First experience recording with Atem MP Iso nIghtmare

I tried my first very basic capture with the Atem Mini Pro Iso. I had a single BMPCC4K connected to the AMPI, with Samsung T5s connected to both. This was a very simple classical music session with quick turnaround deadline of this evening for file delivery. Even though this was only a single camera capture, I thought that using the AMPI as a remote recording devide for the BMPCC4K would be a nice workflow improvement.

I had a bunch of problems at first with the ATEM suddenly not connecting via ethernet to the computer running ATEM control, but eventually I got it going and it seemed like everything ran without a hitch. I have no idea why the connection issues were happening, but whatever.

I'm running Resolve 17.1 Beta on a new Mac Mini M1. I connected the ATEM's T5 drive with the isos and Resolve session to the computer and everything opened fine. As soon as I tried to do anything with the resolve timeline, all of the files suddenly went "offline." No relinking functions worked. I tried going in the isos folder, same thing. All media "offline" even though the drive is there and present. I tried restarting the machine, restarting resolve, etc. Nothing worked. I tried moving the files to a different drive and got a -50 error in finder... hmmm.

I tried mounting the BMPCC 4K's T5 to see if I could just work with the BRAW files from the camera. However, I was unable to get any of those files into the Resolve Media Pool. Clicking and dragging from a finder window into the MP window resulted in nothing happening. Similarly if I tried to go through the "import" dialogue. Nothing worked, although I wasn't getting any errors or anything. Just nothing. So, scratch that idea.

I then moved the ATEM T5 over to my Pro Tools system running on a 5,1 Mac Pro. As I mentioned, I need to get the videos in question online tonight for a client's deadline, so I figured I could at the very least sync up the correct mixes with the relevant video files in Pro Tools so that I at least had something. However, Pro Tools threw up a Quicktime error message every time I tried to import the video files. I was finally able to get them to import by transcoding them with Handbrake. After doing that, the new files imported fine into Pro Tools, and I was able to sync and export new files with correct audio. Already, what I'd hoped would be a 5-10 minute process of sync'ing and outputting two short videos had now taken up over an hour.

I wanted to put simple fades from / to black on each of the two videos, so I tried to bring the two exported videos back over to my Mini M1 to do that simple task in Resolve. When I looked at the T5 drive on the Mini, the folder which I created for those new exports was there but appeared to be empty. Again, Hmmm. I moved the T5 over to my old 2015 Mac Pro which is running a free version of resolve and was able to access and import the files without problem.

Finally now done and delivered, but what an absolute PITA. Is it possible that all of this is down to Big Sur file system issues? I've been having all kinds of problems with the T5 drives not copying correctly or at all if they were formatted on the BMPCC4K or another mac, but I can't format them on the Mini without getting errors / failures. Is anyone else having this much trouble doing what should be just about the most basic thing one could do with this setup? Feeling pretty discouraged right now...

What file format is this device recording?

Which codec were you recording in and which Beta version of 17.1?

I'm running 17.1B. The files generated by the ATEM are MPEG-4. I actually don't see any preferences in ATEM control where you can adjust that. Streaming quality is set to Streaming High, and I was operating at 1080p24. Is there a preferences menu somewhere that I'm missing where codec can be selected?

I'm also having lots of issues with the software control losing connection with the ATEM. Seems like the only solution is powering down both the computer and ATEM, powering the ATEM up, then booting the computer and re-connecting. Is that normal?

I also just tried opening a different test project I recorded a couple of days ago but hadn't had a chance to check in resolve yet. I open the reslolve project that the ATEM generated and see the opening frame of the program capture while transport is stopped. When I hit play, it immediately switches to "Media Offline" and then kind of flashes intermittently between stray frames of video and "Media Offline". Even looking at the timeline, it looks like a mix of preview frames and "Offline" icons.

EDIT: I just updated DR to the latest Beta 7.1.10 and tried opening the project again. Now it just shows all files as offline. Interestingly, when I try to relink and navigate to the folders where the files are located, they show as empty. This seems like it's at least in part an issue with the T5s not working correctly in OS 11. I tried updating the T5 software (firmware?) to the latest Big Sur-compatible version, but it hasn't changed anything.

If I try to preview the program MPEG-4 in quicktime, I get an error message saying that the "document could not be opened; the file isn't compatible with quicktime player." And suddenly the Video ISO Files folder in the project folder appears to be empty even though those files showed up a minute ago and also show up if I mount the drive on a mac running Mojave.

Ok, this is weird. I just opened one of the Resolve projects created by the Atem on an older mac running Resolve 17 under Mojave using one of the T5s in question. However, this was not the T5 that I originally had connected to the ATEM but a different one to which I'd copied those files after the fact. On the old Mac, everything worked fine with this drive.

However, when I mount the original Atem T5 to this same computer, I get the same files offline messages as I had gotten on the Mini M1. I then reformatted that "Atem drive" (tried APFS this time) on this older mac, and I re-copied the files over from the drive that had previously worked. Trying to open the project on the newly-reformatted drive yields the same results: all files show as offline and trying to relink leads me to a folder full of iso files that are all greyed out and can't be selected.

Meanwhile, I took the T5 that was working correctly with Resolve on the old Mac and tried to mount it on the Mini, and I got a "Drive is unreadable" message from the Mac.

The one thing that has worked so far is that I just tried copying the Resolve project over to a basic WD Passport drive and mounting that to the Mini. Works fine! So, perhaps it's just down to the T5s being a mess with Big Sur? If that's the case, then apparently any time I want to work with the BRAW files from the Pocket 4Ks (which are recording to T5s) then I'll have to move everything over to a conventional drive before doing any work.