[Kevin Copeland]

I love the Blackmagic ATEM products. As far as latency, any production switcher that has frame synchronizers will give you latency. You have to genlock all your sources to minimize this.

As far as titles, I would go with the SimpleSupers.com app. This let’s you use PowerPoint as a character generator with key and fill. It generates an alpha channel. You can use it with any production switcher that accepts key and fill. No need for green or blue screens behind your slides.

If your design/animations are good, no one knows its PowerPoint. Plus you can even use it to play out videos. And you’re already set up for the large base of PowerPoint users out there. (Of course you may have to re-format their presentations to 16:9, ugh.)

I use it every week at our church. PowerPoint plays out our intro video, then I key up Lower Thirds with peoples names, worship songs, scripture, etc using DSK 1 on the ATEM Production Studio 4k (all inputs are 1080i59.94). The DSK fill is my Laptop Display 2, and the DSK key is my Laptop Display 3.

Cheers,
kc

[Kevin Copeland]

I love the Blackmagic products. You can someone operating the switcher, another loading graphics and keys, etc.
Do you have the budget for a big crew? Audio mixer, camera operators, character generator operator, production assistants to run errands, technical director, playback, DIT. Lot’s of pre-production needed. A couple of hours for set-up and testing. Rehearsals?

Teradek makes great products for streaming. You need redundancy, especially if the internet goes down. Bond several cell phones together for streaming.

SimpleSupers app uses PowerPoint to make an alpha channel and use key and fill into your switcher. Great for an on-demand character generator. No special hardware, just a computer with 3 displays hooked into your switcher at the right raster size and frame rate.

Run SDI cables. If you have HDMI sources, convert to SDI for long cable runs.

Good luck.

[Kevin Copeland]

Here is a product that uses an off the shelf computer and PowerPoint as a cg with key and fill. It generates an alpha channel. No decklink card needed. SimpleSupers.

[Kevin Copeland]

Here is a way to use a cheap CG. It’s called SimpleSupers.com. It uses PowerPoint and a computer with 3 displays. It generates an alpha channel from the transparent objects on the slide and outputs both for use with your video switcher. Pretty cool.

[Kevin Copeland]

As far as a titler, here is an inexpensive solution. You just need a computer or laptop that supports 3 displays. Hook 2 displays to your switcher for key and fill. It uses PowerPoint and generates an alpha channel. simplesupers.com It keeps all of PowerPoints animations and transitions. Very cool.