An(other?) ATEM DVE Animation Generator

Animation Generator GUI

ATEM-DVE-Animation-Generator.png (109.99 KiB) Viewed 4501 times

What is it?
It's a two-keyframe animation tool for ATEM Mini series switchers. It animates (DVE) keyers or Supersource boxes. The animations themselves run on the switcher through macro's that the tool exports.
I created this in the past 10 days. It took that much time because I set myself a few interesting challenges:

• Should have no dependencies or third party code, so it's entirely frameworkless
• Should not rely on external content (on other words: makes no HTTP calls, ever, in other words, runs perfectly on a local machine disconnected from the interwebs)
• Should come in one self-contained HTML file with inline CSS and JavaScript

Requirements: only a modern web browser (Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Edge).

People will probably comment that tools like this exist. I have only found a British guy that runs easing animations through the ATEM API through an Arduino (ouch!), and I looked a few seconds at a YouTube video from someone who animated Supersource boxes. But those were linear animations, so I stopped watching after three seconds. Linear animations are in the ATEM, they hurt my eyes. Besides, using something that already exists, where's the fun in that?

There's still a lot to improve and test, but have a go at it:

https://pimz.com/ATEM/ATEM-DVE-Animation-generator.html

Yeah, that runs online. You can just save the file (choose "Save as..." in your web browser) for offline use and it will work.

device_animate.png (3.78 KiB) Viewed 4501 times

Every "device" and "animate" combo has its own set of animation presets.

animation_presets.png (8.27 KiB) Viewed 4501 times

You can create your own presets, delete the defaults, etc. Keep in mind that loading a preset (shortcut: doubleclick its name in the list) will overwrite what you currently have on stage. The default presets were created for 30fps, so they run too fast for 60fps, but you could double the number of frames in the animation properties.

Will continue in following message, because three attachments is the max...

animation_properties.png (13.69 KiB) Viewed 4388 times

"Animation properties" is a mini-spreadsheet where the values of the seven properties that can be animated are listed, in their "from" and "to" keyframes. In addition, there's the option to define the number of frames in which this has to happen, and a delay (in frames).
When you click in a cell in the "from" or "to" column, and there is a deviation in their values, the curve-editor will become active:

curve_presets.png (10.06 KiB) Viewed 4388 times

It's just a cubic Bezier curve with two handles, which is quite limiting in terms of complex animations. I've created a far more advanced curve editor for a different project in the past (written in Cocoa, for macOS), and that might have been nice here too. But then I thought: "it's just some boxes that need to move on screen", and I stuck with this. If you're in dire need for more complex animation, then let me know and I'll look into adding a more advanced curve editor.

download.png (4.08 KiB) Viewed 4388 times

And then, when you're happy with the animation you've created, it's time to download it as an ATEM macro file. Just type in a name and an index (it's 1-based, so index 1 is the first macro on the macro pane in ATEM Software control or the "1" macro button on the Extreme). Your web browser will probably bark at you because of security concerns downloading an XML file, but you can train it to keep quiet.

In general, it takes me less than 4 seconds to download an animation from the editor and have it uploaded ("restored") to one of our ATEMs through ATEM Software Control.

So yeah, this is my take on how DVE keyframe animations on these switchers should look like. Keyframe animation should definitely not work like the "A/B keyframe" on the machines themselves. Although I'm well aware that that option has a great advantage over macro-driven animations: the values get calculated in real time, so you can change the animation while it's running halfway and things will still end well.

As I've written earlier, I'm impressed with what the ATEM Mini's can do, hardware-wise, but in my opinion there's a lot of room for improvement in the software (either ATEM Software Control or in the machines themselves).

Use it to your advantage, or tell me it's useless, and (hopefully) convince me to improve it...

Nice work .. How about support for nonMINI ATEMs ?

How about support for nonMINI ATEMs ?

I've been thinking about that. There will be a few issues I'd have to solve, which I think are not really difficult:

• I'd need to know the exact name of the device how it gets written in the macro files
• I'd need to know the number of "mixEffectBlocks" for the "mixEffectBlockIndex" for that device, and you'd have to be able to choose this.
• I'd need to know the number of keyers for each mixEffectBlock
• I'd need to know the number of Supersources in the device

Can I find this easily somewhere?

