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Instant Replay, ATEM Television Studio, and MMA

PostPosted: Sat Oct 12, 2013 11:26 pm
by Carmen Mallard
I am looking at purchasing VidBlaster and an ATEM Television Studio because I need to do Multi Camera AND Instant Replay for MMA fights. I stream Live to GoFightLive.TV as well as send a feed to the projectors in the arena.

I will be controlling the ATEM Television Studio with a MacBook Pro, and sending the feed from the Studio to another MacBook Pro through a Blackmagic Intensity to VidBlaster.

Will the video feed from the ATEM need to come from the HDMI connection on the ATEM Television Studio, or from the MacBook that controls the ATEM?

Also, am I being redundant in purchasing VidBlaster since the ATEM Television Studio has most of the capability that VidBlaster does. My real need for this fight promotion to go to the next level is Instant Replay.

By the way, I know that VidBlaster is a PC product, I'm running Windows using Parallels on a Mac.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. The fight is October 26.

Carmen

Re: Instant Replay, ATEM Television Studio, and MMA

PostPosted: Sun Oct 13, 2013 12:37 am
by Scott Ryan
What type of hardware are you using to get your feeds into VidBlaster? I would be most worried about Parallels not playing well with that hardware. Seems like you would get much better performance if you just ran Windows through bootcamp. That said, I've never used VidBlaster. Replay is going to be very heavy on disk write speed especially for HD. A 7200 rpm might cut it, but a SSD would be much safer. Otherwise you might have dropped frames.

We were recently requested by a client to look into replay and we decided on renting a NewTek 3Play system, which is basically made for replay. It's not cheap to buy, but to rent it's reasonable and the client is footing the bill for it.

Re: Instant Replay, ATEM Television Studio, and MMA

PostPosted: Sun Oct 13, 2013 12:55 am
by Carmen Mallard
So far I have just used a Canopus ADVC Converter that connects via Firewire to the MacBook to send a couple of SD signals into VidBlaster. It only locked up twice. I think it was because VidBlaster was sending a temp file to the C: root partition that Parallels software creates. I changed the location of the temp file and everything worked fine.

My intention is to use the BlackMagic Intensity Extreme. It works well with Wirecast, but I didn't consider that it might have an issue with VidBlaster. It runs through the Thunderbolt Port on the Mac. If the ATEM has a Thunderbolt connection, that would eliminate the need for my Blackmagic Intensity Extreme.

I'll test the Intensity Extreme and let you know if it works. I looked at the NewTek system. Thanks for the information.

Carmen

Re: Instant Replay, ATEM Television Studio, and MMA

PostPosted: Sun Oct 13, 2013 4:42 am
by Scott Ryan
ATEM Television Studio does not have a Thunderbolt connection. It has a USB 2.0 connection that sends a compressed H.264 program out stream mainly used for webcast.

The 1 M/E and 2 M/E have a USB 3.0 connection that can send and uncompressed stream from whatever you assign to your aux 1 output. I believe this only works with Windows right now using BMD Media Express.

In general it seems like all the Thunderbolt products from BlackMagic seem to be made for Mac. Might be wrong about that though. Then all the USB 3.0 products are for Windows. They recently came out with beta USB 3.0 drivers for Mac, but again they are beta. There are PCs with Thunderbolt though, but it seems like there are more PCs with USB 3.0. I don't see much on the VidBlaster site about Thunderbolt devices so it might be something to ask on their forums.

http://wiki.vidblaster.com/index.php/Blackmagic_devices

http://wiki.vidblaster.com/index.php/Choosing_Hardware

To eliminate driver problems I would run Windows in bootcamp and get a USB 3.0 device like the Intensity Shuttle USB 3.0.

Re: Instant Replay, ATEM Television Studio, and MMA

PostPosted: Sun Oct 13, 2013 5:32 am
by Liam Kennedy
The ATEM 1ME & 2ME's USB3 port output shows up as a regular directshow/wdm driver under windows and can therefore be used in pretty much any software that supports regular BMD capture devices. I used mine with Wirecast and FMLE.

Re: Instant Replay, ATEM Television Studio, and MMA

PostPosted: Sun Oct 13, 2013 6:46 am
by Tanner Schelle
I do the same thing for MMA. I stream to YouTube and use an Intensity extreme to record each fight to Media Express then re route it to an input of my 1 M/E. I also use a fight clock this way but with a chroma key.

