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Hey everybody! PhotoJoseph here… I just finished watching the live stream on the Blackmagic release and I've got to share some of this stuff with you because it's absolutely incredible.

[00:00:08.25] A ton of you have watched my ATEM Mini videos… Well, looks like I'm going to be recording a whole new set of them on the new ATEM Mini Pro. But before I get into that, there's actually a software update for the ATEM Mini that adds some of the features. 

[00:00:20.22] The primary feature that you get on the ATEM Mini with the new software update is control over the Blackmagic Cinema cameras. You'll be able to control the camera; control the Color Balance, control the Iris, control the Gain of those cameras and you can do that over a two way HDMI communication.

[00:00:36.04] It requires a software update for the cameras as well and that is apparently both going to be available later today which is just absolutely remarkable. But then we get into the Pro… The new hardware, the ATEM Mini Pro which has an unbelievable feature set to it. First of all I'm going to start with the price. It’s $595. So, it is double the price of the regular ATEM Mini which is still a huge, huge price reduction over what it used to cost to get into this space.

[00:01:01.01] The main big huge thing that it can do is it has its own built-in live streaming encoder. So, that right there is worth everything you're adding to it. For cost, that's absolutely worth doubling the price because you would pay at least that to get a decent hardware encoder. So that's incredible.

[00:01:17.28] This is now built-in which means you can connect your Ethernet cable to the back of the ATEM Mini Pro and live stream straight to YouTube, Facebook, whatever you want. It's a simple RTSP setup which means you can just plug in any key to any platform and off you go.

[00:01:30.16] Now, part of what you get with this live streaming setup is a small buffer inside of the ATEM Mini Pro, so if while you're live streaming, your internet connection goes a little bit wonky, it'll actually store a little bit of data. It wasn't clear exactly how much it could store, but it would store a little bit of data so that it can then push that out live once the connection cleans up. So, that's a fantastic feature right there.

[00:01:49.17] You also have the ability to record your live show. You can record it using an external USB Drive; the USB port on the ATEM Mini can now be doubled up as a port to plug in a drive and you can plug in not just one drive, but even multiple drives through a hub, or using one of their larger recorder devices, you can actually connect up to four drives, and you can, in software, toggle between which disk it is recording to. So if you have a really, really long program and you wanted to switch over to another disc, to an empty disc, you can absolutely do that.

[00:02:20.09] They even show yanking the drive out of the back of the ATEM Mini Pro which would normally absolutely corrupt and kill a file but somehow they managed to close the file before - I've no idea how that works, but they plugged it in, you could play the video back even after it had just been yanked out of the back of the machine.

[00:02:34.26] Also in regards to recording, in addition to being able to record the Program Out, you've always been able to record in the camera itself that's feeding into the ATEM. So if you wanted to have a local backup, an ISO - and individual isolated recording of each camera, you could just hit record on the camera that's plugged into the ATEM. Of course, that's assuming that the camera you have supports that. 

[00:02:55.23] And that's something you've always been able to do, but what you can now do with the Blackmagic Cinema pocket camera update as well, since you can control the camera from the device, from the ATEM Mini, you can now trigger recording in those cameras and so all the cameras have the exact same time code, exact same timing on them so it makes it really easy to drop them into an editor and do a multicam edit later.

[00:03:17.00] Another absolutely mind-blowing new feature on this is that you now have a MultiView support; meaning that you can choose to look at all the camera inputs, so all four inputs and there's a traditional eight input view, so what they've done is they put other things into the other four inputs so you can see all four of your cameras at once plus some audio controls, the status of your live stream and the status of recording and then you get your full preview and program monitors on it.

[00:03:41.04] Now, as far as I can tell though, this has to go out over the HDMI and doesn't go out over the USBC, which would mean, if that's true, that your Program Out is now relegated to the USBC connection which as we have learned is a compressed connection, it's a motion JPEG connection and doesn't look as good as what comes out of the - over the HDMI port.

[00:04:01.11] So, I'm not quite sure, hopefully you'll be able to get that MultiView out over USB because that would really free up the HDMI to do the full Program Out. The hardware on the ATEM Mini Pro on the back is exactly the same, there's no additional HDMI output which would have been really, really sweet, but at least one way or another, we do get full MultiView. We'll have to see exactly how that plays once I get my hands on one of these.

[00:04:22.27] And the last thing to mention is that there is now hardware support for large hardware switchers that are part of the ATEM family which ironically cost considerably more than the ATEM Mini or the ATEM Mini Pro, but you can now control the ATEM Mini Pro using that hardware.

[00:04:38.28] I don't actually know if that will work with the ATEM Mini via the software update or not. Overall, this is an absolutely amazing update. The software for the ATEM Mini is definitely very nice especially if you're using the Blackmagic Cinema cameras, but the new hardware, the ATEM Mini Pro is just mind-blowing… to have the hardware encoder for live streaming built into it is phenomenal. That alone is worth the price for admission. Being able to record the Program Out to a connected USB Drive, being able to control the hardware from the external hardware source if you want to do that and being able to control the cameras if you've got the Blackmagic cameras hooked up to it and then of course, the MultiView altogether just makes for one unbelievable package.

[00:05:15.25] Stay tuned… If you haven't already subscribed, make sure you do that. I will of course do a video on this new hardware as soon as I can get my hands on it… I've already talked to my friends at Blackmagic, they won't give me a date of when I'll get it, but I will get one absolutely ASAP and I can't wait to share that with you.

[00:05:29.16] As always, thanks for tuning in and I'll see you next time. Bye bye.