But you can already just import a macro that this "app" generates, and you'll just get a warning that the macro was for a different device. But it will always be for mixEffectBlock 0, because the ATEM Mini's don't have more of these.

Wow, nicely done Karel.

I have to admit, when I first read your post I didn't quite understand the functionality. But when I loaded the tool and began playing around with it, I got it immediately. Your UI is very intuitive.

Thanks for doing this!

Wow, nicely done Karel.

Thanks Jeff! You sort of challenged me to create this in the thread about the keyers limitation (turned out to be a DVE limitation)

I have to admit, when I first read your post I didn't quite understand the functionality.

Yeah, it's not that straightforward to explain, even to people who know their ATEM stuff. I tried to explain to my girlfriend what I'd been up to for the past 10 days, but I gave up. "Moving some boxes around on screen, nicely"...

BTW, had a brief look at MixEffect you pointed me to. I haven't found the time to run it on my iPad yet, but from the App Store screenshots it indeed seems like a nice piece of work. Interestingly, the developer came to a couple of the exact same conclusions I did: "you need Supersource presets" and "all four Supersource boxes need a different colour in the UI". Will check it out, hopefully tomorrow.

Nice work .. How about support for nonMINI ATEMs ?

+1

How about support for nonMINI ATEMs ?

As I wrote earlier: I'd need to know the names for those devices to get them right into the generated macros. But for v0.2 I just scanned for the names for all supported devices in the macOS "ATEM Software Control" binary blob, because obviously, the software itself will have to know the supported device names, and the strings didn't seem to be mangled (why would they be?).

I ended up with:

• ATEM Mini
• ATEM Mini Pro
• ATEM Mini Pro ISO
• ATEM Mini Extreme
• ATEM Mini Extreme ISO
• ATEM Television Studio
• ATEM 1 M/E Production Switcher
• ATEM 2 M/E Production Switcher
• ATEM Production Studio 4K
• ATEM 1 M/E Production Studio 4K
• ATEM 2 M/E Production Studio 4K
• ATEM 2 M/E Broadcast Studio 4K
• ATEM 4 M/E Broadcast Studio 4K
• ATEM Television Studio HD
• ATEM Television Studio Pro HD
• ATEM Television Studio Pro 4K
• ATEM Constellation 8K

After thinking some more about the remark from Roman in another thread ("But U have SuperSource too , with 4 DVEs (totaly 6 DVEs)"), I figured it might be fun to just mix and match the boxes from both the keyers and the Supersource (when present). I can now effectively animate 2 keyers and 4 boxes simultaneously on a Mini Extreme:

sixboxes.gif (38.64 KiB) Viewed 3937 times

Obviously, the keyers will be on top, and the Supersource has to be on air.
Note the "Switcher" dropdown menu at the top. This is for 2 M/E and 4 M/E ATEMs. Basically, you can create animations and save presets on each M/E individually. They're being remembered/saved at the M/E level.

Neat new feature: set the input for your boxes and save this in the generated macro:

setsource.gif (21.78 KiB) Viewed 3937 times

It's a bit hidden away, below the animation curve presets.

NOTE: I quickly glanced over the specs from most of the ATEMs on the BMD website to find the number of keyers, cameras, color generators, etc. But the list I created will probably not be accurate/complete (some of the supported devices aren't listed on the BMD website anymore). If your ATEM seems to be missing features, then just post the right numbers here, like this:

Code: Select all

production_st4k: {
   name: 'ATEM Production Studio 4K',
   switchers: 1,
   keyers: 1,
   supersource: 0,
   cameras: 8,
   mediaplayers: 2,
   colors: 2
   },


But note that the software only supports one Supersource (index 0) for now (as far as I can tell, only the Constellation has 2 Supersources).

Check it out and let me know if you can use it: https://pimz.com/ATEM

Good Job

Hey,

could you update the tool for the new Constellation HD 2M/E and 4 M/E?

could you update the tool for the new Constellation HD 2M/E and 4 M/E?

Just got PM'd with this question, I'm not getting any notifications from this thread anymore (not sure why).

If you want your switcher supported, just post the data I'm requesting a few posts back.

If you want your switcher supported, just post the data I'm requesting a few posts back.

hopefully my 2ME Constellation will arrive soon and I can post the info you need. thanks for checking in.

Don't see any supersource for the ATEM 2 M/E Production studio. Not supported?

