Blackmagic Forum

Hi guys,

Sorry for the somewhat newbie question. But what is the main advantage of a switcher like the Blackmagic Design ATEM 2 M/E Advanced Panel? Is it just that the top bus could be mixed for your live production while the bottom bus could be mixed for an in-house feed to the screens on stage?

Or can both buses be used for the same mix? I'm just a little confused as to the benefit of having two mix buses and two t-bars.

Thanks for any insight!

J.

Hi Jarrod,
It comes down to how complex of a program you want to create and be able to modify at the press of a button. Broadcast TV switchers have historically had multiple mix effects busses so that certain effects can be executed swiftly. For example, if you have a news talk show where you had 2 speakers in boxes side by side over a background, that could live on the ME. Then if you wanted to change who was in one of the boxes, you could hit a source button. There are many programmable and crafty ways to pull this off on a small switcher with memory presets, but the historical solution is the way it's been done for a long time.

We have Advanced 2ME panel .. and good thing is , that it have 20 direct buttons (+ another 20 with shift) .. On 1ME panel, there is 10 buttons in row .. 4ME have 40 buttons in one row ..