BlackMagic ATEM MINI: 5 Top Tips & Tricks | Save Setup, Monitor Audio + More!

I've already done a full rundown of the black magic a ten minute but what are some of the tips and tricks that I picked up after using it for over a month well in this video I'm giving you five of them so tip number one the a-team restore function a way of saving out your settings so that when you pull the power out of your a10 mini you can get them back the next time so one of the questions that I have seen the most especially in the comments on my last video is is there a way of saving profiles or saving out your settings I didn't show that in my last video and if you haven't watched that yet it's a full guide of how to set up the black magic 810 mini I'll put it on the little YouTube cards at the top just click on the I button if you want to watch it but yes there is a way to save your settings and say about all of your settings and basically if you want to create different profiles so that when you come to plug in the a-10 mini again you can just select the one you want and restore it straight to the device and I'm going to show you firstly how to save that and then secondly how to restore so let's say like if we go into my software control panel we've got here I've been changing put myself up so you can see I've been changing some of the settings this morning having a playing around with chroma keys and things like that and let's say for argument's sake that I've got my a 10 minute exactly how I want it and I want to save out all those settings it's super simple to do so all you would do is go up at the top click file and then click save as now this is going to create an XML file with all of your 8 M mini settings as they are right now so let's just say this is the dumb one for the morning setup so let's say this is the afternoon setup you see what I mean by you can start to create different sort of profile so let's say you're using this for interviews sake and you want to do a set up for three for a three person shoot and they set up for a two person shoot and they have set different settings for both you could save out each of these setups and then easily very quickly restore the one you need when you need it so we've hits hit save on there and we then get this dialog box that asks us what we want to save you know what settings do we actually want to put in this file now my advice is to just leave everything selected and I'll tell you why in just a second but if you so you can say you know I just want to save the audio mixer settings and things like that but for now my advice is always save everything because you can choose what you want to restore later hit save and down at the bottom here you'll see it says save complete the file is generated I've saved it to my desktop so if I bring that up we can see it there we've got afternoon's setup now it is an XML file so if you're into editing those files you can just open them up in any sort of text editor editor and edit those to your heart's content you need some knowledge of kind of the way it's phrased but it's pretty simple once you start looking for it so that's how to save it but how do you get that same settings back on your device when you pull out the power now I can't pull out the power right now because I'm recording this setup through the ATM mini itself but what you would do is you would boot up your ATM mini go to file let's make sure we're in the software control first go to file restore and then you would select that restore file that you've generated and just hit restore now this is the point I was making I always say save all your settings because then when it comes to restoring you actually have the choice whether you want to restore everything or just select things so let's say you know I did just want to take the audio levels from the shoot I did last week but maybe since booting up I've done a different color grade and I want to keep that well I could just select audio mixer and that's just going to change and replace the audio mixer settings from that restore file and it won't do anything else to your 810 mini but again for argument's sake I want to actually resawing have the a-10 mini go into the exact state that it was when I saved that file so all I do is select all and then click restore and there we go you see at the bottom here it says restore complete that's when you know you're back to the settings from the restore file and that's it it really couldn't be simpler that is how you save out different versions of your a-10 mini and then when it comes to the time you can easily restore them so that you've got all your settings ready to use as they were in that instance now one of my biggest concerns when I received the Blackmagic 18-minute was how am I going to monitor audio because there's no headphone jack in the device itself and I really kind of thought about this and I found two ways so far I want to share those with you the first one is for an instance where you are just using like a laptop and this works for both Mac and PC and it's because of the USB or what they call Blackmagic called the webcam output because it's outputting the program with audio you can use your computer to monitor that audio now I'm using a Mac it does work on PC and let me show you how I am doing it on the Mac here so if we switch over to the desktop what I do is I fire up QuickTime and I open up here new audio recording now you could do new movie movie recording if you wanted to and that would show you the video as well but I don't need that I just want to monitor the audio select Blackmagic