Animating SuperSource Transitions with ATEM Mini Extreme

hey everyone how's it going doug here uh i'm going to do a nice video today here about the a-10 mini xtreme which i have here in front of me and the supersource uh transition macros that i've created that have been available for quite a while now for other atem switchers these the superstore feature has been primarily reserved for blackmagic's higher end switcher so previously the 2me production studio for me broadcast studio in the constellation and with the introduction of the a10 mini xtreme recently they've also brought that feature into a lower end model as well so for those of you who are not familiar with it it's basically a way of doing up to four picture and picture windows together on screen at the same time now what my scripts do is allow you to do animations with those so it's not just uh static put it up on screen look at a look at a layout for forever you can actually transition between different layouts so if you want to go from a layout that has two people on screen to one has three people on screen or four or whatever you can do that and the software automatically figures out how to do a smooth transition from one layout to the next and so it does that with animation if you watch the channel here much you've actually seen this in in use i've been using this pretty heavily on my channel here for about the last year and it's something that i use very heavily with my clients as well and it's something that always wows them and makes them think hey this guy knows what he's doing he knows how to put on a big production a high quality production something that looks good and you see it in in broadcast especially on cable news all the time being able to do multiple layouts and being on then doing animated transit transitions between those so let me give you a couple examples and initially here you're going to be seeing me doing these transitions on my 2me production studio 4k switcher and then we're going to get into me doing them on a10 mini extreme here in a few minutes i should mention that because this is live if you're watching this live you can actually jump into the chat and ask questions i'm not going to be monitoring continuously throughout the course of the this video but i will be checking in from time to time so if you have questions be sure and leave those in the chat if you're watching this after the fact you can leave those questions down in the comment section below the video and i will do my best to try and answer those uh since you're here be also be sure to subscribe to the channel i do video production related content around once a week and i try to do videos that are a little more technical in nature than some of the other ones that are out there kind of give you more information about what's going on behind the scenes with a lot of the video production equipment that's out there and whatnot and uh also and when subscribing be sure and click on the bell icon for notifications of new videos i should also mention that 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i wanted to wait a couple minutes before i really get digging into this to make sure that people have a chance to join and see everything i'm going to answer some questions right up front that typically come a little later when i do those these sorts of videos so um so just a couple minutes about some of the videos that i'm currently working on it may be of interest to viewers here on the channel so i've had in my possession now for about a month uh actually exactly a month the a apple mac mini with m1 chip and i've been doing a lot of testing with that for different video production related workflows so video editing and rendering and live streaming and those kinds of things and i will be producing a video here on the channel before too long with the results of that i spent well over 200 hours in testing on that so far and the results i should i would say are very surprising so yeah be sure and stay tuned to the channel and be and subscribe if you haven't already for that video it's going to be coming in the next few weeks it's very interesting also i'm going to be doing a video here very shortly about the new intercom system that i installed in my trailer here in december and that video is currently in the works and a lot of interesting things there because i've done some very interesting things with using a traditional audio mixer traditional digital audio mixer for intercom so i'm marrying two different worlds there and i've got some really cool capabilities that i've got with that because of the way that that is set up so again subscribe to the channel and that's something that interests you okay so with with all of that uh hopefully people who are meaning to join have joined by now and we can actually join and jump right in to the real content so when i talk about my animated supersource macros let me show you guys kind of an example of what that looks like so so i press the button here on my little control panel and just for information this smaller control panel is the one that i'm using to control my 2mm production studio switcher and then this bigger one here is the one i'm going to be using to control my atemi extreme here so if you see me pressing buttons on different switchers that helps you to understand which which equipment is doing what so so that yeah so what you just saw was an animated transition from me full screen to me with the overhead camera showing the top of my desk here i've also got similar layouts for going to my computer that's here at my right and also for the output of the a10 mini extreme i can also do these four up views as well and all i have to do to transition between those is press buttons that here on my little x keys control panel this is done using a piece of software called adjust macros it's a little old now it hasn't been updated for a long time but it absolutely does still work even with the latest version of the a10 switchers works just fine with the a10 mini xtreme i didn't find any issues at all as i've been testing it for the last 24 hours um so that said so you use the just macro software along with some code that i've written and i'm making available for free i'm not even charging anything for this where i've produced currently the list is currently at 109 different super source layouts and you can add your own at will you know do whatever you want to the code in order to modify it's really not that hard to add your additional layouts i've covered that here on this channel before so that's something that interests you you can go back and watch one of those previous videos that information does still apply the software that that i've written to do this i'm gonna i'm gonna be making available for free and bear with me for one second so this is the web address where that's gonna actually be made available so djp.li supersource 4 that is not available just yet if you're watching this live that link doesn't do anything just yet but it will later today i'd have a few things that i need to do with the instructions to update it for the atm mini extreme and make a few last minute tweaks on the code but i will be posting that later today and that address right there at the bottom screen is where you're going to find that so this is something that interests you go to that address and you'll be able to download the code and in a minute here i'm going to show you how to install that into the just macro software in order to do these transitions like you're seeing on the atm mini extreme all right i didn't program a button over here to do that so i have to turn around and use my main excuse control panel behind me okay so um that said for one of the big questions that i've gotten many times with this software before is does this software require just macros and the answer to that is yes it does the reason for that is just macros is the only platform other than uh some very high level or very low level complicated things uh the guy name the guy named ian morris that watches the channel who produces powershell versions of different scripts including my just macro is super source macros uh you can so you can do it you can do it through his scripts as well using powershell but just macros is really the only tool out there that provides the functionality that's required in order to have the intelligence to do these smooth transitions from one layout to another there are other packages out there that are going to be available by by different people to do supersource layouts and did you transition between different supersource layouts but those rely on pre-calculated can transitions that you're only allowed to transition from this one to this one or this one to this one you can't transition from any any layout to any other way out so this is a little bit unique in that it allows you to do any transition you want at any point in time and it automatically does the math in order to figure out how to make the transition from one to another so that makes this a little bit unique and i'm also i'm not charging for mine so a couple of the other solutions out there they're actually charging money for it so so this is free the just macro software they do have paid versions but they also have a free version and i've always been using the page sorry i've always used the free version of just macros i've never actually had to buy it in order to get access to this functionality so the things i'm going to show you here today doesn't cost any money it's actually totally free so the price is certainly right and you're getting some additional functionality here that you don't get with anybody else all right so let's actually talk a little bit about how to configure the a10 mini xtreme to do this uh so i mean it has super source built in but there are some things that you're going to want to do in order to make it work well with my software so let's actually take the wrong button there we go well we'll take a look at some a time configuration thing so if i go into atem setup and go into here so you're going to want to change the switching mode zoom in a little to program preview it defaults to cut bus and you could tweak the code in order to make it work with a cut bus functionality but it's really going to work better if he changes the program in preview and that's a better way to go anyway because that's the way what most video switchers actually happen to work the cut bus is really designed there for people who are just getting started don't want to learn how to do the more traditional program preview workflow where you select