I recently made a video about the
Blackmagic Camera app, which adds a ton of versatility to your iPhone's camera. And from what I can tell, the app
works on every iPhone from at least the XR and newer, which covers
quite a few years, so if you have an iPhone and you don't have the app,
you app-solutely should get the app. But one of the most magical things tucked
away in the Blackmagic app settings is the option to enable a clean HDMI output. Previously, if you used an HDMI adapter
with an iPhone, you see everything on the phone screen, which means if you're
using the camera app, you see all of the camera info and it's not a clean feed... it's a dirty feed. But with the Blackmagic app's clean
HDMI out, you can now get a clean output from the camera through the
app, but on the back of your phone, you can still control all of the settings
and functionality for the app itself. This means you can run your phone's
camera through the Blackmagic app into something like an HDMI capture card,
maybe a Cam Link or an ATEM Mini. In fact, this whole time, I've been
recording into Ecamm Live through my ATEM Mini, and with the press of a button, I
can switch over to my phone's camera right here, because this is an HDMI source. in my ATEM just like my Sony FX3 is. Now I am limited to 1080p through the
ATEM Mini, so this video is not in 4K, but that's a limitation of the
ATEM and not the phone or the app. And now what you might notice is
I switched between my main camera. And my phone is that the audio
is not perfectly in sync. It's Backstreet, it's not N'sync. Now I did a whole bunch of tests
using 23.98, true 24, 29.97- 30 frames per second in the camera. the ATEM, the phone app, and Ecamm. And I found that I got the
best results using 30 frames per second across all devices. If I go over to Ecamm and you see
the infinite screen here, I'm also using a five frame mic delay, and
that helps this camera to be in sync. But no matter what I did,
I couldn't get this camera. And this camera to be perfectly in sync. There's a little bit of latency
here, and I think that this has to do with the app itself, maybe
how things are being processed. So maybe this sort of processing
is something that Blackmagic could improve in a future update? I don't know if that's possible,
but dealing with the latency and the lag of the app to make it
more compatible with other HDMI sources would really be fantastic. So the big takeaway there is as
awesome as it is to use your phone as an HDMI source, it is definitely
not perfect for every workflow. This latency could be a problem if
you plan to mix phone footage in with regular "real" camera footage
for dialogue or talking scenes or something along those lines. If you're editing, it's not really
a big deal because you can re sync things, so right now, this is a little
bit out of sync, but through the magic of Final Cut Pro, I can make it
perfectly in sync, and then it sounds great, and I can go back over here,
and everything is also still in sync. But if you're not editing, or you don't
have the time, you're unable to edit, or the project you're doing is a live
stream where you can't edit or some other event or something where there's
no editing that's possible, then this latency could potentially cause issues. And something that's tricky about this is
even though I'm using that 5 frame delay in Ecamm Live, or I could set an output
delay in the ATEM itself, that applies to both of these sources at the same time. It applies to the entire ATEM,
whether that's through Ecamm or the ATEM or through OBS or whatever. I don't know of a way and I don't
think this is possible to do separate audio delays for each input on an ATEM. If I'm wrong about that, I would love
to be wrong about that, so please let me know if I'm wrong about that, but
for all the years I've been using ATEMs, that's not something that I've seen possible or something I
figured out how to do at least. Now all that being said if you're using
a setup that is all phone based you have multiple phones together as HDMI sources
This also won't be an issue because they'll all have the same latency the same
lag So when you add in your audio delay, everything will sync up the issue really
only arises when you're mixing a phone camera with a "real" dedicated camera. But even then, if you're not using your
phone for something that involves like lip syncing or musical instruments or
something, if you're using your phone for some sort of secondary angle or a
top down shot where it's actually not going to be that noticeable if things
are a couple of frames out of sync, then this really won't be an issue. So for example, If I take my phone
and now I place it up here, I'm using my Elgato Wave arm because
it has that height extension as an overhead shot for the phone. And then I can just run
the cable out of the way. And now I have this nifty top down shot. And even though it's not perfectly
in sync, for the most part, I don't really think that's going
to matter a lot of the times. If I'm showing you how to do something
or I'm building something here, you can still hear me and see what I'm
doing and it works out just fine. And right now I'm using the super wide
angle lens on this phone, but I can switch over to the telephoto lens, for
example, and now I don't even have to reframe the shot, I can just show you
a top down shot of whatever I'm using. So as far as I can tell, this latency
is the biggest hurdle at the moment when it comes to using your phone
as an HDMI source with an ATEM Mini. And there's also a pretty big difference
in image quality of course, even though my iPhone 14 Pro has great cameras,
my Sony FX3 with a Sony prime lens on it has significantly better image
quality, and a full frame sensor, than the phone does. This camera's image sensor is bigger
than the phone's entire camera array- like everything, just the sensor there. So it makes sensor then, that
this is going to look a little bit better than a phone. In fact, I recently did a whole video
that dives into real cameras versus phone cameras, and it's really fun because I go
back to like, 15 plus years of smartphone cameras versus dedicated cameras. So if you want to kind of go down this
