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ATEM Television studio?
Hello,
We do baseball games for our local little leagues. Up to this point we have been using wirecast, which works, but has some problems, especially when trying to record.
I was thinking of getting the ATEM television studio to replace our wirecast box, but have a problem. Our center field camera using component to get the video signal back to our trailer. The distance is pretty extreme, using over 400 feet of Ethernet cable, since we have to go around the fence. Component is about the only thing we have found that can go that far. I was looking at fiber, but not really sure how fragile it is in the field, not to mention how much that much fiber would cost.
I noticed that the Television studio doesn’t have a component input. I started looking at the 1 M/E at that point but noticed that it doesn’t have a hardware mp4 encoder, which is pretty important for our workflow.
So I was wondering if anyone had a suggestion that would allow us to use the ATEM television studio. Perhaps a good compnent to hdmi converter? At this point I am not sure what would be the best way to go.
Thanks
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18 Replies
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Blackmagic sells a component to SDI mini-converter for $295. This will work with the TVS.
https://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/miniconverters/models/
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I hope you will excuse my ignorance, I have never even read up on SDI, I was under the impression that SDI was standard def, and that HD-SDI was the high def version.
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SDI stands for Serial Digital Interface. Yes, SDI is standard def, and HD-SDI is high def, though both use the same types of cables.
The TVS takes both SDI and HD-SDI (and HDMI), and the mini-converter I linked to does both SDI and HD-SDI.
Some of us get lazy with the terms, we may use “SDI” even when speaking of “HD-SDI”.
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Thanks, that clears things up. It sounds like its pretty compelling for what we do.
I guess my last question is about the h264 recording. I read on the BM site that using some software on the computer you can record. But some day, I might want to stream a broadcast as well.
Does the TVS support an hdmi output, with audio so we can feed it into a streaming computer? I have read through a few posts and I am getting the feeling that it only sends video, but I could be reading things wrong.
Once again thanks for your help.
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You can stream if you use the software MX Light, the Blackmagic software (Media Express) currently only records.
Yes, both the SDI and HDMI outputs do audio, but you need to know that it embeds the audio from the audio AES input. Meaning, all audio needs to come into the TVS as a single input, normally coming from a mixer. The TVS ignores the audio coming into the unit via HDMI or SDI.
And yes, the h.264 output contains the audio also.
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Thanks Mike! Thats exactaly what I needed to know!
We already input all our audio into a central mixer anyway (coming from cameras turned out to be a bad idea), so it shouldn’t be a problem as long as the AES converter doesn’t add too much delay.
Had a problem a few years ago, that the audio was out of sync by a 1/4 second, so when someone hit the ball you heard the “clink” of the bat later. To say the least is was embarrassing. So we started making sure the cards in out switcher were all the same type so they would all have the same delay.
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In our experience, the TVS adds about a 4-frame delay to the video. If your mixer can’t add a delay for the audio, there are plenty of devices that can do it for around $130.
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4 frame delay? Well, the ATEM TVS installations I have delivered all have 1 frame of delay with genlocked sources. Genlock is crucial in these kinds of productions.
Aleksander Steffensen
Steffensen Multimedia -
I am an amateur to say the least. We sell some DVD’s buts its mainly done the pay the camera operators. I love baseball, which is the main reason I do it.
In that train of thought, I have not even looked into “genlock”, I figure its pretty high end, out of my price range, and I don’t think I could afford new cameras for that matter too. Right now we use cheap little consumer cannon HV30’s, was going to look into some of the new dslr’s but figure I needed a better switcher before spent money on that.
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The reason we end up with a 4-frame delay is because our video isn’t feeding directly from the cameras into the TVS. In our studio, the cameras go into our Echolab switcher, then into a DPS, and finally into the TVS. The audio just comes straight out of our mixer into the TVS.
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