your preview and then do your transition the cut bus is press the button and it automatically cuts to that source so the program preview is a more flexible way to go and it works much better with these macros than it does in the cut bus mode now also while you're in here you're going to want to make note of the ip address of your switcher in my case it's 10.1.8.195. we're going to use that when we set up just macros a little bit later so with that we can go ahead and save and that's all we really have to do in order to make the atm mini xtreme compatible with the latest version of my just macros software so okay i'm going to minimize that now i speak talking about just macros what first of all where do we get it so the website for that is just macros.tv and so you just type that into your browser and then scroll down a little bit and you see downloads and you see download just macros full package you'll click on that and then you'll click on the link here that comes up to download the 2.9 version of the software it does work with older ones i'm actually still running an older version in my production system but it does work well with either one so once you've actually downloaded that and taken that zip file and opened it and placed it on your desktop so i've got my just macros folder here if i zoom in a little bit so i've extracted the zip file into this folder and then what you're going to do is you're going to go to that link that i showed a little bit earlier the the djp.ly slash super source four that will be a zip file as well and you'll take the contents of that zip file and you're gonna stick those files into this macros and then global's subdirectory so you'll you'll find a bunch of files like this apply ss layout dj atem funk these are files that are going to be included in that download and the files that are necessary in order to make this work once you copy those files into there you can actually go ahead and launch the just macro software and you can find that by going back to the main just macros folder that you just created and double click the just macros plus and then you're going to click on allow access in order to allow that that software to communicate with your atem switcher alright now the free version has these pop-up reminders so you're going to want to dismiss those whenever those come up we're going to see that show up a few times here today one way to prevent that from really getting in the way when you're working is to stick the just macro software on a second desktop on your computer and if you haven't ever if you're not familiar with this if you press the windows key and then tab that brings up this screen right here where you can actually create different desktops so i've got desktop one desktop two desktop three and when i'm working i normally stick my just macro software on desktop two and then i do most of my work on desktop one and that way those pop-ups even though they are still occurring they're happening on desktop two and don't get in the way and i never see them so yeah you might want to do the same thing all right so today we're working on desktop one so that's where i'm going to be most of the time with with those scripts actually installed you'll you'll find those again under the globals and then you see here's like the eight dj a10 funk uh dot it doesn't show the extensions here but it's a dot uh blue macros extension so what doesn't solve we can actually kind of get started a little bit and i'm gonna be demonstrating today using the x-keys controllers here so for purpose of this demo i'm going to be using my 80 key one that i've got here but i'm going to be doing configuring these buttons on here to do to do these layouts and do these transitions and so that's what we're going to be working on but before we get into that we actually need to set up the just macro software to talk to our switcher and if we go into yeah make this a little sorry a little bit bigger mixing up which button is which here so so go over to the devices tab mine already has my switcher in here but you say click add atem and i've already added one you're only allowed one in the free version but it will pop up and ask you for the ip address that we just got out of the atem setup software and then you can give it a name if you want so the name name isn't really very meaningful which is there for for you for your reference it doesn't actually have anything to do with the way that it works within the software and once you've done that just macro should actually just start talking to your a10 switcher automatically and there's a lot of functionality that's there that this enables most of it is designed to work with these x-keys controllers but that's not the only way to go if there's if there's time at the end i'll show how to incorporate this into a bit focused companion with stream deck workflow but i i don't know if i'm going to have time to do that today i do have instructions on how to do that within the download so when you download that supersource four file there's a pdf file in there that has instructions on how to set all this up and there is a couple pages in there that show how to enable this to work with bit focus companion and not and not require the x keys controllers so if that's something that interests you there are instructions on how to do that that is a supported workflow and it does does work reasonably well so anyway all right so we've got our atem talking a10 mini xtreme talking to just macros at this point and at this point we're going to actually want to set up some some keys on our x-keys controller and go there we go set up some keys on our x keys controller to to do the atm supersource macro transitions all right so let me show you guys a little bit of how this works before i do that i actually want to reconfigure the way that i have my a10 mini xtreme set up so i'm going to open the atem software control you can click on the little gear icon down there in the bottom and then i'm going to go over to multi view now as you can as you guys can see on the lower left portion of your screen there i've got this setup in the default i'm we're showing the multi-view on the up on the output of the a-10 mini xtreme and i've got this set up to show the default layout for this for this whole process to work really well you're really going to want to be able to see the preview window that's part of the switcher and if you if you want to set up your one of your hdmi outputs to show preview that's great but it probably makes more sense in my situations to use the multi-view and then reconfigure that to show the preview as well so i'm going to go ahead and do that so i'm going to click on the upper left corner upper left quadrant and and then i'm going to set that to preview actually i already set the preview then i'm going to reconfigure my cameras down here so i can actually see those so camera one camera two camera three camera four i only have two inputs hooked up today but then i've got i've got i've got super source sitting in the lower left and then i've got the remaining three stat the remaining three boxes set to audio status recording status and streaming status obviously reconfigure this to your own needs whatever's going to work well for you but yeah but you're probably going to want you're really going to want to have a preview window available because some of the stuff that this these macros do you have to be able to see the preview in order for it to work so you will probably want to do that anyway it's also nice to have the super source window there in the lower left corner as well so you can see exactly what the super source is doing at any given point in time so you know when it's safe to transition to it if it make sure that has the layout that you're expecting it to all right all right so i'm going to demonstrate a couple of buttons that i have configured on my x-keys controller here so the first button is a button to to select the particular layout that you want so as i press ah i forgot to do one thing so i'm going to come in here to go back into super source i'm going to go to down here i forgot to mention that you need to set up your sources to go into your super source all right so uh in the atem software control in the under palettes super source presets we're going to want to set some video sources to our supersource boxes so box one i'm going to set to camera one and then box two i'm going to set well we need we need to select the reel so box two i'm going to set to camera two box three to tower one and then box 4 i'm going to set to color bars so you can actually see that there's there's different sources actually i'm going to change box 3 so it's not just white i'll go to color 2 there we go all right so if you look at the super source window and it's available in in the lower left corner also showing on preview you can see that i have those four super sources set up so my camera the atm software on this computer the orange color source and then color bars and so uh you'll be able to tell that uh those are the four sources and as i navigate through the different supersource layouts you'll be able to see how those how those are going so all right so back to back to my software so if i press the super source layout button you can see that it's cycling through the layouts that i've predefined and just one by one so i've got 109 different layouts in the version of the software that i'm going to be releasing today i add new ones all the time for different events that we're doing and so you know you'll find like something the ones we're looking at here are very similar to i'm actually see a little more closely there we go uh so these are similar to the ones that i'm actually using on my main switcher right now so you can see how those how those are are generated so again i've got a ton of them 109 109 different available ones and feel free to add your own or customize at will like these those that i just went through two up views and i've got some these are these particular ones here are designed for using there we go with uh zoom so they crop off the top and bottom of the screen so you're not seeing any of the the on-screen controls so anyway i've got it i've got a bunch of them there's a whole bunch of them here and what what i'm doing here is i'm going through the different layouts i'm this allows me to choose which layouts that i want to use as part of my program so say i've got one like here like for example i like this one i want to be able to use it later i've got this code set up so that i can save this layout on a different button