[Jeff Hartman]

If you’re not recording, then the requirements are fairly minimal and can probably be met by any PC made within the last year or so. It needs to be running Windows 7, and needs both an ethernet connection and a USB-2 port (USB-3 will also work). My PC is several years old, but even so the app takes less than 120 meg of RAM and less than 10% of CPU time, according to the task manager. As your question implies, running the recording software demands faster hard drive performance, more memory, and more processing horsepower.

Your video card and monitor need to run with at least 1440×900 resolution in order to see the whole switcher panel; my machine runs 1680×1050, and looks good. Since the app is much wider than it is high, a widescreen display will probably be more useful.

If you’re thinking to buy an entirely new computer, you might consider an all-in-one with a touch-screen monitor; the switcher app looks like it would be pretty well suited to a touch screen.

During normal operation, the switcher control application communicates with the ATEM through the ethernet cable; if you are using the recording software, that also uses the USB connection. You also need the USB connection to initially set up the ATEM: to assign its IP address, and to perform firmware updates.

Hope this helps —

Jeff Hartman
Engineering Project Manager
Newport Television, Northeast

[Jeff Hartman]

As a rule, we try to minimize the length of the HDMI cable because it’s rather hard to nail down the quality of a particular cable with any objective criteria. Generally speaking, we locate the converter with the HDMI source and use a short cable, typically several feet.

Coaxial cable for SDI can cover far greater distances, and the performance is quite predictable. For example:

Belden 1694A is good for 1,339 feet at 270Mb/s (SD-SDI), 364 feet at 1.5Gb/s (HD-SDI), or 250 feet at 3Gb/s (1080p). Other smaller types like 1505A and 1855A have shorter distance limits. You can take a look at Belden’s chart here.

Regards,

Jeff Hartman
Engineering Project Manager
Newport Television, Northeast

[Jeff Hartman]

I’ve downloaded and installed the 3.0 beta, and updated the firmware in our ATEM Television Studio. The installation went smoothly and I don’t see any obvious bugs; in fact, this seems to fix an issue with the pulldowns to the right of the switcher page. Here are a few initial observations:

1) The switcher app really should inhibit the 2M/E option when it knows it is connected to 1M/E or TVS hardware.

2) In the same vein, it should not allow 2M/E to be selected if it sees that the system screen resolution is too small. My PC happens to top out at 1680×1050, and selecting 2M/E created a situation where I couldn’t access the menu to revert back to 1M/E, and I couldn’t move the window to get there. The only way to get back was to change my desktop to 1600×1200 temporarily so the top of the app window was visible. Also, the published system requirements should be amended to add higher display adapter resolution for 2M/E users.

3) Although your note refers to A/B direct switching, I see nothing in the switcher app that relates to this — nor do I see anything in the revised manual.

The remaining points are either ongoing issues or wish-list items:

4) The chroma key still has inappropriate interaction between the target hue and background video phase. Changing this value should change only the desired hue as it is compared to the key source video; unfortunately, right now it also changes the hue of the background video. This is not specific to this new release; it has been a problem going back at least through 2.5.

5) I haven’t checked this yet, but earlier versions could not pass closed captioning from SDI inputs through to the program output. This disqualifies the unit for a number of television broadcast applications.

6) It would be extremely handy to add a means to automatically reload the media stores with the last-used files. It’s a real chore to get things reloaded manually whenever the hardware is restarted.

7) Adding keyboard hotkeys for other switcher functions — especially DSK cut and auto, and FTB — would also be useful.

8) Finally, it would be really good to let the user map GPI inputs from the GPI/Tally interface to different virtual buttons on the switcher. That would allow rudimentary TVS control even without a computer, for example.

Thanks,

Jeff Hartman
Engineering Project Manager
Newport Television, Northeast

[Jeff Hartman]

One of those boxes is sitting in front of me right now; I would strengthen Richard’s reply to be an almost certain “no”. Ironically, the device won’t even control an ATEM switcher; all it can do, based on current firmware, is actuate tally relays. The input half of the interface is essentially non-functional.

The most current firmware release package includes the software development kit for the ATEM series; you would have to download and install it to get to the SDK. If you’re conversant in C++ (the language the kit supports), you can probably figure out exactly how the interface communicates with the ATEM switcher, and prove whether or not it will work.

— Jeff

[Jeff Hartman]

The current firmware does indeed support either SD or HD, but the inputs only synchronize; they do not do standards conversion. The bottom line is that you must set the ATEM to whatever format you want the output to be, and then every input needs to conform to that format. This detail is given in the current revision of the manual (they updated it along with the software). The sort of mixed-format functionality you seem to be looking for is more expensive: you find it in something like the Ross Crossover, for example.

