[00:00:00] In the previous ATEM (mini) tip, I showed you how to create a macro that allowed you to switch camera angles and also load up a different lower third over each camera angle. However, the problem with that process of creating the macros by recording them over and over and over again is that they're quite prone to error.

[00:00:15] So, in this video I’m gonna show you how to take the first recording that we did in the previous video and then replicate that out for cameras 2, 3 and 4 using XML Editing. Here are the two macros that we created in the previous video; camera 1 plus lower third and camera 2 plus lower third.

[00:00:30] Just to test them out again, we'll go to Run and load up camera one plus LT and camera two plus LT, and they're working fine. But I want to go ahead and create them for three and four and in fact, I’m also going to create the one for camera 2 all over again.

[00:00:43] I’m just going to go back into the Create tab, select Camera 2 and delete it, so we only have the first one created. I’m going to go ahead and save this out as an XML file. Go to File, Save As, give it any name you like, I’ll just call it “Camera Switching”, hit Save, and here in this window I can choose what I want saved into the XML file. In this case, I don't want all of this; I only want the macros.

[00:01:04] So I’m going to click on Select None, and then select Macros and save that. It'll just make it easier to manipulate the file later. Next I’ll switch over to BBEdit, which I like to use to edit these files. I’m going to go ahead and open the file that we just created and from here we can see exactly what this macro is made of. There's the macro, index 0, (that’s the first macro in the list), there's the name we gave it, “CAM 1 +LT” for lower thirds, and then here's all the different commands; program input was set to camera 1, the key fill was set to media player 1 and there's the key source for it as well. We disabled the mask so you can see the mask is set to “False”, we enabled the Premultiply, so there's premultiply set to “True”, and then we chose the Media Player source which was that first graphic which is showing up as “Index 0”.

[00:01:51] Now, this can definitely get a little bit confusing because the index number is not the same as the number in the software for that particular graphic. Let me show you what I mean; this is set to index 0, however, if we look at the media player, it was actually graphic number 01.

[00:02:06] This is position 0. This is position 1, position 2, position 3 and so on. This applies to the macros as well. You'll notice that our macro is set as index 0 but it's actually in position 1. So again, it's confusing but whenever you're dealing with these you have to know that you are loading up a different number than the one that you need.

[00:02:24] All right, let's go back into BBEdit and here we can see the downstream key on air was actually disabled and then enabled. Curiously, it actually recorded that turning it off, so I’m going to go ahead and delete that line because we don't want it. We don't want it to turn it off and back on; we just want to leave it on.

[00:02:39] All right, now I want to go ahead and duplicate this three more times. So we'll go ahead and select all of this from the opening of the macro to the closing of it. I’ll hit Command-C to copy that, put the cursor here and then just go paste, paste, paste, to give us three more of them.

[00:02:53] Now I need to change each one of these for each camera angle. There's a few things I have to do. So, it's index 0, camera 1. Let's change this one to index 1 and we'll set that to camera 2, this one will be index 2 and we're gonna set that for camera 3 and this one is index 3 and set that to camera 4. Next let's look at the camera inputs; this one's set to camera 1, this one is going to switch to camera 2, to camera 3 and to camera 4.

[00:03:23] Finally we need to change the graphic. The graphic is index 0. Here's the graphic right here, that's index 0, this one's going to be set to index 1, index 2 and index 3. And of course, if you're ever confused at which one you're switching to, simply check out in your software, the Media Player, it was number 4 that we wanted to load, in position 4, subtract one from that to get to the index number and there we go, index 3. That's it!

[00:03:48] This should be everything we need to do to save all four of these buttons as macros. I’m gonna go ahead and save this but I’m gonna do a “Save As” and just a little tip on how I like to do this; under the “Save As”, there's always a date and time automatically added by the ATEM software; I’ll go ahead and update that timestamp so that it reflects the current time. It is currently six minutes after the hour, so I’m going to say 6-00. The -00 is for me replacing the seconds but also an indicator to me that that is one that I created, it's just how I do things.

[00:04:18] We'll go ahead and save that, go back over to the ATEM software and from the file menu, Restore, and we'll choose the new one that I just created. Restore that; it asks what I want to restore, in this case, macros is the only thing available, click “Restore”, load up our macros and there they are; camera 1, 2, 3 and 4 with the appropriate lower third.

[00:04:42] All that's left is to test it out. Go to the Run, make sure “Recall and Run” is enabled and we'll switch to camera 2, camera 3, camera 4 and back to camera 1 again. This is a great way to take total control over your macros. Yes, it's a little bit complicated and it does take some getting used to, but once you get comfortable with manipulating the XML file, you'll find that you can go in and start copying and pasting individual lines of code from one macro into another making it easy to combine complicated macros into one. You can also save off multiple macro files, open those up and copy and paste one macro command into another file just making sure to always give each macro a unique index number. That's a common mistake.

[00:05:23] If you have multiple macros with the same index number, you're going to be missing one inside of the macro list. So, just open up that XML file and make sure that each one has a unique index number.

[00:05:33] Other than that, have some fun figuring this out. It’s, again, complicated but it's worth the effort. As always, don't forget to like and subscribe so I know that you want to see more of these videos, and if you have any questions that you want answered; any tips that you're trying to figure out, drop them into the comments below, I’ll try to get to it.