2-Box using Blackmagic Design ATEM Television Studio Pro 4K

Hi All,

I'm trying to figure out if it's possible to have a 2-box using the Blackmagic Design ATEM Television Studio Pro 4K Live Production Switcher? This switcher only has 1 M/E and 1 upstream keyer. I understand I can use picture-in-picture using the upstream keyer, but that's not exactly what I want.

Here's what I'm trying to do: I have two cameras with a person shown centered on each one. When I would switch to the 2-box, I would want to show both people centered on the left and right halves of the screen. I hope that makes sense. Is this possible using this version of the ATEM switcher?

Here's a picture as an example:


I'm not sure if it's possible or not, but I figured I would ask you guys for help.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

- M

Someone with better knowledge might be able to tell different story.
But AFAIK, you can't (I would love to know if it can be done as I was looking to do the same).
You need something BMD calls SuperSource.
Only ATEM 2 M/E PS 4K or better has the feature.

During Aaron P ' s Q & A yesterday. (Sunday, available on youtube), He showed how to doing it with a ATEM mini with an ATEM Pro .

During Aaron P ' s Q & A yesterday. (Sunday, available on youtube), He showed how to doing it with a ATEM mini with an ATEM Pro .

I just watched the video.
Yes, you can do it if you have another ATEM.
Since you can buy an ATEM Mini for $300, it's much cheaper option than 2 M/E.

Yes, there are workarounds in production. However, there is also something called feature creep. Yes, you can kludge it for a 2up. What happens when they ask for a 3 up? Buy another mini, add some DAs. Lose your hair trying to keep track of which machine is doing which function? Oh, you want to do a graphic in there too. Oh, the crop is different, crap. How do I adjust it quickly? With a 2/4ME and supersource, you can animate these boxes for a very slick effect. With the kludge, you're limited to cuts only, a bunch of DAs, extra cables and prayers that you don't punch the wrong bus.

It's annoying that it's not a straight upgrade path where you pay more to get more capabilities however. None of the other ATEMs (or other Blackmagic products) have the streaming capabilities of the Minis, the ability to control and trigger recordings on the Pocket Cinema cameras, create synchronized ISO recordings of multiple sources, auto-generate Davinci projects, etc.

It's annoying that it's not a straight upgrade path where you pay more to get more capabilities however. None of the other ATEMs (or other Blackmagic products) have the streaming capabilities of the Minis, the ability to control and trigger recordings on the Pocket Cinema cameras, create synchronized ISO recordings of multiple sources, auto-generate Davinci projects, etc.

In a larger environment where you're spending more money on a big switcher, you are likely also going to have a separate encoder, separate disk recorders, and so on. It's convenient to have everything in one package, but it also makes it hard to stop using it - the TriCaster effect.

I was careful to point out there's no separate Blackmagic product that provides the type of streaming capability that the ATEM Minis have, so I wasn't just talking about features built into the switcher.

At least for streaming there are 3rd-party products available. For all the other features I mentioned I don't believe there's even a 3rd party solution let alone a separate Blackmagic product that provides the same functionality.

By "functionality" I guess I don't just mean that you could theoretically produce the same result but I also include the amount of effort it takes. Sure you can buy a separate HyperDeck for every source but you still can't push one button and trigger a recording of all the ISO sources in a single folder along with RAW recordings on all the cameras and an automatically generated Davinci project with all the real-time edits and links to all the media and whatnot.

I actually had the fancy setup at one point with all the separate gear to try and do what the ATEM Mini ISO can do out of the box but it still couldn't match the features and was so complex and painful to use that I basically never used it for what it was intended for because it was too much effort.