Are the new ATEM SDI & ATEM SDI Extreme ISO switchers worth it?

wait what new a-tem minis with sdi hi i'm aaron pirecki blackmagic just announced three new a10 minis into their lineup the atem sdi the sdi pro iso and the sdi extreme iso these are primarily an sdi version of the a10 minis but there are a couple of interesting differences aside from the obvious difference of the sdi ports the atem sdi base model priced at 345 is nearly identical to the original a10 mini it is a switcher with all the same features in the atem mini like the downstream key the upstream for chroma keying and picture in picture as well as the media pool for graphics i'm actually not going to go into all the details of the product because i've already got plenty of videos on this channel all about all the things you can do with the a10 mini but the big difference with the atm sdi models is that all of the inputs are sdi instead of hdmi sdi is often used for the more professional broadcast grade cameras and most importantly the cables can go a lot farther than hdmi cables hdmi cables max out at around 30 feet at most if you're lucky and it really depends on the cable as well as the camera and the thing you're plugging it into as to whether you can actually get that range there are fiber hdmi cables you can get which can go longer but really if you're planning on doing a lot of long cable runs i would really start investing in an sdi workflow instead sdi also doesn't have the same issue with negotiation like hdmi does you know how when you plug in an hdmi thing it takes a couple of seconds before it syncs up that's because hdmi can do so many different things and that both sides have to actually talk to each other to figure out what video to send sdi is more just like bashing out video frames one by one really fast so as soon as you plug in the cable it appears on the monitor so back to the a10 minis the base model atem sdi now has two sdi outputs those outputs can be assigned to either your main program output or as pass-throughs of any of the inputs the atom sdi pro iso at 795 is nearly identical to the atem mini pro iso including the built-in streaming encoder and recording all four inputs to a usb drive of course instead of the four hdmi it now has four sdi inputs and it also has two sdi outputs the atom sdi extreme iso which is 14.95 which is definitely a price tag but it can also do a lot the biggest difference between this and the hdmi extreme iso is that this new sdi model has four sdi outputs that is a lot of flexibility but other than that all the models appear to have the same features as the corresponding a10 mini hdmi models now i do actually think they made the right call by not releasing a non-iso version of the others the iso feature was only a couple hundred dollars more on top of the non-iso a10 mini and it really gives you a lot more value by having that iso recording and there is more good news it looks like they are the same physical size as the original a10 mini and atm mini extreme which means yes you can use the new atem sdis in the pk1 stands so i now want to talk about a few of the things i think they actually got wrong with the new models i'm really surprised they did not include a headphone jack on the smaller models that is one of the big missing features of the original a10 minis which a lot of people complained about it's not the end of the world it just means you have to connect headphones to your monitor instead but it definitely is nicer to be able to connect headphones to the atem directly the xtreme does have a headphone jack in both the hdmi and sdi and i'm really surprised they didn't take that feedback and bring it to the smaller models of the sdi as well the supersource feature is one of my favorite parts of the hm mini xtreme supersource is what lets you make the nice side-by-side layouts or put four people on the screen in little boxes however the big missing feature is that while the supersource appears as a video source that you can switch to in the software and with the buttons it's actually not recorded as one of the iso channels on the drive and that also means it's not included in the davinci resolve project that's created i understand that it's likely a hardware limitation with the original extremes that they couldn't add it with firmware but i was really hoping they would have fixed this with any new hardware so it is really disappointing that the new atem sdi extreme does not include the super source in the iso recordings but at least now with the extra sdi outputs you can actually now loop one back with a short sdi cables into one of the inputs if you do need to record it and you still have three sdi outputs free now it also would have been nice to add the super source to the smaller four input sdi model which i do realize is a bit of a stretch but it would just be so good i also think the extreme should have had one hdmi output for a multi-view monitor it's pretty common especially since this is very clearly meant for a portable desk setup to want to use this with an hdmi monitor since there are only sdi outputs you'll now need to find a monitor with an sdi input like the lilliput a11 that i use as my teleprompter or you'll need to add an sdi to hdmi converter i just think it would have been nice for at least one of the sdi outputs to be an hdmi output instead i also actually think there should have been a mix of hdmi and sdi inputs it makes sense that the rack versions of these are all sdi but again since this is a desktop form factor there are a bunch of times it'll make sense to use some hdmi sources like a laptop or an ipad on your desk and now you're gonna have to run these through a converter instead so like i said in my original atem wishlist video i would have liked to see a mix of sdi and hdmi maybe three sdi one hdmi