Video Production Advice

The last few questions have all come from American videographers but today’s questions comes all the way from Sweden and is about the Sony FS100 HD video camera and the Blackmagic Design ATEM Television Studio.

Video Production Question

Hi Shawn,

Just wanted to drop you an email in desperation. I have a shoot this weekend and client are using NES-FS100 and I´m bringing my Blackmagic Design Television Studio. I have been messing about with this thing and can’t get it to work feeding the HDMI from camera to ATEM, it´s all black.

I have been googling this all day but can´t find the settings to use but then I found your review on the ATEM 1 M/E.

I guess you get a lot of questions but I hope you can lend a helping hand. How do I solve the settings? What settings do use in camera? What settings do I use in the ATEM software control panel?

Best wishes,
Magnus

Video Production Response

Hi Magnus,
The Blackmagic Design ATEM line of HD video switchers don’t have any scalers or converters to you have to make sure that all your video inputs have the same resolution and frame rate and match the frame rate and resolution set in the ATEM Software Control Panel.

There are four HD input options for the ATEM Television Studio but only two are applicable for most users, depending if you are in a PAL or NTSC country (Sweden is a PAL country because you use 50hz electricity but you already knew that).

PAL
ATEM Television Studio (and ATEM 1 M/E) Compatible HD frame rates: 1080i50 & 720p50.

The Sony NEX-FS100P can record one frame rate to either or both the FMU128 and SD cards (say 1080p50) and output a different signal via the HDMI cable (say 1080i50). It is important that either you both record and output in 1080i50 or record in 1080p50 and output to 1080i50 when outputting an HDMI video signal to the Blackmagic Design ATEM Television Studio.

NTSC
ATEM Television Studio (and ATEM 1 M/E) Compatible HD frame rates: 1080i59.94 & 720p59.94.

The Sony NEX-FS100U can record one frame rate to either or both the FMU128 and SD cards (say 1080p60) and output a different signal via the HDMI cable (say 1080i60). It is important that either you both record and output in 1080i60 or record in 1080p60 and output to 1080i60 when outputting an HDMI video signal to the Blackmagic Design ATEM Television Studio.

So no matter which system you use, make sure that your HDMI signal output matches the input signals that the ATEM video switcher accepts and make the appropriate selection in the ATEM Software Control Panel.

If you ever run into the scenario where you have an input that doesn’t match the frame rate and frame size that you are working in, then you need to use a converter to scale up, down, or cross convert.