on my controller and in order to do that i hold down the shift key and then press one of these five layout buttons or i've reconfigured this panel for today to use my what i would normally use as the second me on my main switcher i've got those set up as layout buttons as well so i press hold down shift and press one of the buttons in this case i'm gonna do layout one so shift layout one and that stores that layout in that button um and then go to another layout so we'll go to this layout and i'm gonna store that in layout two and with the shift key and advance a few more that those are full screen layouts there we go let's yeah and then if i hold down shift and press my layout selector button that goes backwards so forward and then shift goes backwards so yeah we'll choose this one is this is a is the one for layout two so shift layout two and then that's stored and then when i want to use those i actually just press the button so there it is so i press layout one and it does the animation from the full screen to do that layout so press the button there we go and i've got other ones here as well so these ones that i chose earlier before i started this video so you can see i'm freely freely able to select and rotate between any of these transitions in any order that i want at any time it gives you a lot of flexibility you know it allows you to dynamically uh adjust what's going on um with your different video sources all right so now i should mention that when the super source is live like it currently is if you see you can see the supersource layout in the program window there you're not able to view what's going on with your supersource transition and what what with you when you're selecting different supersource transitions so as i press my layout button it's blinking the window but and it is selecting a different source but you can't see it because the supersource is already in use you only have one on your switcher so that's why you probably want to use these layout preset buttons that i've that i've been demonstrating here because that allows you to with a single press transition between any of the layouts that you you know you want to use all right okay uh let's do a quick check in with the chat here and see if anybody is asking any questions okay all right so just very quickly how am i streaming 4k i'm using obs uh my my 2me i 2mm shoots 4k so i'm shooting in 4k camera's 4k i have converters to convert the video between 4k and 1080 coming going in and out of the mini extreme videos going into the computer that's behind me on a deck link card and i'm using obs to do the encoding for it do the upload in 4k so very briefly yeah all right so um someone asked me earlier if i bought this a10 mini xtreme yes i did i paid for this it came yesterday all right um see can't figure out how to use chroma key output as a fill source in the super source box you can't use a chroma key on super source unless you have a multiple me switcher and you do the chroma on the second third or fourth me and then have set that me program as one of the sources for your super source so the a10 mini extreme is not going to be able to do that all right let's see which control panels i'm using these are the x keys xk80 and xk24 i also have xke 128 behind me and i'd buy a bigger one if they made it like it's it's nice to have so many so many buttons so alvin asking is any of this possible on a mac uh not natively you might be able to do something using one of the emulation like wine darwin crossover one of those tools but just macros is not available natively for the mac all right so um have a tutorial on how to install and run the software i'm kind of working on that here in the video there are full instructions in the download for how to install my stuff i'm not i don't go into detail on how to install to install just macros but i do have instructions on how to install my scripts into just macros all right okay cool all right so let's now i demonstrated how some of these buttons some of the buttons work we can actually i can actually show you how we configure these all right so we go over to the x keys panel and i'm going to create a new layout here so basically starting from scratch so even though i've got all this preconfigured and ready to go um ah there we go we'll go with that one there we go so i'm gonna i'm gonna start with an entirely new layout so you guys can see exactly how this is done from start to end so when we come into just macros it automatically detects the executes control panels and at this point we just need to configure the different buttons to do the things that we want to do all right so just briefly let me do a little bit of housekeeping here i need to make some changes to disable my current layout so i'm going to change this unit identifier 998 on there so just ignore what i'm doing for the moment all i'm doing is disabling what i've already done so that i can redo it for purposes of this video all right so i'll go ahead and click on update there all right now i see the xk xk 80 in here and then down in this lower left pane let me zoom in a little bit so you guys can see better what's going on all right so add profile for you choose the x keys model you have in my case it's an 80 so i'm going to use xk60 80. that creates a brand new profile in this profile 3. now in order to connect it to my particular control panel because the software can talk to multiple panels it's very regular for me to have all three of my panels connected at the same time and each one is configured independently but in order to find in order to connect that we need to know the unit id so we'll come back up here click on the unit itself and then it shows the unit identifier right now i've got mine set to six so this panel that i've got here in front of me is id6 and i need to connect my profile to that so i'm going to click on the profile here and then i'm going to change the unit identifier in here to 006 and then click on update that will connect the button layout that i'm about to make with this x keys panel that i have here in front of me okay all right so and the other thing you're going to notice here is that the numbering on the buttons is a little bit weird and this takes some getting used to it doesn't start with one in the upper left corner and then go to two three four to the right it starts in the upper right corner and then goes down and then then from right to left so it's very very weird and how it works it makes it a little bit hard for you to wrap your head around how you number the buttons and whatnot but we'll get through it alright so uh as you can see from overhead i've got this fourth row here is my buttons that i'm going to be using so that's button 76 68 60 52 and so forth let me zoom in a little bit so you guys can see that a little better there we go so that's fourth row and the buttons that i'm going to be using for the supersource layout and the button to apply those layouts are going to be buttons 51 and 43. so we'll start by doing those first so we're going to want to configure button 51. so remember that this whole process is a little awkward and i apologize for that that's just the way that just macros works so anyway so if you ever get if you ever get lost and don't know what button number you need come back up here and upper left click on your panel in the list and it will bring up this this kind of cheat sheet there but once we go to actually configure the buttons then we have to go back to the profile that we created earlier so now i'm going to configure button 51 so i'm going to click on profile 3 and then scroll down in here in this list to button 53 all right from there i'm going to want to choose well i need i'm going to go i'm going to grab the code that i need to stick in there first so take it back we're doing the apply ss layout so we don't need we don't need to grab any code so i'm going to say set button type and then i'm going to choose macro and then click ok and then i want to give this a label so that we can see what it is later so i'm going to say ss layout cycle all right and then the macro name here is ss layout cycle so choose that from the list and then press ok and at that point that button should actually start working so let me make sure that i take the super source off screen and then i did 5153 only 1551 let me try that again gotta love doing live right so sis layout cycle and then we're going to choose that script from the list and remember we downloaded and installed these earlier so that's why these scripts are available in this list so we'll click on ok all right there we go yeah so there we go as i'm pressing the button you can see it's cycling through the different layouts now what we're going to want to do next i'm going to want to assign the button next to it and go back to our thing here and you know button 43 is the one that we want to use to apply that particular layout so i'm going to go back to profile three select button 43 oh i'm sorry is that right it's going to be eight more what is this one two three four five six seven eight forty five is that right double check that 43 so okay 51 to 43 all right so 43 the one we're gonna want to set yeah yeah 53 is wrong let me go ahead and reset that clear that so it doesn't screw me up again 43 set button type macro okay and then we're going to say apply ss layout and then we're going to choose the apply ss layout macro from the list of available ones there so i've got my buttons to cycle between and then i've got my buttons to actually apply the layout so yeah so i can cycle to choose a layout and then apply that particular layout okay all right so uh next thing well before i go too far let me actually show you guys how to configure your video sources on these buttons as well because that's something that uh some people tend to have trouble figuring out so i'm going to want to configure this bottom row so buttons 80 72 64 and so forth as my video source button so that's video camera one video uh camera two camera three coming four and so forth the way we do that we go back into profile three and i'm going to scroll all the way down to button 80. click on that say set button type and then this is going to be atem let's see atem preset source so we're changing which source is on the preview so i'll click on ok there i'm going to call this 1 11 because i'm going to have this actually do two different sources mini xtreme is the switcher we want and on me1 source number is going to be camera one and then the shifted source number is going to be camera well we don't have a webinar on this let me close