How to Mark Good & Bad Takes on ATEM Mini Pro ISO

Hi,

I'm hoping for some advice and wisdom, please.

How do you suggest we mark good and bad takes to help the video editors not waste time on watching through the whole recording session? It should somehow be indicated what the good (and bad) takes were.

We're recording educational lessons, in an on-campus studio, on an ATEM Mini Pro ISO (to external SSD).

This is not a live streaming set-up, but instead it's for post-production relying on the ATEM recorded DaVinci project and ISO media.

Camera 1: Front of tutor behind desk (green screen background)
Camera 2: Top-down of desk (to show hand and lesson activity)
Camera 3: HDMI feed from iPad or laptop

We have two scenarios:

(1) A recordist is present to check cameras, sound levels, make notes, etc.
(2) No recordist, tutor only. The studio is already set up, the tutor hits the Record button on the ATEM, and proceeds with their presentation.

At the moment we're wasting quite some time in edit, wading through bad takes.

Thanks in advance!

Paul,
We also record educational content and it looks like we use the ATEM in a similar way.
We created a macro that brings up either a solid color or a graphic from the media pool for the editor to easily spot where a take ends/begins. We usually go for the last take.

Now, if we do 3 takes and the 2nd take is the best one, we need to communicate that to the editor.

However, you could have graphics in your media pools stating which take was the good one (ie "Use Take 2") that you would pull up at the end of your recording.

Hopefully this gives you some ideas,

We set the recording timestamp to time-of-day, and take notes/have the presenter take notes about their takes.

Thanks for the suggestions!

We also do record time-of-day, and thought of taking notes this way. However, we're hoping not to overwhelm our tutors with complicated tasks while already burdened with presenting their lesson well.

Even with an ATEM operator present, it takes particular discipline to keep detailed notes while monitoring sound, do the vision mix, etc.

Using Macros is interesting -- thanks! Don't the thumbnails of those graphics screens sometimes get lost to the editor when the timeline is zoomed out?

I went to research ATEM Macros. I wish macros could be remotely triggered, with a marker at the current time being inserted onto the ISO Resolve project timeline. I'd then have 2 large physical buttons on the presenter's desk. Hitting the Red button places a timeline marker labeled "BAD" and pressing green creates a marker labeled "GOOD". This would be easy (and fun) for the presenters and super easy for our editors.

We also thought of triggering an audio generator via two such big buttons so that different tone patterns get recorded on the soundtrack and are therefore visible to the editor (as being the tail-end of GOOD and BAD takes).

Our ATEM is on a different desk. We're hoping not to place the ATEM on the presenter's desk for our tutors to operate.

We also have other ideas . . .

I wish macros could be remotely triggered,

They can; there is an SDK available here: https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/developer/product/atem

with a marker at the current time being inserted onto the ISO Resolve project timeline

This one I'm not so sure of though.

They can; there is an SDK available here: https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/developer/product/atem

Great, thanks!

Using Macros is interesting -- thanks! Don't the thumbnails of those graphics screens sometimes get lost to the editor when the timeline is zoomed out?

We haven't run into that issue. We ask them to have the graphic up for 5 seconds and to keep recordings to around 7 minutes.
Alternatively, if you use premiere, you could "detect" those moments with "automatic scene detection".

I went to research ATEM Macros. I wish macros could be remotely triggered, with a marker at the current time being inserted onto the ISO Resolve project timeline. I'd then have 2 large physical buttons on the presenter's desk. Hitting the Red button places a timeline marker labeled "BAD" and pressing green creates a marker labeled "GOOD". This would be easy (and fun) for the presenters and super easy for our editors.

We have faculty triggering macros using the Elgato streamdeck buttons from a "remote" location within the same network.
The streamdeck has nice buttons and they're customizable.

Thanks for sharing your experience, Martin.

The Stream Deck looks like a really good solution which I was unaware of. Saves us from developing our own buttons

Thanks again for the StreamDeck advice!

We have our 6-button Elgato StreamDeck Mini up and running. It's an excellent accessory for the ATEM Mini Pro, for sure.

We have it connected via USB extension through a USB hub to a MacBook Air M1. With the help of the Bitfocus Companion software we do the following:

• Start and Stop recording (also shows hours and minutes for the current recording)
• switch to Front Face camera
• switch to Top Down camera
• switch to iPad
• mark a Bad Take
• mark a Good Take