlier post, covers most of the things I have talked about here and is well worth watching if you already have or are contemplating getting the Atem Mini Pro.

Will update soon.

Roger

[Roger Gunkel]

Just made a big Boo Boo, having got a new Hard drive and formatted it to Fat32. I found that the mixer wouldn't recognise it. I had formatted it from a post not on this forum, so then read the manual and found that it needs to be exFat formatted for the mixer to use. That's good though as there is no 4Gb file size limit. The only minor problem for me though is that my LG tv doesn't recognise it, so I simply transfer it to a Fat32 formatted drive.

Apologies if anybody has followed my advice in the previous post :-(

Roger

[Andrew Smith]

Beware of inferior video discussion forums.

Andrew

[Roger Gunkel]

Originally Posted by Andrew Smith

Beware of inferior video discussion forums.

Andrew

Quite right I should have known better LOL

Roger