image quality rabbit hole a little bit further, definitely check out that video. It's one of my favorite
videos I've ever made. But overall, I think it's really fun to be
able to use a phone or phones as part of a setup like this, whether they're the main
camera and this is how your whole thing is being done, or they're just a secondary
or tertiary angle that you're using, especially considering this Blackmagic app
that I'm talking about is totally free. So how does this all work? How do you actually get your phone's
HDMI output into an ATEM Mini? Because phones don't have
HDMI output ports natively. So you definitely need an
HDMI- I think Apple calls these an "Audio/Video Adapter." When it comes to Lightning to HDMI
adapters, there are so many options out there, but if you're going to be using
your phone regularly or in anything where the quality actually matters, I
strongly encourage you to go with the official adapter, which this is not. This is being used with the
official adapter right now. And it is more expensive, but it is
so much more reliable and just gives you a way better overall result. Because I originally bought
this $20 adapter from Amazon, and even though it is MFI, "Made
for iPhone" certified, so it should work in theory just the
same as the original adapter, it is significantly more unreliable,
and it doesn't kick in right away. Let's see if I can show you, actually. So I switch over to the phone,
and I unplug the regular adapter, connect this cheap adapter,
switch back to a blank screen, see what happens when I plug it in. (don't worry, the screen is
supposed to be blank here) Anything? Anything? Well, oh, there we go. We get this weird screen and then here I
am and what you might notice is now I'm not even taking up the full frame, so
in order to use this I have to zoom in on this input source either through the
ATEM or through Ecamm Live to take up the whole frame, but the bigger thing, I don't know if I can I can't show you
this without making you motion sickness, but the bigger thing I noticed is a lot
of time when I'm doing this, it will give me these weird video artifacts. It almost looks like video
interlacing where you can see like, lines coming in from the side. I don't know if I can, of course it's
not going to work, as I'm trying to show it, it's not going to happen, but it was a huge issue as I was testing
things out in addition to just not being ultra reliable to begin with. So I'm sure that there are some third
party adapters that work really well, but for example, here's the Apple one. I'll connect this to the HDMI
source, we'll go back to the phone, plug it in and there we go. It just shows up, there was
no weird screen with like a random QR code and info on it. And this is filling up the
frame 16 by 9 just perfectly. And even though these are just cheap
plastic dongles, the Apple one is actually built a bit better and it seems
like the connectors are higher quality. So in my opinion, it was worth
the extra dollars for that dongle. Extra DongleDollars™ over there. But a great thing about all these
adapters is they also have a Lightning port, which means you can connect your
phone to power while you're using it. So while you're streaming with
your phone, you don't have to worry about draining the battery. If you're doing something that's a really
long event or whatever, you never have to worry about your phone battery running
out because you can power it while you're also using it as a camera HDMI source. If you've got a newer iPhone or you
want to use this setup with an iPad that has a USB C output, Apple does make
a USB C to HDMI A/V adapter as well. I haven't used it with a USB C
iPhone myself though, but there's really no reason it shouldn't work
exactly the same as this one does. So I guess the last
question to ask is why? Why would you want to use your
phone as an HDMI source and go through this whole setup? Especially because, There are so many
other tools out there like NDI, where you can use your phone as a wireless source,
or Apple even allowing you to use your iPhone as a webcam natively through macOS. And to be honest, I think all of
those options are really great. This is just another tool. It's just adding another tool
to your toolkit that you can use when and if you need it. And I do think that it has some pretty
strong advantages because personally, I don't know if there's any science
behind this, but I just trust a wired connection more than a wireless one. So if I'm using my phone for something
over a long period of time, I definitely get nervous that a Wi Fi
connection is going to drop out or an NDI connection might drop out. But now when I'm hardwired in via HDMI,
I have a lot of confidence that this is going to be on and working when I need it. This setup also opens up the possibility
to use the iPhone with Windows computers because the ATEM Minis are Mac and PC
compatible, so it doesn't matter what HDMI source you connect to them, you'll
be able to use it with your computer. Or if you want to ditch the
computer altogether, you can stream directly from an ATEM Mini. So that means the phone, or phones,
or cameras, or combination can run directly into an ATEM, directly out
to a stream without the need for anything else if you wanted to do that. And a really cool thing is it's a great
way to put some older phones to use. If you have an old phone that's just
been sitting around in a drawer, now it can be a second or third angle
or something cool for a live stream. There's still a lot of life left in your
older devices, and now this is another cool way that you could use those. And again, that Blackmagic app is
totally free, so if you haven't checked it out yet, you should,
because it is totally awesome. And speaking of things that are
totally awesome, thank you to everyone who helps support my channel through
Patreon and YouTube Channel Memberships. The perks are the same between YouTube
and Patreon if you'd like to support the channel, and then you can get your name on
screen like these fine folks right here. And if you want to know more about
the Blackmagic Camera app, or creating with an ATEM Mini, check
out one of these super rad videos.
