FEATURE REQUEST: Remotely trigger REC from ATEM

As I have seen the ATEM Mini Pro presentation recently, is this feature also coming to ATEM Studio Pro HD/4K to remotly trigger REC on URSA Mini Pro cameras with synced time-code? In that case I would also like to have EDL/XML based on ATEM camera selection to complete the workflow of Multi Camera studio workflow where rough cuts can be made live, while to finish the episode in post BMRAW/ProRes files from the cameras can be used to fix the mistakes and color grade in Resolve.

Hopefully this can be implemented in on ATEM Studio Pro too with the help of software upgrade. Of-course there will be no hardware button but it is fine to have software feature only.

This is a good question, not sure it would be possible with a firmware only update. You can make a feature request direct to BMD Support. I do not think the Ursa Mini Pro is hardware can be remotely triggered into Rec Start/Stop via the return SDI, or this would be currently available on the ATEM CCU. That said, if BMD is working in this type of an upgrade, they are not going to announce this until it is ready to release.
Cheers

I do not think the Ursa Mini Pro is hardware can be remotely triggered into Rec Start/Stop via the return SDI, or this would be currently available on the ATEM CCU.

Interesting... would be nice if someone from BMD can confirm, if there is hardware limitation on USRA mini Pro side or ATEM TV Studio Pro side? Or SDI Return can not handle this kind of data?

I don't think it's a limitation at all, just that the function doesn't exist within the GUI.

Kim Janson lays out a sample script here...

https://github.com/LeViteZer-Oy/LeViteZ ... -Recording

The protocols to activate camera recording are listed in the Pocket manual on page 155.


Good Luck

Good point Howard, not being a UM Pro user, I did not realize their was a protocol for this. Hiwever, the question remains if the camera can be triggered by this?
Cheers

I would imagine there would need to be some new type of extra hardware in-between mainly because the ATEM Mini's do not support SDI and I would imagine that HDMI and SDI manage the ancillary data in different ways due to the difference in standards.

The Blackmagic SDI Camera Control protocol already includes commands for starting and stopping recording. The protocol also includes commands for changing the recording format, codec, sending timecode information, etc. It's fairly extensive:
https://documents.blackmagicdesign.com/ ... ontrol.pdf

The Bluetooth version of the Camera Control protocol uses the same commands and format, just sent over Bluetooth rather than an SDI return feed. The URSA Mini Pro responds to both the Bluetooth and SDI Camera Control commands, but since the Pocket Cinema Camera 4K and 6K lack an SDI return port, they only responded to the Bluetooth version of the protocol initially.

If I had to guess, I would expect that the HDMI camera control signals from the ATEM Mini also use the same Camera Control commands, but embedded in the HDMI signal somehow. How this is done exactly is a little unclear, since it's not possible to embed the commands in the video blanking interval like is done for SDI, because the video signal in the HDMI case is coming from the camera rather than the switcher. There are a few features in certain versions of the HDMI protocol that allow for communication from a sink device (the ATEM in this case) back to a source device (the camera). These include:

• HDMI Consumer Electronics Control (CEC) since HDMI 1.0
• HDMI Ethernet Channel (HEC) since HDMI 1.4
• HDMI Audio Return Channel (ARC) since HDMI 1.4

I'm not sure which of these HDMI features is being used for the camera control commands (or if it's something else entirely), but I would guess that once the commands are extracted from the HDMI signal, the command format is largely the same as the existing Bluetooth/SDI protocol, making it easier for the camera to process control commands independent of their source.

Given this information, it certainly seems possible to embed a record trigger on the SDI outputs from the SDI-based ATEM models. There's just no option to trigger recording now from the ATEM Software Control panel for these ATEM models since they don't have internal recording like the ATEM Mini Pro. But I don't see an obvious technical reason preventing this from being added via a software update.

Is there any reason a macro wouldn’t work?