this real quick we don't have my weather on here so i'm not going to bother with that but on my other switcher i do have an 11 so i would set this up as camera 11 on the shifted all right so that's for that one then i can do 72 set button type a10 preset source call this 2 source number it's a little tedious to go through this but you only really have to do it one time and then next one after that's going to be 64. set button type a10 preset source okay this is three choose camera three and then i'll do four and then i'll call it done if you remember that you advance by eight or actually decrease by eight uh in order to go to the next button to the right it makes this a little bit easier so preset source okay and this is going to be i'm on four now i think right so four and then camera four okay all right and then with that i'm able to select sources one two three four on the buttons here on my panel all right the other button we're gonna want to configure before we get too far is a shift button in my case that's on the upper right so that's going to be click on this button one all right so if we go back into profile three scroll all the way to the top to button one i'm going to say set button type and then where is it it's uh a temp shift right there all right so yeah so and we'll call that shift so we're going to actually use that a fair amount here with what we're doing all right so there we go so now i have button one configured as a shift so let me take let me do one other as well so button eight i'm going to set that up as uh atem cut so this will be the cut transition so that will be able to do do the strand notice not cute cut there we go so there we go so that allows me to cut between sources all right now so if i do my layout cycle pressing it without shift goes to the next layout and then pressing with shift goes to the previous layout so it goes backwards so that makes it easier to navigate with the pres with the preset buttons we're about to create the shift button stores the current layout in that button and then when you press the button without the shift that's when it does the recall so it makes it really handy so in order to do the preset buttons we do have to actually have to copy copy the code so if i come over to macros and then i choose ss layout uh which one is it ss layout i don't have it in there so let me actually grab the code i know i have it i have the code here in notepad plus plus there we go so this is one i'll make sure that the download includes this but the function that we want to call here is ssl recall ssla our set recall ss layout so remember that so i'm going to copy this to my clipboard and then come over to and it doesn't want to hide there we go okay all right so i'm going to program some buttons here for different layouts to store different layouts and as i mentioned earlier it's going to be button 76 68 and so forth store different layouts so i'll come over to profile three scroll down to 76 and then i'm going to say setting button type and this is where we choose standard instead of macro and then our caption on this is going to be layout one and then we're going to paste in that code that i just grabbed again you'll be able to get it from download and then i'm going to make sure that this number here reflects the layout number that i want so layout one make sure that the script here let me zoom in there and show that actually is a one so and click ok and then i'm going to advance eight positions up i think i said seventy six and i just did seventy eight all right let me fix that real quick reset button okay 76 set button type standard ok caption layout 1 unbuttoned down we'll paste that in that becomes layout one okay and then i'll move up eight slots one two three four five six seven eight and then set button type standard okay layout two and we'll paste that in there and then i'm gonna change the number in that function call to two then i'll go up eight eight okay position sixty set button type standard you get the idea so i'll do i'll do like four of them here so change the ss layout recall parameter to three one two three four five six seven eight set button type standard okay layout four paste change that number to four okay one two three four five six seven eight forty four yeah standard okay you get the point so this layout five unbuttoned down set recall ss layout five and then hit ok all right so now that i've got those buttons pressed as programmed i can cycle through my different layouts using the ss layout cycle script that we configured earlier and then when i find one i like hold down the shift key and then press my layout button that i just now programmed and that stores that way up in that button so advance a few more shift store advance a few more shift store and now for me to recall those layouts i just press those buttons so so yeah that's really the gist of it so there are other things that this the script can do as well but that's really the heart of it so with the button to cycle between different layouts and the button to apply a different layout a shift button in order to allow you to reverse the direction as you're cycling and then setting buttons to set and recall different preset layouts as well so button by itself to recall and then hold down shift with a button in order to store a particular preset in there as well so before i go any farther check the chat room see if anybody has any questions all right okay you've seen john superstars program i briefly yeah i briefly looked at it uh he's he's what he's doing is he's uh making it easy to create the layouts he's not really doing anything with the animation so you could you could use his in conjunction with mine um they're not they're not doing the same thing so all right uh see stream deck compatibility um i mentioned this earlier so just macros itself does not communicate with a stream deck if you want to use a stream deck with this you can set up companion bit focus companion to send commands over to this just macro software so you can do it it's not quite as simple as just using x keys natively but it can be done uh it's what there's a it's a little bit more tedious to set it up and get it working but it absolutely can be done i've tested it i made written code specifically to do that and there are full instructions on how to do that or will be full instructions on how to do that in the download that's going to be made available later today so all right so someone asking can you actually define button colors on the execute controller so these are actually just paper labels so the buttons are transparent and i just use the color laser printer to print out the labels that are going in here so it's not an lcd screen like you find on the stream deck they're just paper labels and i use i actually use a fairly thin paper so that the light actually shows through you can't see it on camera with all these bright lights everywhere but the lights actually do show through on the buttons here so i can see in the dark so all right uh john you could always rotate x keys 90 degrees to the left to make the number easier it makes it a little bit easier if it doesn't doesn't really solve the problem because the numbering still goes right to left or top to bottom right to left which is very different than the way that we tend to think so uh the link to supersource does not work yes i have not posted the files yet i still need to do some last minute tweaking i've only had 24 hours to test and make a few code changes in order to make this that this stuff work with the atm mini xtreme there were a lot of changes that i had to make but i did have to make a handful the version of the supersource macros that i've posted here on my channel before does not work natively with the atm mini extreme the versions that i've been posting on discord which by the way if you want to continue to receive updates for this stuff and you want to get help and do feature requests for that kind of thing actually you want to join us over on discord so djp dot li discord in order to find that discussion going on that's where i'm posting beta version so as i add new features which i do pretty regularly that's where those updates are going to go so i'm going to leave the version that i'm posting and linking to here in this video the same unless there's a major bug that i need to fix so you're not gonna i'm not gonna be adding new features to the version that's gonna be in that djp dot li super source for download if you want beta versions with new features new layouts etc get those those over on the discord server that's where that's where i've been posting those so but anyway i have not posted that link just yet it will be live later today so just be a little bit patient i the software will be available today just it's not available just yet but i i've had a few minor changes that i've had to make i also need to update the documentation a little bit as well so um yeah so yes as spencer said join the discord uh that's where that's where i'm posting updates that's where we're doing uh that's where that's where we go to help for to get help in order to configure this and so anyway um paul asking can you set up multiple buttons at the same time so like set up buttons one through nine concurrently no uh it is one button at a time unfortunately but like i said you only have to do it one time so it's only painful just once you don't need to continually do this over and over and over again every time you watch the software once you set up a button it that configuration stays forever so yeah all right uh okay all right so i looks like all the questions we've got going on now all right so with that i'm going to actually show you guys how to add your own layout and i'm going to do this um using both the atm software and the just macros code make it a little bit easier so all right so with i'm going to go ahead and minimize this and i'm going to bring up the atem software control and we're going to create another layout um here in the atem software so i'm going to start with their basic one which is just a two by two it's four source layout um you can see that there on the lower left portion of your screen and we'll do a custom one so in order to do this i'm going to do the user interface so we can actually see the changes live i want to make sure you guys understand how the how the numbers that we're working with here actually work because once you understand that you can actually do a layout creation from within code i've done of those 109 i've done like 105 of them just in code without having to utilize the atem software