[00:00:00]  Today’s ATEM (mini) Tip is a mini tip indeed. This one is simply about getting the right color to display on your ATEM when you’ve connected a Mac or possibly a PC. This definitely applies to Mac and it might apply to PC as well. I’m sorry, I don’t actually know.

[00:00:13]  The problem is the color profile - the wrong color profile will be selected by default when you first connect your Mac to your ATEM, and unless you go in and manually choose the right one, the display image won’t look quite right.

[00:00:25]  Now, to be honest, most people will never notice, and if you’re simply doing things like playing Keynote slide decks, you definitely won’t see it. However, if you’re using the ATEM for things like software demonstrations, especially apps that have a very dark UI like Lightroom or Final Cut Pro, then you’ll definitely see the dark grays go a bit too dark, a bit too crunchy and you won’t actually be able to see all the details in the screen. Let’s have a look.

[00:00:46]  I’m currently in Screen Mirroring mode. Here’s my Mac and here’s the BMD Display and you’ll see that it’s mirrored. When I look at the color options, there’s only one option here: “BMD HDMI”. So you would think, “well, that should be right”, right? But it’s not.

[00:01:00]  If I go down here and deselect “Show Profiles for this display only”, you’ll see a lot of other options, and the one that you want is right down here - the very conveniently named “SMPTE RP 431-2-2007 DCI (P3)”. Just remember that it starts with “SMPTE” and ends with “P3” and you’ll find it each time.

[00:01:19]  As soon as I select that, you’ll see the gamma on the screen change. Let’s go back and forth again. There’s the default and there’s the right one. Now, let’s take a look at this with an app in the background. I’ll switch over to Lightroom first and bring my color displays back up, let’s hide this guy and here we go - this is correct, this is not. That’s correct, that is not.

[00:01:44]  Let’s take a look at Final Cut as well. Same idea… this is not correct but this is. Incorrect; correct. It’s a subtle change but it makes a difference. And again, if you’re doing a software demo with an app that has a dark UI, you’ll really appreciate the change here.

[00:02:03]  So, that is the correct color profile to choose when you’re running your Mac into your ATEM. Now again, this same color profile or something similar might be on PC - I would say, if it doesn’t look right, simply look for a color profiles option and if you don’t find the exact same SMPTE one, just try some other ones and see if there’s one that looks better for your PC.

[00:02:21]  As always, thanks for watching… don’t forget to subscribe and I’ll see you in the next tip.