ATEM TV Studio VJ Controller

[sleepytom]

2012 could be the year of affordable HD mixing!

If you don't know the ATEM TV Studio it's a $1000 6 input HDMI / HDSDI vision mixer in a very compact 1u package. It's great, though it doesn't come with a control surface and so you need to control it with a laptop. This obviously sucks for VJing, so why not build a controller from some nice buttons and an arduino? Sounds hard? Not when Kasper has made a kit for you to do this!

You can order the parts from http://skaarhoj.com/ or you can just download the code, make your own parts and build it yourself.

Arduino based ATEM TeleVision Studio VJ mixer - YouTube

Arduino based ATEM TeleVision Studio VJ mixer - YouTube

Shows a prototype controller designed for VJing (with the silly layout that VJs seem to like) I'm working with him to create a more traditional vision mixer layout for people who understand why its better not to reinvent the wheel. So there will be a choice of designs or you can get the bits to make your own exactly how you want it! Why not make your own case out of bricks and chewing gum? Ok that's stupid but you get the idea!

How much is it? Depends what components you want to use and how much you can build yourself. It is all opensource though so if you don't want to pay the asking price you can take the designs and make your own.

[alfaleader]

Very, very nice!

The touchscreen ATEM controller looks very user friendly and usable for non skilled people.

Arduino really is a nice platform for vjing. I really wonder what the raspberry pi will do in the future.

Insane that this guy makes such cool things and I'm still having problems with a simple RS232 connection

[thomase]

The only downside I see with the ATEM is that it doesn't do any rez outside the rectangular HD. So everything that leaves the rectangle isn't feasible, is it?
On the other hand - could you control multiple ATEMs with one controller?

[alfaleader]

I did a quick look on the code and it's possible to control multiple devices when using multiple instances in the code.

It goes through a network, so you only need a router with everything connected.

[sleepytom]

That might prove a little difficult as it goes.

TBH i don't see the need for multiple switchers. You can run the atem output into a datapath X4 and chop up the 1920x1080 pixels however you want. The resolution is perfectly OK for even gigantically huge screens. (i frequently do corporate Spyder jobs where we are stretching 1920x1080 over huge widescreen edge blended screens - if its good enough for high budget corporate shows then its fine for VJing!)

The thing with video in odd shapes is that you need to be able to THINK outside the box, get creative with the hardware and it all flows easily.

I was doing split / spanned screen shows long before the TH2Go came on the market simply by chaining scanconverters and zooming in to different parts of the image on each scanny. When the matrox box came out everyone started doing it, but the paradigm became 3 in a row (where it has largely stuck) Now we have the same issue with "mapping" where people seem to think the ONLY way is to use MadMapper or Mappio - creativity is at zero with people doing the same shite they see in Gary's youtube time and time again.

Multiscreen is easy if you know how to properly work your tools. Sadly most VJs have zero tech skills, most people have never even changed their V4 presets!

Read the manuals, try things out. Think about what you can do, make up ideas that will look great. Take advantage of the cheapness of modern hardware, experiment and have fun with it.

[thomase]

All true Tom. But my last multi-screen setup had 9 screens with 1920x1200 each. I only had short preparation time, so I treated them in pairs instead of having one big picture - which I would have loved to do. This was corporate/vj and the rez was determined by the av hire company. I am now in the process of creating a new show for the very same band and I might be required to go higher than HD. On the other hand you're right, I might et away with stretching or zooming. It's prolly going to be LED and so the splitting will be done by a seperate computer anyway...

[sleepytom]

Short of a Spyder X20 or maybe a networked pile of encore or diventex units then there are not any solutions which can mix visuals over a screen which is 17280x1200 - to playback content at this resolution you'd need networked media servers (5 hippotizer HDs would do) So to work at projector native resolution your looking at around half a million pounds worth of hardware (just for the playback and mix stage!)

Thus it is rare to work at native res on such jobs. I do plenty of work on that scale, more often than not the content is played back at a much lower res (4k maybe) and then upscaled.. Apart from anything else creating content at anything beyond 4k is so expensive as to be not worth it.

There isn't any point trying to design a system to mix native res by using a network of multiple ATEMs - its a bodge and it would not be *that much* cheaper than doing it properly. (reliability is generally more important than cost and ultimate resolution on such shows)

Anyway the point is that we now have access to some cool affordable tools for full HD mixing. Previously people were either doing without mixers or working at PAL composite resolution.