in order to come up with the values that we're going to be using but that said all right so um see over here screw it let me zoom in a little bit so that we're setting up what we're setting up here is the position and size and cropping actually of each one of the different boxes that's on screen so right now box one and the one that's got my video is in the upper left the source for that is camera one which is where i have the camera input connected on here but let's say we want to have a layout that looks similar but has smaller black borders around it we want to fill most of the screen so we do what we're going to do here is we're going to be mostly tweaking the values here in this box control section so we what we do is we specify an x and a y position let me explain how this numbering system actually works so the numbering system doesn't matter what resolution your switcher is running it's always the same so the center of the screen is 0 0 the far left edge of the screen x is -16 and if you're centered top to bottom your y is zero so y goes from nine minus nine to the bottom of the screen to nine at the top of the screen x goes from minus sixteen at the left to the side side of the screen to 16 on the right hand screen for what you're looking at is backwards so for you yeah minus 16 for the left side and then positive 16 on the right and then again 0 0 in the middle so if you want to have a box positioned do this right so it looks right for you half like one quarter of the width of the screen you gonna want to be halfway between the middle and the left edge so halfway between zero and minus sixteen is minus eight so i'm going to go ahead and put that in to the x position we're saying minus 8 on the x position and then for y well again we want to do the same thing that between 0 and 9 halfway between that is 4.5 all right so that moved that window a little bit to the left and a little bit a little bit upward and we're going to want to adjust the size here and then the size very very size value is between zero and one zero is well it's actually 0.07 is the smallest size it can do all the way up to 1 which is full screen so if i change this to 1 you're gonna you're going to see that that window is full size it takes up that would take up the full size of the screen let me change it to 0.5 actually i'm going to go a little bit for a little bit smaller so 0.45 so we want to leave some some border between all right so does that make sense so we've gone exactly halfway between center and the left-hand edge and center and the top edge so that puts us at minus uh minus eight and plus because it goes minus the plus on the on on the y and we're gonna go plus four point five and then size zero point four five and then i'm gonna do the same same sort of thing on the other one so i'm gonna go to box two that's the ones currently upper right change the x here to eight i'm gonna change the y to four point five and then change the size to zero point four five that's like forty five percent of full size if you want to think of it that way then we'll go to box three and again minus eight because we want halfway between the center and the left edge and then y is we're going downward so we want a minus number minus 4.5 and then the size we're going to do 0.45 and then we'll do box 4 and do the same thing so x is 8 y minus 4.5 and then size 0.45 all right so there you go so that way that we're looking at there is the one that we're going to be putting in here it's one i wouldn't really use but for purposes of demonstration that's what we're going to do so now that we've actually come up with the numbers that we want and by the way you can use the uh you can use the mouse here so for example if i uh let me adjust box one see it's very clear what's going on i hover over the x thing and move your mouse you can do with your mouse you don't have to type in the values but uh you can you will lose a little fine grain control if you do that but it's good for rough positioning all right so we know the numbers that we want to use so camera camera one is minus eight four and five four point five a size of point four five camera two minus eight camera two oh sorry that changes the box two is what we want positive eight positive four point five box three minus eight minus four point five box four positive eight minus four point five and then the size is point four five for all of these now what we're going to do is we're going to go into adjust macros application and we're going to create a new layout so we go over to the macros page and the layouts themselves are stored in this dj atem funk file and you'll see here in a minute it's actually pretty easy to do these once once you understand the numbering system we're going to add one additional layout uh there's a variable here at the top and it says num layout and we're going to need to change that in order to accommodate the new layout that we want so right now it's 109 i'm going to change it to 110. i can type that right there we go so that tells the script that there are 110 layouts that we need to worry about and then from there scroll down there's this set supersource layout function and this is where you actually find all the different layouts and they're numbered starting at zero so if we're we're doing the 110th layout that actually means it's layout number 109. now i've got these in numerical order it doesn't have to be but it certainly does make it easier to find things i'm going to scroll down a little bit and we're going to come down to where the bottom where the last layout is defined so right now the current what current last one should be 108 that there we go so we're going to be adding one for 109 and in order to make this a little bit easier i'm just going to copy paste the existing ones there so i don't have to retype everything but then i'll go ahead and paste and then so it'll say elsif layout equals 109 and then we're going to call this one so the layout name is actually the the name that gets displayed in the log on the bottom of the screen so if you're monitoring that you can see which layout you have four up 45 size all right from here we're going to call this set box function with those values that we did a minute ago so first first number here in this list is the box number so one two three or four the second box second number here is the size so zero point four five next one here is the x position so on box one we are at minus eight and then the next one is the y position that was 4.5 and then these the next four are crop cropping factors and we don't want to do any cropping so i'm going to set all those to zero so zero zero zero zero and then this true in here at the end that tells it to omit the border on this particular layout so i don't know i haven't really talked about borders much but supersource does have the option of putting borders around all the different boxes and i'm going to set this to false like basically we want we want to say we do want the borders for this one all right so that sets up box number one and then i'm going to repeat the same thing for box number two again if you need to refer to the values in atem software control you can certainly alt tab back and forth between those make it easy to recall those but off the top my head i i remember that box two x value was eight the y value was four point five and then all four cropping values are zero and then we don't want to remove the border by the way the border is a global function well global a thing you can't have some boxes with a border and some boxes without all right so and then i'm going to just paste in two more four boxes three and four three and four uh 0.45 is what we want okay so if on box three that's lower left so x is minus y is minus it's on the lower half and then the rest remains the same and then box four it's on the right so x is positive it's on the bottom so y is negative and clear out get rid of these pop-ups there we go so there we go that actually will set set that set up that layout and as i cycle through the different layouts that i have in system that will show up um in as we cycle through so it will be the last one uh we actually have um as part of that cycle so if you wanted that additional ones it's basically the same process and if you don't need a box like say for example you only need a three box layout you just omit that layout number you don't do it you don't call set box you know call the set box function for that box it assumes if you don't call set box that you don't want that box on screen there so in terms of the cropping factors let me very quickly demonstrate how those work as well so you see down here there is for any of these boxes we'll go back to box one and a little box here you can tick and don't know what you want to do cropping again these values are based on that whole 16 minus 16 to positive 16 system so if we want to crop say half of the left half of 16 is eight so we say eight and then if you look at the video window there in the upper left it has removed half of the left and if we want to do the same thing for the right we put in an eight and there we go it crops off the right half so we basically have a window that's half the size that it was originally because we've cropped off half of the left and half half of the right some anyway so that's how the cropping factor works if you don't want any cropping you can just put zeros in for those parameters okay all right let's check in with the chat room and see if there are any additional questions does just macros work with the macro buttons on the atm switcher you have to use the x keys controller uh it does not just macros does not uh it cannot be called by the by the atems uh software so if you want to do any any sort of macros from within just macros you have to write those scripts in the just macros application um you can call a10 mac no actually i take that back you cannot call a10 macros from winning just macros i thought you could but i looked into it and it turns out you can't um so anyway so anything you want to do macro wise you're going to want to to do within just macros and the just macros actually does have a feature for recording a series of steps so if you want to perform perform a macro like thing and you don't want to learn how to code you can go in there and just basically say record do the things that you need to do and then stop and it will actually create create those scripts for you so you don't have to understand programming in order to actually make it work for you so all right okay so sam asking does the position get the coordinates from the