BlackMagic Designs ATEM Television studio

[SHARYNF]

Since there is another thread going on switching, I wondered if anyone has any experience with BMD's Stem television studio. I have a situation where mixing two Laptops running Arkaos Grand VJ via DVI thru TV One dvi to Hdmi converters might make sense, along with adding a couple of consumer grade HD cameras.

BMD seems to think the Tv one converters will work since they do a full DVI to HDMI conversion vs just the simple cable converters. The HD cameras will have the HDMI cable extension issues and I wondered what experience people had with HDMI consumer cameras that will transmit via HDMI the full image and not have any of the viewfinder info overlayed.

Sharyn

 

[museav]

Since there is another thread going on switching, I wondered if anyone has any experience with BMD's Stem television studio.

The ATEM Television Studio is an amazing product for the price, but that price does mean not having or doing some things that people may assume it has or does.

The things I have noted with the Television Studio relate primarily to the HDMI inputs and especially to those thinking of it as a presentation rather than video production switcher. One thing is that the HDMI inputs are not HDCP compliant. In addition, for the HDMI inputs you get to select one format from among a limited list (525/29.97 (NTSC) or 625/25 (PAL) SD or 720p/50, 720p/59.94, 1080i/50 or 1080i/59.94 HD) and then all HDMI inputs must be compatible with that selection, which I believe also sets the output. And although probably not relevant in your application, the ATEM Television Studio does not switch audio on the HDMI inputs, all it does is insert/embed the audio connected to the single AES/EBU input (on a BNC) into the HDMI and SDI outputs, thus all audio switching or mixing has to be handled externally.

Unfortunately, there are few consumer grade cameras. There are many 'prosumer' camcorders but with most of them it is often difficult if not impossible to tell from the product information if they will provide an output without any recording media or without also recording, if they can output the video without any menus or overlays, etc. In that regards they generally seem to be heavy on the "sumer" and light on the "pro".

 

[SHARYNF]

BRAD
do you have any experience comments on the tvone 1T-C2-750 as a 2 input switcher scaler? can you fade from one to the other input?

Sharyn

 

[museav]

do you have any experience comments on the tvone 1T-C2-750 as a 2 input switcher scaler? can you fade from one to the other input?

I can't speaker from experience with that specific unit but it is a dual scaler device and Page 45 of the manual (ftp://ftp.tvoneftp.com/Manuals-CORIO%20Products/Manual-1T-C2-750.pdf) addresses setting the 'Adjust Transitions' menu settings by saying "Transitions control how your unit responds when a source is changed. Fades between sources, as well as wipes and cuts, are possible. The amount of time taken by a transition is controllable from instant transition (a ‘cut’) to several minutes." and then goes on to address the related settings. So it appears that you define what transition you want when you toggle or switch between the two inputs.

On that unit you seem to switch sources via the front panel using the "Input" button that toggles between the two inputs, however there seems to be no direct input selection and no indication of which input is currently active on the device itself. Serial control or the handheld IR remote seem to allow direct input selection and serial control might allow indication of the currently selected input.