on the smaller ones and six sdi and two hdmi on the extreme remember the tv studio hd i used that one for years it has four hdmi and four sti and even half and half was a great mix i used the sdi for the long cable runs to far away cameras in the back of the room or for the long run to the presenter's laptop on stage and i use the hdmi for local video sources like a laptop with a slide deck of sponsor logos or like for an hdmi player with a motion background or an ipad for video playback there's just always going to be a mix of hdmi and sdi sources in a production so if you have all of one type or the other you're going to always need some sort of converter so maybe if blackmagic is going to stop making devices with a mix of inputs they should instead make a new device which is a multi-sdi hdmi converter right now the bi-directional converters can do hdmi sdi and sdi to hdmi simultaneously but how cool would it be to have a device with four parallel converters all one box that way you could just easily turn your four sdi inputs into four hdmi inputs or the other way around it seems doable the converters are pretty small and a lot of that is just the case and frankly i would also like to see a rack mounted version of a multi-converter device since mounting these converters in a rack is really a challenge okay my last complaint i swear we're gonna get into some positive things in a second is that the base model atem sdi also doesn't store the media pool when it's shut down originally that was true for all of the a-10 minis but they actually published a firmware update for the pro and pro iso a while back which made the images stay in the media pool when it's powered off but for whatever reason they weren't able to add that feature to the original a10 mini and while that was unfortunate i can't really blame them because the hardware already shipped and there just wasn't the hardware inside to add the feature but now launching a new base model atom sti it really feels like they missed out on adding that memory to the base model too i'm guessing the reason it's not there is something like they are actually reusing a bunch of the internal components of the actual base model a10 mini and just like swapping out the ports on the back but it still really feels like a major oversight but it's not all bad news i do want to talk about a few things i'm really excited about on the new atem sdi models the iso models either the 4 or 8 input would pair really well with the new constellation hds basically adding the streaming encoder and iso recording feature to the larger atems the constellation 2me has 12 sdi outputs so you could easily run four of those into the atem sdi pro iso and record four of your constellation sources in parallel and at 795 it's still the cheapest way to get a four channel h.264 recorder not to mention all the other things it can do too and the constellation 4me has 24 sdi outputs so you could easily dedicate eight of those to run into the sdi extreme iso and that way you get a dedicated 8 channel sdi recorder personally i'm probably going to add one of these to my studio since i am in the process of switching everything over to the new constellation for emmy and while the for me is a massively powerful switcher the big thing i'm losing there with that instead of the extreme iso like i've been using is the ability to record multiple sources at the same time so the new sdi pro iso or extreme iso seems like a really great way to add that back without adding a whole mess of sdi hdmi converters again another really nice addition is the extra sdi outputs the additional sdi outputs are going to be super useful for a bunch of things and now even with the base atem sdi you get two sdi outputs so you can use one for the program output running into a streaming encoder or recorder and you can use the other to output to a secondary recorder for backup or for just one of the cameras as a dedicated recorder or you could actually use it to feed a projector in the room showing a pass-through of one of the inputs that might have a computer screen showing slides or a sponsor logo i really like doing that when i'm recording events that way i can change the projector to show a graphic between presenters otherwise you have the whole awkward projector thing where they unplug the computer and the screen turns blue and it just looks messy so adding that extra sdi output means you can really add a lot of polish to that and that was one of the first things in the wishlist i made before the atm mini xtreme came out so i'm really glad to see that the two sdi outputs on even the base model and one quick note about the new base model atem sdi i did ask blackmagic to confirm that both sdi outputs are assignable and turns out the answer is yes so both sdi outputs can be set to either one of the camera inputs or your program output and of course with the sdi pro iso that can also be a multi-view alright that is it these are my initial thoughts on the new atem sdis will i be buying one possibly right now i'm leaning towards the smaller atem sdi pro iso to use it as a four channel iso recorder along with my constellation for emmy i think four channels is probably enough for me since i usually don't actually need to record more than that very often and i can always throw in a hyper deck for an extra channel if i really need to so give this video a thumbs up if you enjoyed it and subscribe and join my weekly live streams on sundays and i will be sure to share an update when i inevitably buy one of these and start testing it out thanks so much for watching and i will see you in the next one

Channel: Aaron Parecki

Views: 38,081

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Id: jEezzjmicOE

Length: 10min 31sec (631 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 23 2022