Can I connect the ATEM Mini to a iMac (Late 2015)?.

Hello,

I'm trying to connect a ATEM Mini to a iMac (Late 2015). Only available ports on the iMac are two Thunderbolt 2 and one USB 3 (ATEM Mini only has HDMI out and USB C out)

I tried using the HDMI out from the ATEM mini to Thunderbolt 2 on the iMac using a HDMI to mini DisplayPort adapter but it didn't work. USB C(ATEM Mini) to USB 3(iMac) did work but video seems darker and I'm worried video and audio quality will decrease during our live streaming.
We are currently using a BM UltraStudio Mini (HDMI/SDI to Thunderbolt 2 version) to connect a Canon video camera to our iMac and we use Wirecast to stream to YouTube and Facebook. We purchased the ATEM Mini because we want to be able to connect two more cameras (3 video cameras total).

What would be the best way to connect the ATEM Mini to the iMac (which only has Thunderbolt 2 and USB 3 ports) without losing video or audio quality? Is the USB 3 port capable of handling 1080p30fps video and audio coming from the cameras?

Thank you for your time!

The USB-C webcam output from the ATEM Mini into the USB port on the Mac is the easiest way to get video from the ATEM Mini into the computer. The USB output supports resolutions up to 1080p60 and uses MJPEG compression such that it fits within the bandwidth of a USB 2.0 port.

A second option would be to take the HDMI program output from the ATEM Mini and send it into the UltraStudio Mini Recorder connected to one of the Thunderbolt 2 ports. In theory the video quality of the video capture of the UltraStudio Mini Recorder might be slightly better since it supports uncompressed capture, although it only supports video resolutions up to 1080p30.

Having said that, if you are going to compress the video input to the computer for internet delivery anyway, there may not be much of a difference in the quality of the resulting video by the time it is compressed to streaming bitrates.