center of the source it's from the center of the screen so 0 0 is always the center of the screen no matter what minus 16 minus 16 0 is always to the left 16 0 is always the right 0 9 is always the top 0 minus 9 is always the bottom so do your calculations relative to that so yep jose is there a way to add more than four just four boxes the answer to that is no because that's the limitation of the atam switchers the one exception to that is the constellation which can do up to eight sources in its it's a little bit weird but the constellation has two super sources and you can combine those into one super source that has eight it's a little weird and my code doesn't really support that but but you can so the switcher itself actually can the constellation and the constellation only can do more than four boxes on screen at a time now with that said uh a10 mini xtreme has in addition to having supersource it also has two dve which is digital video effects units and you could use those to do two additional ones um i had gone down the path of making my code use the dves that you have available on your switcher as additional boxes what i found though was that there's some sort of bug somewhere in the system where it stops working after you've done one or two transitions and so even though the code's still in there i wouldn't recommend trying it so you i mean you could do set box five and it tries to use uh dve one on upstream key one in order to add a fifth box but i found that it was just too buggy and it isn't worth worth doing so short answer is no not really you can't really do more than four just because that's the limitation of the of the of the switcher itself uh you're not unlimited like you would be in something like obs in terms of how many different video overlays you can do there are limitations within the hardware but i mean to be able to get a 4dve plus 2 additional dves and a switcher for a thousand dollars is just mind-blowing if anybody has been in video for a long time know that dves have traditionally been super expensive and like even aside from the super source the the black magic switchers have traditionally only had one dve so the fact that they've added two in the atm in the extreme is actually kind of kind of mind-blowing so it's like wow what are they doing here because like my four thousand dollar two me production studio only ha it has the super source but only has one additional dve on top of that and this one the thousand dollar switcher has more it's like what are they doing it's kind of crazy so anyway um so yeah bottom line is with the supersource you get four dves they're not full dvds but you get four dvds you can use for doing picture-in-picture windows and that's honestly if you need to do more than four you probably need to reconsider the way you're doing the layouts for your video anyway because you didn't try and do more than four on screen at a time things are getting too busy uh so even though there are switchers out there that can do more than four you traditionally don't find that people actually do do more than four because it just adds a lot of clutter on screen and that's too much just too much going on visually and even four can be a little bit overwhelming so if you guys been on zoom calls and you have 16 people or 25 people on screen at the same time you can't watch them all it's just not possible so having for living limiting yourself to four on screen is probably better than trying to squeeze more uh on here as well so all right um okay so um i guess i could roll into how to do the bid focus companion integration i don't have companion uh installed on my computer but if you guys don't mind being a little bit patient i can't i can actually do that on here i did i did bring a lot of my stream decks out um so so we can go through that i hadn't really planned on doing this so i'm not fully set up for it but uh that said i was able to finish in an hour so i finished the main portion of the video in an hour so um we can actually take some time to get bit focused companion talking to just macros in order to do these transitions and whatnot okay so in order to do this i'm actually going to need to install companions i don't have that on here yet all right so while i'm doing that you guys can feel free to leave questions in the chat and i will check in from time to time to see what you guys are asking so bit bit focus companion now i should probably note that even though a lot of people have had really good luck with bit focus companion i have stopped using it um it caused my a time switcher to crash in the middle of a show a few weeks ago i was doing a live stream let me switch away i was doing a live stream for a client and my switcher just died right in the middle it was still passing video but it was not allowing me to switch sources um and nothing was was uh responding like not even the front panel on the on the device and i talked to the atem one of the hm engineers that designed the system and he said yeah that basically what happened is it's a third-party software that caused the software inside of inside of the atem to crash and the only thing that i had added was bitfocus companion and i know a lot of people have had great luck with it but i'm probably pushing it a little bit harder than most i've got like 15 devices that i'm talking to with it um but like i say i have since even though i had spent a lot of time configuring i have since removed companion from my workflow um i i just can't afford to have my exposure crashing in the middle of the show so all right so the focus website does require you to log in in order to get access to the software so that's what i'm doing right now i'm making sure he's logging in okay all right so you guys see what's going on here all right so i'm going to download for windows all right so it's downloading it's being really slow i've got an amazingly fast internet connection here it shouldn't be taking very long but but it is there we go speeding up all right so while that's going check in on chat documentation that explain you got later will include setup companion yes yeah so the document the the version that's on discord right now actually has those instructions so i just need to do a thought a few small tweaks for the version i'm going to release today so yeah so setting up for companion now let me make this clear once again uh even though i'm going to be demonstrating how to do this in companion you still have to have the just macro software installed companion does not have the capabilities necessary in order to make these things work natively within there so you know companion it's it's very simple it's it's a macros application it's kind of funny just macros as a programming application the companion is actually just uh just macros capability but uh so anyway so yeah so you do have still stuff you do still have to have the just macro software installed and running you don't have to have the x keys controller though that is optional it just the just macro software is what provides that programming language that is needed in order to make these animations actually take place um yeah it's just not something companion or any of the other tools that i've out there are capable of doing now there's more going on to make these things happen than than companion itself can do so anyway that's that's why it's in just macros and i haven't done a companion version because panning just can't it's just not capable alrighty so going to get a 2 me for work should i get a stream deck to get started with macros uh what what are the pros and cons um stream decks are cool but i like this one the standard one it's only 15 buttons i've got 80 on this yeah i've got 80 on the x keys controller and i've got 128 behind me even the small one which is less than the stream deck is is 24. uh so you can get yes you can navigate through different pages on the stream deck which you can't do on these but if you always want quick access to certain functions uh you may find that x keys is a better way to go so just it just depends on your workflow i prefer x keys layouts because i always want to have one button do one function i don't want to have to worry about what page i'm looking at and the additional functionality it with just macros that you don't get with companion you just got to decide it's going to work for you so some people stream deck and companion works great for me i need the additional functionality of just macros and the x-keys controllers and having found out recently that companion can cause your atm soft switch switcher to crash i'm removing companion from my workflow just because i cannot have my switcher crashing in the middle of an event so okay let's see if the download is finished all right it looks like it has so yeah go ahead and install that sit and wait patiently ah sorry there we go this one yep there we go all right then we'll go ahead and run companion and there's a couple things you're going to want to set up in companion here so yeah allow access that interface network interface is fine so we say launch gui that'll bring up a web browser where we can actually configure companion all right so i'm going to say add by manufacturers i need to add my atem so that's black magic design blackmagic design atem let's choose that target ip my boot is 195 if i remember right let me just let me double check that oops and cam set up there we go yeah make sure that this really is yup ten one eight one nine five okay all right so we can close that and then model me well they don't have the uh they don't have the extreme listed yet so i'm gonna have to go with mini pro that's gonna be the closest one and apply changes okay all right so that adds the atem so companion should be talking to my switcher now and then we're gonna add by search and we're going to say just macros lula say add that and then target ip on this it's this local computer so 12701 apply changes all right and so with that we should have companion talking to my atm mini extreme and to my stream deck and to just macros so all right so buttons all right just to make sure this is working right i'm going to go ahead and configure one of these buttons to be atem source 1 preview me1 cam1 drag and drop that on there and then we'll do cam 2 m3 and 4. let me change my way out so you can i can actually see what's going on with with the device here so as i as i added those buttons they did show up here on on my stream deck now what we're going to do here is we're going to set up this upper left button uh actually let me do i'm going to do a cut button here so they have