StudioTech TV

James Morgan July 11, 2011 at 12:42 am

I ended up using an ATEM 1 M/E Chassis and Panel this weekend just gone for a live sports broadcast, and learned a lot of things about it that I otherwise probably would never have known. To summarize, this is a product with a lot of potential that has some pretty serious flaws in the current software revision. Some will no doubt be fixed, but as for how many of these and when, who knows?

Here are some of the Pros:
– Multiviewer allows full frame rate and looks nice.
– Chassis itself is small and feels solid.
– Running in Full HD looks great.
– The Photoshop plugin worked fairly well.
– The stinger transitions are great.
– The broadcast panel was very solidly built, and the buttons felt great. I liked the feel of the t-bar, but a couple of others said it wasn’t what they expected.
– The tri-colour LCD buttons to the right of the main display on the panel are just about worth the money themselves.
– The ability to move/fly keys was great.

Cons:
– No scalers built in unless explicitly stated. Therefore the unit is extremely particular about what it will and wont accept as inputs. I had it reject two laptops and a DVD recorder (all set to what the ATEM says it wants). Meaning your AUXs, etc on the output will all be the same as the input format too. Blackmagic doesn’t plan to do anything about this one.
– The heatsink on the chassis has very sharp, unrefined edges, so if you’re not looking very well while patching (eg; patching the back of a rack from the front) you could get a nasty cut.
– The heatsink fans are very thin and bend very easily.
– The layout of the connectors is such that they have what must just about be the minimum required clearances from each other which can make patching hard.
– The power adapter for my chassis made a constantly changing high-pitched noise. I don’t know why, but in a quiet environment it was very, very annoying.
– The unit does get very hot while in operation.
– The Multiviewer doesn’t give you a choice where you’d like the labels on the inputs overlaid or if you’d like them labelled at all, which means you’ll have an input label obscuring a lower third graphic in a media player. You also can’t switch the sides of Program and Preview, or choose to remove the guide markers on the preview screen. In my case while trying to switch I found it distracting because the Program and Preview were exactly the same size leading me to forget which was the live source. Maybe it was just me?
– The chassis doesn’t allow you to re-map crosspoints, which in the case of our live switch was quite a significant problem. We would traditionally run our sources (1-6) Cam1, Cam2, Cam3, Cam4, PC/DSK, Replay, but on the Atem we were forced to run as (1-8) Spare, Spare, PC/DSK, Cam3, Cam1, Cam2, Cam4, Replay. Not an easy switch, and a pretty severe limitation.
– The chassis only saves settings for which input and down-conversion format, multiviewer layout and camera labels. Therefore, when you disconnect power your media pool will be cleared, as well as all settings for transitions, keys, etc. I saw no way to even be able to backup the config to a PC. A huge mistake.
– The PC interface is pretty useless. It’s designed for high resolution displays only, so most laptops wont be able to see a third of it at a time. I don’t know why it would be designed this way – the switcher section is very large for no appreciable reason. Sure, it could be for a touch screen, but I couldn’t imagine wanting to use this software on one. The foldable/unfoldable menus for configuring keyers, mediaplayers, etc, was not a very good design – it means in the middle of a live production you’re having to look too many clicks deep, and worse yet – many of the folders are too tall to fit on the screen so you have to scroll around.
– Trying to set up keyers was an exercise in tedium. You couldn’t rely on using pre-shaped keys from Photoshop because everything would come out at far less opacity than was usable. I’m not sure if the Photoshop plugin exported images with alpha channels, but using the Blackmagic instructions it looked as though it didn’t.
– While the effects for flying/moving keys were good, the way you had to trigger them was not. You couldn’t make a key (eg; a DVE) fly in from infinity as a transition, you had to bring the key live and then either unfold the keyer config and tell it to do that, or on the panel you had to go around 5 button presses deep. Not very good live.
– I’m not sure how you’d go trying to arrange (move, size) PIPs on the software panel, but I’d imagine it is not much fun. Luckily if you have the panel you can use the joystick.
– There is no support for macros or commonly used functions which would have been very welcome.
– To update the software on the chassis you have to connect it via USB (cable not supplied). I don’t even know if the software panel can get auto updates.
– The media players only support clips that are a series of still images. Hardly ideal. Apparently it will be fixed in future.
– My chassis kept losing ethernet connection with my panel requiring a power cycle.
– The audio breakout cable supplied is very, very poor quality.
– The Atem strips out all incoming audio on SDI/HDMI inputs, which is a shame.
– The screen on the broadcast panel is fairly cryptic and difficult to follow.
– There is a pretty number pad on the panel that appears to do nothing.
– The t-bar doesn’t do anything when you have stinger selected as the active transition, which in some ways makes sense, but if you’re like me and use a stinger to transition to a replay, and dissolves between cameras when not in a replay it means you can’t set up a stinger and until the replay is ready use the t-bar to do dissolves. This is probably a personal thing.
– Unlike most transitions you can’t pause a running stinger by pressing the auto button again. This was pretty annoying when configuring the stinger because you would like to run it in slow motion or pause it to make sure you’ve got the timings right.
– An undocumented but cute feature on the panel is that you can quickly double tap a crosspoint on the preview row to perform the action of shift+selecting that crosspoint. Not so useful if you accidentally double tap and get something silly like a colour or bars.
– The shift key lives next to either the program or preview (can’t remember) row and makes it look like it’s for use on that row only. It’s not – it’s for the program, preview and FX row at the top, as well as a bunch of other things on the switcher.
– You need to hold the shift key down to be able to select shifted crosspoints, which may not suit everyone. I know I would have liked the option to be able to have the shift key latch.
– Setting up chroma keys wasn’t a lot of fun; you have to do it by dragging a chroma bar left to right, which doesn’t do much for being exact.

There’s more, but I’m running out of steam. Basically this has the potential to be a powerful switcher, but is let down badly by the current software. I couldn’t purchase one until at least some of this is fixed.

James.

Jairo July 19, 2011 at 9:06 pm

Mark,
I have been reading your blog and I wanted to ask you a question. How do you capture video with ATEM 1 M/E Production Switcher if Mac’s don’t have USB 3.0? We have been wanting to buy an ATEM but we are not sure about the compatibility with Mac’s.
Thanks,
Jairo