Design or it might come up as a 10-minute for you depending on what you have your device called as and then you can turn up your gonna mute exciton tits it come back but you would turn up this slider here and that's going to output the audio coming from your 8m Mini through your headphone jack or through your computer speakers so that's really it's a really useful way of monitoring audio that is coming directly into your 8m mini without having a headphone jack on the device the other way that I use a lot and a lot more because when I'm using a 10 minute I'm also using a black magic video assist which is a monitor it's actually right here hold on I can show you with the GoPro so this is setup that we've got right here you see I'm using a black magic video assist to just see and actually record the output of the a 10 minute as well and the great thing about that is the video assist has a headphone output on it so I can just grab I've got some headphones down here so I can just grab my headphones and I do this a lot when I just want to check the levels make sure everything is sounding good again if I'm using like the EQ or anything like that I'll plug directly into the headphone output of the Blackmagic video assist go directly into I mean I don't know I'm not doing this you guys won't be able to hear it but just to confirm and yeah I can now hear myself back there's no delay I can hear the audio that is coming out of the 8m mini so you can either monitor the audio for a third-party program via that us the output or from the HDMI output using a third-party monitor that has a headphone output on either one will allow you to monitor the audio and it's just a great workaround that I've found for being able to check your audio levels and see how things are sounding or hear how things are sounding without having a dedicated headphone output on the a-10 Mini itself so what this allows you to do is effectively take a still screenshot as it were of your program output at any point so let me show you how it works we fire into the software control and if we go over to capture you'll see there's an option here called capture still now if I smart and click this now if we go over to the media pool you'll see I have a still called capture too and it's already loaded in the media player and what that means is I cut over here to the a.m. for a second if I cut the still on-air you can see there's me smiling it is that still shot on air there I'm sure there's a bunch of different use cases for this I can see it being it maybe in something like a photo finish or in demonstration purposes to kind of freeze frame something and prepare something else but it's a really cool neat little feature and I'm sure people as they come to use it more and more or find different use cases for it but I wanted to share it something that I kind of found new in the ATM software control and didn't really know was there but it's a cool little tip for especially if you want to just grab a still for maybe like an end frame for your live stream it's a great idea tip number four if you haven't been able to work it out already is chromakeying and the picture-in-picture mode okay so I have a nice green screen behind me here now and I want to show you the advanced chroma keyer built into the a-10 mini it's the same advanced chroma keyer that is in the top-of-the-range 8ms the black magic have and some of the powerful features that are actually built inside within that and I know a lot of people are also asked like can you use the picture-in-picture at the same time as using the chroma keyer I'm gonna answer that question and kind of show you maybe a way around it as such so let's dive into the software control first now I'm going to keep my picture and picture off right now because we are using upstream key or one for the chroma key so click on upstream key one and then go over and click on chroma now if I put the chroma key on air right now this is what it's seeing it's obviously not putting a great key of the green it's pulling more of the blacks right now so what I'm going to do is I'm just going to turn that off and I'm going to use my preview screen that I've got here now I know you can't see that but firstly you want to select a camera that you want for the fill source so that is the correct camera then I'm going to click here and use chroma sample and I'm just gonna drag this and I can see on my preview screen to the green area behind me click that now if I bring that on screen you can see it's doing pulling a much better key still not perfect around the kind of glasses area we'll sort that in a second but it's certainly better than what we had now for kind of argument's sake here I'm just going to change one of the settings so that I can keep something on-screen at this I keep this on screen at the same time while I make adjustments you can see it so let's turn on flying key and that will just shrink down there we go so you can see while I make adjustments so I think the first thing that we're going to want to do is I want to apply a mask to the key so I want to trim a little bit off the top just to the point there we go and quick tip if you want to change these levels there's like a one of these granular sliders so that you can make very slight movements just highlight your mouse over the the word so you can see here I've got top or bottom highlight click and drag and then you can make those sort of granular movements now for big movements I just like to jump in from the and type the actual number so I reckon probably around like an a negative 8 here now what I want