a preset for that i don't remember i don't see one okay so i'll just set button type regular button and then we're going to search for atm cut operation and change the text on that to cut all right so now i have a button here labeled cut yep and that that is cutting between different camera sources all right and i'm also going to add just for fun i'm going to add a super source button here as well regular button actually no i'm not going to be able to do that because the a10 mini that the template i'm using for for this doesn't have supersource so i won't be able to do a super source button on here all right all right so anyway let me what i'm going to do here is i'm going to set up the top left button to be the a10 so the ss layout cycle um so i'm going to do a regular button and then we're going to say ss layout have that be the label on the button and then for the action just macros execute script and then i'm going to go over to adjust macro software there it is make sure i get the layout the name of that script ss layout cycle is what it's called so yeah i'm going to go ahead and highlight and copy that so then i'm going to go back over to companion and the script that we want to run is ss layout cycle and that should be enough so let me cut away there we go yeah so as i'm pressing the button here on the stream deck it's calling over to just macros to tell it to run that ss layout cycle script all right so i'm going to set up this next button to apply a layout so that's going to be apply layout oops i can type i promise and again we're going to do just macros execute script execute function no sorry execute script is what we want and the name of the script is ss apply ss layout i just remembered that off top my head alright so if if that's working right if i press that button yeah there we go it does the transition so cycle through the layouts and then apply the layouts so there we go that there is a stream deck talking to companion which is then talking to just macros in order to apply the layouts now things get a little bit more tricky with the the layout preset buttons that i configured there's no shifts button on here what you have to do is decide ahead of time which of the layouts that you want on the different buttons this is a little bit more involved so i'm going to have to consult some documentation on this because i don't remember exactly off the top of my head how how this works so bear with me one moment again the documentation on how to do all this where did i put that right now to one drive uh apps that there it is okay yeah so this is this is basically the download that you're going to get from my website and inside this instructions.txt file the instructions.pdf file are the instructions on how to do this so we're going to do a button to apply a layout 1 and another button to apply layout 2 and so forth so okay all right so here we go so it's following two buttons be sure to change the preset number so this these are the buttons that we are the these are the commands that we're going to run in order to call specific layouts so we're going to do best match just mac chess macros execute function envirowrite and then asset preset number and then a number so back over to oh companions just over here on this previous tab alright so we're going to take this button here set button type regular button just macros execute function and function name is again let me get this right envirowrite and be the iro w-r-i-t-e parameters one so we want to execute layout one and we're going to add another step here just macros execute script if i remember right yeah ss layout set so the script that we want here is ss layout set and let's see is that all i need to do trying to remember that should be it okay all right so with that said i'm going to go ahead and i need to get that way out of one give that a name all right and change the font size so it's readable okay alright i'm going to copy that button so we'll go copy from here to here and then on this one we're going to change the text to layout 2 change the parameter to 2 and in theory it may not be applying the way up so i need to add another yeah let's go back to button one just macros execute script and then script name is apply ss layout okay so hmm doesn't seem to be working i i may not have everything configured just just perfectly i know it does work i did test it at one point in time um and it can't it can be done but like i was unprepared for this um so there might be other changes that i need to make i can keep working on this after i end the video today and make sure that it works for the version of the download that i that i make available later tonight so but but yes you can take use the stream deck to trigger these scripts and make these animations happen it's just extra work and it's a little bit uh a little bit clutchy if i'm being a little bit being honest uh you're having to run i have one scripting engine called another scripting engine in order to make it go but you can make it work so you don't have to have the execute controller you can i mean you can actually cause call these things manually from just macros as well i don't recommend it but but you certainly can do that so uh ss preset one here there's a script that i've got that automatically goes to layout one and i can click on the execute button and it runs it and i did it without having to use the x-keys controller or the stream deck or companion any of that so i mean you can do it and i believe there's ways to do interfacing to interface with midi controllers as well so if you've got a midi controller you can you can use just macros with that and you're on your own for figuring that out i haven't haven't gone looked into that at all myself but but yes it is possible there's a lot of things you can do with just macros it does talk to a lot of different hardware it does not support the stream deck the stream deck didn't exist when just macros was created so that's that's come along um since just macros was released so but anyway so yes it can be done uh not pretty but it can be done so if you've already got the stream deck you've already got companion working you can add just macros and my scripts on top of that in order to give you give you this ability to do these nifty layout transitions uh you're seeing there on your lower left so i haven't programmed those um so anyway let's see you guys have any other questions let me go back to that desktop with the can you go over the windows hotkeys we're using for live streaming production um well that's there's a lot that i'm doing in windows but none of it actually has to do with the production itself that's just me configuring things so yes okay stream deck to just macros to hm uh yeah yeah so i should mention that one of the nice things about just macros is it goes through blackmagic's official sdk companion does not companion uses an open source library to communicate directly with the switcher which has caused some problems um so if you're looking for something that's going to be reliable and it's going to work with equipment moving into the future even though just macros is way older it has proven to be more compatible with new equipment coming out like i mean a10 mini line didn't exist at all when just macros was last updated but it works just fine with them so because it's because just macros it uses a black mods blackmagic's official sdk so it doesn't matter what version of the atm software you're running it just works which is not necessarily true of just macros all right sorry i've got a companion so yeah pedro is just macros windows only yes it is windows only there's no version for mac or for linux uh i have not tested it under some of the emulations like darwin or crossover or it would definitely work under parallel so i mean because you're running windows there but um and yeah is i don't know how to say any p build uh is mentioned that it's just macros is not being maintained that is true that said i haven't encountered any situation where it doesn't work i mean here i'm using on the last update for just macros i think was 2018. so three years later and it works just fine with the atomic stream which just shipped so yeah and norm first person to make a browser based sas service to generate atm animation macros is going to clean up the problem with a lot of these solutions like a to z productions for example has created some uh animation scripts as well the problem with those they're pre-canned so you can only animate between the different combinations of layouts that you program into so if you do a button to go from one to two and then a button to go from two to three you have to have a button to go from one to three otherwise you can't make that transition without going one to two and then two to three the the software i've got here it uses mathematics and logic in order to figure out do the calculations that it takes to do a transition from whatever you've currently got on screen even if that's a manual super source layout you've created in the atm software to transition to the stored layout that you've got in in the script so there's there's intelligence there that you're just not going to be able to get with some of the other solutions that are out there so again you're not going to get that with the a to z productions things and you're not going to find it with companion uh right any of these other solutions that are out there there's there's a lot more going on there there's it's a two-way communication thing going on it's not just blindly shove these instructions over to the atm switcher it's what is the current state of the atm switcher and then what do i need to do to transition from that state to the layout that i want to display on screen and you just can't get that with a simple simple macro a simple list of steps and so that's the big difference between these and unfortunately right now the only solutions that i'm aware of that allow you to do that would be just macros or using ian marsh's powershell code that's it unless you want to write your own so i've considered doing that and if i had all the time in the world i would certainly be producing a piece of software designed specifically to control video production equipment from any number of devices whether it be x-keys or stream deck or a midi controller or whatever unfortunately i just don't have all that time in the world in order to make that happen i've toyed with it a little bit and again if i had if i had an infinite amount of time i would already have something uh done there something just macros does kind of drive me crazy a