Best,

David

Info for 2ME Constellation:

name: ATEM 2 M/E Constellation HD
switchers: 2
keyers: 8
supersource: 1
cameras: 20
mediaplayers: 2
colors: 2

Let me know if I missed anything.

Still no support for the 2ME 4K? I don't see supersource as an option.

Thanks,

David

ATEM-DVE-Animation-Generator.png

What is it?
It's a two-keyframe animation tool for ATEM Mini series switchers. It animates (DVE) keyers or Supersource boxes. The animations themselves run on the switcher through macro's that the tool exports.
I created this in the past 10 days. It took that much time because I set myself a few interesting challenges:

• Should have no dependencies or third party code, so it's entirely frameworkless
• Should not rely on external content (on other words: makes no HTTP calls, ever, in other words, runs perfectly on a local machine disconnected from the interwebs)
• Should come in one self-contained HTML file with inline CSS and JavaScript

Requirements: only a modern web browser (Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Edge).

People will probably comment that tools like this exist. I have only found a British guy that runs easing animations through the ATEM API through an Arduino (ouch!), and I looked a few seconds at a YouTube video from someone who animated Supersource boxes. But those were linear animations, so I stopped watching after three seconds. Linear animations are in the ATEM, they hurt my eyes. Besides, using something that already exists, where's the fun in that?

There's still a lot to improve and test, but have a go at it:

https://pimz.com/ATEM/ATEM-DVE-Animation-generator.html

Yeah, that runs online. You can just save the file (choose "Save as..." in your web browser) for offline use and it will work.

device_animate.png

Every "device" and "animate" combo has its own set of animation presets.

animation_presets.png

You can create your own presets, delete the defaults, etc. Keep in mind that loading a preset (shortcut: doubleclick its name in the list) will overwrite what you currently have on stage. The default presets were created for 30fps, so they run too fast for 60fps, but you could double the number of frames in the animation properties.

Will continue in following message, because three attachments is the max...

Thanks for building this!

I had just bought MixEffect and was disappointed with the jerky animations it produces.

I also tried H2R Layouts, and it just doesn't do what I wanted.

It works great for my purposes.

Also still using it and its working great.

Maybe someone has some time to add the new ATEM (Constellation HD) models?

After downloading the website as a .html file, I've found out that not only is this super useful tool free to use, but is basically open source too. Doing that, I was able to add (with info from BMD forums) the support to the new ATEM 1 and 2 M/E Constellation switchers. Enjoy! (download link through Google Drive, because BMD forums don't allow uploading of .html files)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Pr7DhC ... sp=sharing

I have also tried adding support for the 4 M/E HD and 4k, but the code can't handle anything above 8 keyers and 1 super source layer (it just isn't built for that). I just hope that OP will find some spare time and add this in the future, but of course, it isn't his obligation.

I would also like to express my gratitude to the OP and his creation which adds incredible value to my productions.

thanks for making that update.

I've recently been in contact with the original developer of this tool (he is also from The Netherlands) and offered him to take over the project or/and help with it. He hasn't been working on it as it mostly a proof of concept for him but I think it's a very helpful tool.

He said that he was going to make it available on GitHub and would like people to submit issues for bugfixes, changes and feature requests. I offered to help out and submit pull requests where I can.

I will ping him again and see how far he has got with that.

Good initiative, Marco. Thank you for keeping us informed.

Hey guys, sorry for being absent this long. The generator was a "proof of concept" that looked and worked actually better than expected. But the reality is that video production is only a tiny fraction of my daily job.

Things were "better" during COVID-19 as we did way more livestreams then, to only a few per year now. So this project didn't get much attention from me anymore. Marco has contacted me, and asked me to open-source it. Here goes:

https://github.com/zmip/ATEM-Animation-Generator

For people who want to add support for more switchers, that's actually pretty easy. Check out "devices.js" in the "src" directory. Use a distinctive name, add the correct parameters. I think the presets are automatically created from interpreting the values in the device parameters (number of keyers, supersource, etc.). Not 100% sure about that. I'm also not entirely sure what "defaults_generator.js" does, as it seems commented out. I left it in the repo, just in case.

To be honest, I wasn't entirely happy with the output from the tool. I needed to tweak some stuff in the generated macro's to avoid flashing of sources etc. There's definitely a lot of room for improvement. Fortunately, that's up to the community now