to do with this shot is place me in the bottom right left hand corner so that you can see me and you can see the software control panel at the same time now if I turn off that flying key you'll see that's the fullscreen key but the key to this the key to this is actually the flying key what that allows you to do is place it on screen place the key on screen wherever you want but more importantly black magic have built into this key frame so that you can sit key frame a and then key frame B and anime anime between them and also have your your chroma keyer kind of animate off the screen as well so what I'm going to do is shot a I'm just going to move the position of it on the left hand side I'm doing this really rough and somewhere about there and the same I reckon we actually want to make that slightly bigger so let's push that to about there and maybe just adjust it again there and there now let's say I'm happy with that quick keyframe set a and that will lock that down we're also going to do a smaller versions if I need to show you something in the bottom left hand corner so we can shrink that right down to maybe like that sort of size just so I'm still here but not really in a way of anything and then I'll set that to keyframe B now one thing that I noticed is the key isn't perfect so we're gonna go back on and fix that a little bit but I'm doing it really rough for now but let me show you now that we've set those two keyframes a and B we can animate between them so if we we know that a keyframe a is the larger version I can click that and bow our scale up if I need to scale back down I can click under the run to Section B and a scale back down there is also the option as well to bring that keep fullscreen and while we're there let's just adjust that chroma key a little bit so if we go up here to the key adjustments let's just have a look we bring the background I'm losing a bit too much of the chair there better bring that back so let's say that's okay for the background I just Kia yeah it's probably okay for the foreground I'm gonna bring the background down a little bit and let's try and adjust that there with the edge suppression that's about okay I'm happy with that key especially as it's fullscreen and it's not going to be fullscreen you also have the option of course to change the chroma correction as well so you've got spill of flare suppression within those settings too but if I come back down to the flying key let's go back to our larger version of me so you can see there it's a really great tool to be able to kind of dip in and out if I want to be large on screen I've got that and then I've kinked down so if I want to show you something in the bottom left you can still see it for gamers and gaming this is gonna be a killer feature and the other options that you have down here if I just bring myself a larger again how to animate it on and off the screen so we can say shrink to the top left hand corner and there we go it goes off bring it back by clicking which keyframe we want to go to so there's a again and if we want it to shrink to the middle we click that there's loads of different options I'll just bring back so you can see me there we go there's loads of different options to have your key source and a mate on and off the screen as well now when you pair this feature with the next tip of the final tip which is macros you can create something really powerful for your live streams oh one more thing before we move on to macros the question can you use the picture-in-picture at the same time as using the chroma keyer the short answer is no I kind of just showed you a way that you can have the same effect but let me show you what happens when you try and do it so I'm just going to cut to the screen here in fact I'll cut to the shot of the a-10 mini and if I try and bring on the picture-in-picture here worked perfectly fine now look what happens when I try and then use the chroma key at the same time if I click on to the chroma keyer both will flash at the same time to let me know that the upstream key is already being used for the picture-in-picture and so that's what happens just thought I'd throw that in there but let's talk about macros and how you can use macros to really elevate and automate your broadcast all right got rid of the green-screen let's talk macros because they are probably my favorite thing in the ATM range it's not just in the ATM minutes across all or black magics ATM products but they're so powerful and what they allow you to do is in effect automate some of the processes that might take 10 20 button presses for you to do and you can change that into all in one button press so let me dive into the software and we're gonna actually create a macro right now for starting a show and what I want that macro to do is I want it to automatically transition from a holding slate that we've got on the program to them putting our first camera which will be this one here onto the program at the same time I want it to fade up the microphones and at the same time as that two seconds after that's happened I basically want it to then put a bug of a website that we're live streaming on to advertise so that's what I wanted to do that would usually take multiple button presses and also multiple kind of brain functions to remember to have to do everything at the same time but we're going to try and get it all down into one macro for one button press now when you create a macro what happens is you the ATM mini will basically record your every button press setting change every movement you make on the device until you