little bit i mean it's it's got some quirks and it's not perfect it hasn't quirks and i have seen it crash on me before but that said it has still been the best solution i've found and the best solution i've tried and i've tried a bunch but it's the best solution that i found in order to make my workflow work with the ability to do these cool animations between different layouts um and be able to do it fully dynamically you know like you know on the fly i need to adjust the layout i can do that or tweak it in the atem software and not break scripts you know because i'm because the numbers that's expecting to be uh used uh are not what they're not not what they're so so dan saying you can't do that with advanced panels then no you can't and the advanced panels doesn't don't have those capabilities and that's one of the main reasons that i have stuck with the x-keys controllers all this time uh when you know these event the advanced control panels those are they're very cool products and they're super high quality and are really really well made and the standard interface that most technical directors actually prefer but i actually like to have the additional functionality that you get with something like this much more i would prefer that over an expensive interface that limits what i'm able to do i mean you could certainly use them in conjunction with one another you could have an atm advanced panel along with just macros and the next keys controller you could you could use them together but [Music] but yeah i mean there's there's pros and cons to each you know you've got to decide what's going to work best for your particular workflow for the customers that you're going to be working with and for me i've found that the best thing is just macros with x-keys controllers because it allows me to do whatever i want with it with the device you know i'm not limited to whatever commands happen to be available in another tool like companion you know companions missing a lot of stuff you know there there is no way to say transition turn on upstream key one uh and then fade it in you can't do it it's just not that's a command that's not there and so you're limited by the tool that you select you know whatever limitations your tool has you've got to live with it and i found that just macros even though it's not perfect it has some quirks it has some weird some weird things that it does i found it to be the the best tool for me so all right um let's see so did you add the atem extreme to your kit and if so how do you see fitting in given all your sdi connecting infrastructure honestly um i mostly well i'll show you it is i'm talking about i mostly got it for the for the youtube channel um i don't actually really plan to use it for most situations the one situation i can think of where it might come in handy is if i get hired by a client that says we need to have six people on screen at the time and then i'll take the mini atemit xtreme add that to what my 2me production studio is capable of doing so i'll use the minixtreme to do two three whatever of the supersource pass that over to my 2mi switcher and then add the additional windows on there so more of an extension for extreme circumstances than something that i'm going to use in my regular production i bought the original a10 mini when it came out over a year ago and i have never used it for production not once because i have other switchers that are more capable and are better fit for the way that i happen to work you know the main limitation for me is that is the hdmi i deal with problems with hdmi constantly if you guys watch the monitors in my trailer flickering that's hdmi those are hdmi problems if i had sdi monitors none of that would be happening it would be perfect it'd be flawless hdmi is just not as reliable as that i would like my equipment to be um especially if you start to do with long cable runs you know like most of the time when we're working an event we've got at least one camera that's 50 feet away or more and hdmi you've got you've got to get into very expensive optical cables at that distance to have reliability and so it's just easier to use sdi it's what it's designed for um so with a10 minis just don't fit into my workflow super super well i i totally appreciate what blackmagic has done here and i realize that this opens up a new world to a whole lot of people you know people able to do things that they've never been able to do before and that opens up a class of equipment that has not traditionally worked very well in in professional video you know camcorders and things like gopros and whatnot you plug those directly into this i absolutely appreciate that but at the same time when you get into the bigger productions like the ones that i do it just doesn't fit it doesn't i mean yeah it's not designed for that and you know if they had an sdi version maybe but it doesn't doesn't fit into my workflow and so yeah so i i bought it really just for the channel probably for the youtube channel here so very i'm making a very expensive video here is kind of the bottom line so yeah all right um use more than one a10 mini xtreme together i mean you can certainly probably one of the big problems with daisy chaining from one to the next each time you add an additional link in the chain especially switchers you're adding additional delay uh and i don't know if you guys have paid attention but the video of me coming from the switcher so let's see go back to the to that layout so the output of the switcher you notice that the video of me it's significantly delayed from the live view there on the right because it's it's having to go through yet additional layers of complexity so daisy chaining one switcher into another that that problem just gets worse and worse and worse so yeah okay all right um bit off track can atm mini xtreme do tally and talk back i have the television studio 4k pro but thinking about changing the mini xtreme iso just because of the iso recording uh so it can do tally with supported black magic switchers um see if i i do so one thing you can do with the mini xtreme if you add these bi-directional sdi hdmi converters you can control the cameras that have sdi so that would be uh like the uh they say they haven't can't remember the name i've not made um yeah the ursa minis or some mini series you'd be able to control those and get tally from a10 mini xtreme so you have your hdmi uh coming from the switcher going into this device and then your sdi connection is going to camera or like the one camera i'm using up here above that's a micro studio camera 4k uh able to get tally with those so if you want to do towie with cameras other than the pocket my cameras you would use one of these devices to convert the signals to and from sdi in order to make that happen so okay how much storage space it has or is it off machine i'm not sure what storage space you're referring to so have you seen john supersource macro program i have not looked at yet i saw that he released a video about it this morning i i had other things going on i haven't had a chance to look at it i did see an early version of it where it was basically creating the xml code to go into atm configuration files to produce supersource layouts so so yeah i mean you could certainly use that to get those numbers to plug into my scripts that would that would work i mean those number values are universal they're not specific to just macros or atm software control so anyway all right jonathan thoughts on hdmi over ethernet for long runs uh it can absolutely work but one of the downsides to that is by the time you get something that actually works really well you might actually be cheaper going to sdi so and you have more compatibility then one of the big problems with it excuse me hdmi it's actually key it's actually cat5 it's not ethernet it's the same cable but it's not an ethernet protocol so but one of the downsides to that is there's no universal standard or there is a standard but these devices don't use it there's an hdbaset that you that goes over cat5 but that's not what these are what these things are using they use their own proprietary thing so whatever device you use you always have to use its companion device you can't mix and match and so if you have one die you can't just go out and buy one from another manufacturer and have it work that they are kind of non-standard so all right um iso recording okay yeah all right so iso recording uh i didn't get the iso version of this switcher i don't need it all my cameras that i use have local recording and it's better quality anyway than what you get with the iso but it's limited to whatever storage you happen to plug into the device so you know if you put a real small ssd on there that's what you're going to be limited to so i mean all the recording is not internal it's done to external ssds through the usb ports that are on the back so if you need more if you need to record for longer you just buy a bigger ssd and i believe it will actually cascade one to another so we plug in multiple either direct or through a usb hub i believe it will automatically cascade from one drive to another and the first one fills up don't quote me on that but i think i remember hearing them say that so so i hope they do an update to tv studio with 8 sdi i would love that too you know i now i have a television studio that's kind of my go-to switcher for smaller events when i'm not using the trailer and i never use the hdmis on that i'm not sure that i've ever used the hdmis on that i've always ever done because i mean if i need more than four sdi sources i just bring the trailer and use my big switcher for that but uh yeah i would love to see something that's television studio like with the capabilities of the atm minis that's all sdi that would be a great product and certainly one that i would buy hdmi hd sdi converter for a longer run will not carry the ccu for black magic cameras getting these scripts later today and so didn't use the download link that i when i there we go have up on screen so supe djp.li supersource4 to download the code to make this work and again that'll be up later today so anyway that's going to be it for now so thanks everyone for watching and have a great day you

Channel: Doug Johnson Productions

Views: 16,140

Keywords: Doug Johnson Productions, DJP, Live Video Production, Event Video Production, Orem, Utah, Live Streaming, Internet Streaming, livestream, livestreaming, live video, blackmagic design, atem

Id: oU5V6y5-6BI

Length: 94min 9sec (5649 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 18 2021