Another improvement with the newer firmware: you can map physical inputs to whichever switcher buttons you prefer (and the keyboard hot keys follow). If you use the GPI / Tally interface, its relays aren’t affected by the keyboard remapping: that means that a given relay always corresponds to a particular physical input to the switcher, which is nice: different users can customize the panel to their preferences without worrying about messing up camera tally.

Two issues I notice that are still unresolved: the switcher does not pass closed captions, and there is no provision to use the GPI inputs from the GPI / Tally adapter to control switcher functions.

— Jeff

[Jeff Hartman]

[Bob Zelin] “I assume you are refering to Behringer copying the Mackie series of mixers and speakers (which they absolutely did, and obviously, got away with).”

Mackie… Aphex… Roland… Peavey.

[Bob Zelin] “But just like Wal-Mart – if you make the same product for 1/3 the price, we American’s don’t care who gets screwed, as long as we can get it dirt cheap. I know very well that a Behringer mixer won’t last more than 3 years – but I keep installing them, because people want cheap.”

There will always be people willing to look the other way if the price is low enough; but the number of people who refuse to do business with Behringer gives the lie to the blanket suggestion that all Americans are unprincipled accessories to intellectual theft.

What I don’t understand is how people who make their living doing technical design — and who would presumably be very upset to have their own work stolen — would knowingly support a company with that history.

Jeff Hartman
Engineering Project Manager
Newport Television, Northeast

[Jeff Hartman]

[Bob Zelin] “I resent everyone’s resentment to the mention of “business practices”.”

Bob, I’m not sure what you assume I’m referring to — but from your tone and wording, you’re apparently thinking about cut-rate Asian outsourcing… which is an issue I did not have in mind.

Behringer has a particular history of ignoring FCC certification requirements, as well as infringing on other companies’ intellectual property rights — neither of which are necessary or characteristic of successful businesses.

— Jeff

[Jeff Hartman]

Bob’s approach will indeed work, but so will using the Blackmagic Audio to SDI miniconverter. The upside of using Bob’s method is that is injects the audio into the ATEM, and if you’re using their software to record the ATEM’s H.264 feed, it gets the audio into the recording.

There are several downsides, though. One is that some people refuse to buy Behringer products on the basis of quality and on their business practices. There are other products that convert analog audio to AES; Rane, for example, makes the very versatile and well-made ML1.

One advantage to the miniconverter is that it can be used as a standalone device: if you only need a single camera for a project, it will embed audio into the video without your needing to set up the ATEM, a multiviewer monitor, and control computer.

Another plus for the miniconverter is that it can insert four analog channels, or four AES stereo pairs, into the video; going through the ATEM limits you to one stereo pair.

Tradeoffs!

Jeff Hartman
Engineering Project Manager
Newport Television, Northeast

[Jeff Hartman]

Based on behavior with the ATEM Television Studio, input and output programming seem to be local to your switcher, rather than stored within the interface — so whether they can be mapped would be specific to your router. (The interface seems to only know the IP address of the target switcher.) This is inferred, and my observation might not apply to the routers.

The GPI inputs are optocouplers, which typically have their anodes pulled high through a resistor, so they will stay inactive until something (a switch or equivalent) pulls the line to ground. You don’t need to worry about pullup resistors, as the circuit is activated by current draw rather than voltage, and essentially forms its own pullup.

I happen to have one of these on my desk right in front of me: it takes 4.5 milliamps of current to pull a GPI line to ground, and the open circuit voltage is 2.7 volts DC. I can pull the voltage up to 12 volts with virtually no current (which is exactly what I would expect for this sort of input).

You should have no problem driving one of these inputs with most standard logic families: it’s well within the limits of standard TTL and LSTTL outputs (which will tend to draw the line up around +5 volts), and just within the ability of most 74HC series outputs, which will pull the line up to whatever the chip’s logic supply happens to be — generally 5-12 volts). Driving it from a switch or relay is no problem at all.

— Jeff

[Jeff Hartman]

[Chad Pearson] “Will the UpDownCross downconvert from 1080i or 720p to 480p or does the NTSC setting only convert to 480i?”

Sorry… the NTSC setting is strictly 480i. It would have been nice for Blackmagic to make the resolution, frame rate, and interleave / progressive scan options independent, but it doesn’t work that way — at least, with current revision software.

— Jeff