tell it to stop and then when it comes to recording a macro it basically just plays those back so what we do is we go into macros menu and we hit the plus button here and we say start show because that's what we want to call our macro and as soon as I hit record the 8 M mini is recording every single movement that we make on the device so the first thing that we wanted it to do was to transition from the holding slate to our camera and for that I basically just want it to switch what is in preview and program so I can click auto and it will mix between them and it's recorded that action now at the same time I wanted it to enable audio so if I go to the Audio tab now I'm using cam ones input right now for this tutorial so I don't want to mess around with that so for argument's sake I'm going to say that our main audio is coming in on camera three so we want that to be turned on when we run the macro as well we go back to switcher and then finally what we said we wanted it to do is to bring on the website bug about two seconds later and that's where this ad pause option comes in handy because we can set delay until the next action in the macro Ed's run and it gives you a default I'm going to set the duration to 2 here you can also say wait until the user presses a button and then carry on running the macro but that's ads that add the pause and what we want it to do is to bring on our website and as you can see if we go to the media tab what's in the media pool is still the holding slate so we need to replace that with what's in slot number 2 which is the website and then we want to bring that on air so what we're going to use is a dsk for that and they make sure all our settings are correct it's using the right media player and then we just hit auto and you can see on your screen that transitions on as well and that's on macro run so we can just hit hit stop and it will save there now if we go back and turn off the audio because we don't want that and we turn off the dsk and we put back to the holding slate into where it's meant to be let's run the show as if we were starting it for real so what I'm going to do is I'm going to set our media player 1 on preview because that's our holding slate and let's now put that to program and I'll count down to when I hit the start show button and it should transition onto this page an able fake audio but it should also 2 seconds later bring on our website at the top so let's quickly cut those are holding slate and I'm going to hit the start show button in 3 2 1 there's a transition audios enabled and there is the dsk on with the website as so you can see it worked and we can go in and actually check the audio has been enabled there too so it's done everything we want and that is how you know what let's remove that DNS cakes we don't need that website there but that is how a macro can be so powerful that's just a quick one I've shown you throwing a few steps together in one button press for starting a show transitioning bringing up the audio and bringing on the DSK for a website bug as well but you can build extremely complex ones that work with all ranges of the ATM mini so I am sorry all ranges of the ATM line so if you have a higher version of like the for any for example that has super source you can start to create macros the place boxes or move boxes in different locations so it's a really powerful tool the macros that are built in but the fact that Blackmagic have also enabled it on the a-10 mini means that you can do some very complex stuff in something of such a small size so those are my five kind of top tips and I guess tricks that I've found of the a-10 mini so far some really useful ones in there I hope you agree if you want to know more let me know in the comments below if you've been using the a-10 mini because by the time you watch this I think it will start shipping so if you've got yours yet let me know in the comments have you found any sort of tricks and tips as well any other questions because in my last video I had a bunch of questions from you guys about can it do this can it work with vex I'm taking a look at all of those and we'll be answering those in my next video on the a-10 mini I plan to do kind of like a showing you how I use it out in the wild I've been using it on quite a few different locations and for quite a few different shoots and I'm gonna do a behind the scenes video of the setups and the things like that that I'm using this a-10 mini for so I can definitely answer some of your questions in there so if you have any questions I always try and get back to them in the comments but if I don't just know that I might use them in my next video and answer them then as well so if you've enjoyed this one I found it useful please do give it a thumbs up that really helps with the algorithms drop a comment and also more importantly if you want more on the a-10 mini hit the subscribe button because there are more videos to come thanks for watching guys

Channel: Alex Pettitt

Views: 117,763

Keywords: BlackMagic, BlackMagic ATEM, ATEM, ATEM Mini, BlackMagic Switcher, BlackMagic ATEM Mini, live streaming, live stream, vision mixer, capture card, ATEM Mixer, Production Switcher, broadcast kit, livestream, black magic atem mini, atem mini live, atem mini setup, atem mini audio, atem mini keyer, chroma key, chroma keying, green screen atem, atem mini green screen, multi cam, atem setup, atem mini mixer, atem mini tips, top tips, atem mini top tips, pocket cinema camera

Id: E2T8D9vt1jk

Length: 22min 18sec (1338 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 26 2019