Re: Instant Replay, ATEM Television Studio, and MMA

PostPosted: Sun Oct 13, 2013 11:32 am
by Thomas Seewald
Vidblaster has a instant-replay function and some people does it using CasparCG

Re: Instant Replay, ATEM Television Studio, and MMA

PostPosted: Mon Oct 14, 2013 3:52 am
by Kane Peterson
If you are trying to take it to the 'next level' with instant replay, I wouldn't look at a product that 'also does instant' replay as just a side feature, I would look at a project that is designed only for doing instant replay. There is a reason that these products exist.

If you haven't take a look at one, check out 3PLAY. Probably the best instant replay/slow motion solution for its price. There are other dedicated solutions as well.

Re: Instant Replay, ATEM Television Studio, and MMA

PostPosted: Mon Oct 14, 2013 6:47 am
by Scott Ryan
Trib wrote:If you are trying to take it to the 'next level' with instant replay, I wouldn't look at a product that 'also does instant' replay as just a side feature, I would look at a project that is designed only for doing instant replay. There is a reason that these products exist.

If you haven't take a look at one, check out 3PLAY. Probably the best instant replay/slow motion solution for its price. There are other dedicated solutions as well.

Agree 100%. I don't have much experience with replay, but it seems like if it's not done right you can make it really hard on yourself. Sure there's half assed ways to make it work, but to make it look right you need a dedicated solution. If you watch videos of the 3Play it looks very easy to pick up and it has features like slow motion, 2 program outs, variable speed control with t-bar and ability to easily mark in/outs. I'll be working with the 3Play for the first time in a few weeks and it looks like the perfect piece of gear for replay. Like I said, see if you can rent it unless you have $20,000 to drop. We got it for $2100 / week.

Re: Instant Replay, ATEM Television Studio, and MMA

PostPosted: Mon Oct 14, 2013 8:08 am
by Thomas Seewald
I think, Newtek 3Play is the best solution, when searching for a good ready-to-use solution for less cost.

Looking on Carmen's equipment, I think 20.000,- is to much to buy a 3Play. So she has two options:

1.) Rent a 3Play
2.) look at software solutions (spending some time to get them running and some additional hardware (Ii think, this would be cheeper, when not looking on spended time....)

Re: Instant Replay, ATEM Television Studio, and MMA

PostPosted: Mon Oct 14, 2013 10:13 am
by Martin Kay
cmallard@aristotle.net wrote:I am looking at purchasing VidBlaster and an ATEM Television Studio because I need to do Multi Camera AND Instant Replay for MMA fights. I stream Live to GoFightLive.TV as well as send a feed to the projectors in the arena.

I will be controlling the ATEM Television Studio with a MacBook Pro, and sending the feed from the Studio to another MacBook Pro through a Blackmagic Intensity to VidBlaster.

The way I would run VidBlaster and an Atem TVS, assuming five cameras or less, is to treat VidBlaster as an extra source into the Atem and take the final TX output from the Atem. That will give you minimum video delay on the feed that's going to the projectors, since the live switched camera feeds will only be going through the Atem, and not VidBlaster as well.

To set up VidBlaster for this purpose, you will need the Pro edition which has the Output module, which will need to feed either an Intensity or Decklink card for the feed into the Atem, or you can use a secondary HDMI graphics card output from the PC. You will also need one or more video input devices (Intensity, Decklink, or other brands) which would either take the Atem program out, or individual camera feeds (via DAs).

If you want to explore the functionality of VidBlaster's various Replay options, the free trial version will allow you to do so. It just adds a watermark on screen, but is otherwise fully functional, and you could use recorded video files rather than live inputs if you don't have any suitable input devices already.

Re: Instant Replay, ATEM Television Studio, and MMA

PostPosted: Sat Oct 19, 2013 9:24 am
by Scott B
I have been using an ATEM 1ME to do MMA for the past several years. I use a thunderbolt equipped macbook pro and send the program HDMI to an intensity, i capture the HD stream in final cut pro, then when i want to show a knock out or what ever, i play it back via the same thunderbolt to intensity via the HDMI output into one of the HDMI in puts on the ATEM.

Re: Instant Replay, ATEM Television Studio, and MMA

PostPosted: Sat Oct 19, 2013 9:31 am
by Scott B
if you want to run a clock during the fight, we use a simple western digital media player. make a movie file with the count down clock, use the HDMI out to connect to the ATEM and use a DVE to crop the clock, resize, and position in the frame as you like. Assign it to which ever key to would like and bring it in and out as you see fit. Search on youtube for tuffnuff, uofmma, sparstarmma, or all starpromotions if you would like to see how we have been using an ATEM to do MMA.