回顾:黑魔法设计ATEM电视工作室

虽然它可能有一个地方被用来射击, 开关, 播放成人内容, even in the comparatively tame confines of business or religious broadcasting, the Blackmagic Design ATEM Television Studio is a truly sexy piece of technology.

继续进行严肃的快速技术审查. This is a precursor to a longer piece that should appear in 流媒体 magazine in a few months, once I have run it through its paces in the field a little.

它是什么??

The ATEM Television Studio is a video and audio mixer (or 开关er, as the old guard call it). It allows you to mix up to six cameras down into a single output program feed, 生活. You can add keys, masks, and titles, and it features a built-in H.264 encoder that puts this little stick of tricks firmly on the webcaster's radar.

它解决了什么问题?

就在最近的2009年, all the kit that I needed to run a three- or four-camera SD composite video shoot with 生活 encode and IP streaming back to the CDN would fit snugly into the back of a Mercedes VITO Van. The video and audio production and mixing technology alone took up about a sixth of the space in the vehicle, 编码器, 切换, 监控又占了三分之一, 剩下的用来装电缆, UPS和座椅.

My kit bag with the ATEM TV Studio in it fits in a briefcase. 用我的笔记本电脑, iPad, 这个包里还有一个小型便携式CellMux, the contents of my briefcase provide not only an equivalent capability to the kit in the VITO, 而是采用改进的SDI或HDMI高清标准, 和硬件H.264 encoder instead of a dual pair of software-based encoders (which, 虽然更灵活, 不太可靠).

With the ATEM in my kit, I can carry a six-channel TV station in a single bag.

两个缺点

If Blackmagic Design had included an analog input-instead of the higher-quality, but less common AES / EBU digital audio input--I wouldn't have to carry the Tascam Audio converter (which, 而光, 比较大). 这似乎是各种论坛上常见的抱怨. 虽然我也喜欢机架形式因素在某些方面, I would also like to see the unit small enough to drop into a shoulder bag (rather than stick out). 考虑到这是一个简单的机箱布局问题, I would hope to see Blackmagic Design introduce more field-ready (rather than data center-ready) form factors in time.

The other shortcoming I found is that while the app supports loading the media slots of the device with image files, it appears I need a more expensive and bulkier model to load animations/ MOVs and so on into the media slots--its really a question of adding a little memory to the device.