**The Blackmagic Pocket 6K: A Review**

I recently had the opportunity to review the Blackmagic Pocket 6K, a compact and versatile camera that has been making waves in the film and television industry. As someone who typically shoots with high-end desktop cameras like my Sony's and Panasonic G7s, I was eager to see how this little device would hold up against my usual rig. After spending some time with the Pocket 6K, I have to say that it's been a revelation.

The first thing that struck me about the Pocket 6K is its output capabilities. As a seasoned camera user, I'm used to seeing high-end cameras shoot in 4K at 30fps or higher. However, when I plugged my Blackmagic DeckLink recorder into the Pocket 6K's HDMI port, I was limited to 1080p output. This was a bit of a letdown, considering that this camera is capable of shooting in 4K at 60fps. I'm not sure if this is just an oversight on the part of Blackmagic or a deliberate design choice, but it's definitely something to keep in mind when using this camera.

Despite this limitation, I was still able to get some great footage out of the Pocket 6K. Its compact size and lightweight design make it easy to carry around, and its built-in features like built-in focus assist and histogram display make it a breeze to work with. The image quality is also quite impressive, especially considering its price point. However, as I mentioned earlier, the output capabilities are a bit of a letdown.

**What I Want from an ATEM Switcher**

As I was reviewing the Pocket 6K, I couldn't help but think about what features I would want in an ATEM switcher. Specifically, I'm interested in seeing some improvements that would make it easier to work with live streaming and video production software like OBS, Skype, and Discord. One thing that I've noticed is that many live streaming sites use a partial range of color, which helps to improve the overall image quality. However, when using full range color, the black levels can shift significantly, causing issues with colors in the background.

I would love to see Blackmagic make the default output setting for their ATEM switchers be set to partial range, rather than full range. This would help to ensure that images look consistent across different platforms and software. Additionally, I think it would be great if they added some more advanced features like uncompressed options and higher bit depth support.

**The Value of an ATEM Switcher**

One thing that really stood out about the Pocket 6K was its value for money. For a device that's capable of producing high-quality video, the price point is incredibly reasonable. However, if you're looking to invest in a more comprehensive live streaming solution, things start to get expensive.

That being said, I think Blackmagic has done an excellent job of packing a lot of features into their ATEM switchers without breaking the bank. The Stream Deck-style control panel and audio mixer are particularly impressive, making it easy to mix and match different audio sources and adjust settings on the fly.

**Latency Tests and Conclusion**

I'll be running some latency tests in this article, so keep an eye out for those! I'm not sure what the exact numbers will be yet, but I do know that these ATEM switchers are designed to minimize latency and ensure smooth, stutter-free playback. If you're planning on using one of these devices for live streaming or video production, I think it's worth doing your own research to see how well they perform in terms of latency.

**The Future of Blackmagic**

One thing that really excites me about Blackmagic is their commitment to making industry-standard gear more accessible to creators like us. For years, high-end cameras and production equipment were only affordable for top-tier productions or large corporations. However, with the rise of crowdfunding and community-driven projects, it's become possible for smaller companies like Blackmagic to produce high-quality gear at a fraction of the cost.

I think this is going to have a big impact on the live streaming and video production industries, particularly in terms of democratizing access to high-end equipment. As more and more creators start to invest in ATEM switchers and other Blackmagic gear, we can expect to see some amazing upgrades to their products. I'm excited to see what the future holds for this company!

**Product Links and Conclusion**

For those who want to learn more about the Blackmagic Pocket 6K or ATEM switcher, I've included links to some product information in the description below. Be sure to check out my next article on the best webcams for 2020, where I'll be sharing some updates on camera tech and recommending some top picks. Thanks again for watching, and I'll catch you in the next video!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enall right so by far the most requested video capture and streaming product that i've had you know people asked me to review recently has been the blackmagic atem mini this is an all-in-one streaming capture device that in a sense might make capture cards obsolete i am super stoked on a product like this but i'm also kind of disappointed in a way that makes sense for what they're doing i'm eposvox and welcome back to stream guides blackmagic designs atem mini is a four input one output with a lot of controls mini atem video switcher they have an entire product line that's been going back like 20 or more years of a10 products which are their professional video broadcasting live video switchers and recorders and they do a whole lot of stuff this one is aimed to be more accessible and user friendly and you you know entry level at 300 for four inputs into one usb capture card this is a pretty compelling offer and like i said it's been one of the most requested topics that i cover on the channel and this video is gonna get a little weird because i have three different screen recorders going with four different cameras most of which are set up for color grading one of which is an xbox of course and i don't really we'll see how it goes and on top of that i also have a screen capture of the software itself so a lot going on here so the core technology as described is a video switcher and a capture card and in a way i could argue that for a lot of people this might make the idea of buying a dedicated capture card pretty obsolete especially for a lot of local broadcasts for like local sports or uh you know events things like that because you do get four up to 1080p 60 inputs and one 1080p 60 output technically two outputs so it's it's yeah i would say it's a four in two out instead of four and one out because you get both the usb output which is recording the side view right now but you also have dedicated hdmi output which is what's recording my main camera right here which you can assign to be any of the different things and in fact switching over to the software real quick under the output menu you can choose whether the hdmi is camera 1 camera 2 camera 3 camera 4 program monitor preview monitor or direct unfortunately there is no multi-view mode available that is unfortunate but there are a lot of sacrifices made to make this product as cheap as it is i'll try to remain positive about it even though a lot of them are disappointments for myself but i do want to talk about them now what is interesting here is this direct output mode for camera one direct here this is actually a compelling use case for game streamers in a sense although i find it a little confusing for it to be camera one only can be direct because camera one is also the only one you can do picture-in-picture so for example if i switch over to my game console input here and then i turn on picture and picture now i can have you know basically a live commentary kind of format going here where i can do gameplay streaming and add a couple images overlaid and things like that which is kind of neat but only camera one can be the picture-in-picture camera or at least by default i haven't actually found the option to change that it the manual says it's the default camera i haven't found any option in any of the screen capture settings or anything like that to actually change which one might work for picture and picture and perhaps that is a fault of my own i only had a short while to review this but i don't see any actual control for that unfortunately this is a problem because it seems camera one direct is the low is the only one that can do low latency pass through most blackmagic devices have a frame buffer of sorts between the input and the output because you can assign different things to the hdmi output and they specifically wanted a lag free pass-through for game streamers here but something about this isn't adding up for me because i don't want the game play in the picture in picture i want my camera and picture in picture like you're seeing now i i i don't know i have i have some issues with this here so input and output wise if we go around the back of the device it is a very small control panel you can kind of see it here and actually if i switch on over to my gopro you can see it here i have it with my stream deck another micro pad the a10 mini and then my go xlr as far as actual inputs and outputs go you have a power input which can actually screw on in order to be you know more securely attached so nothing accidentally yanks all your power you've got ethernet hookup for remote management from another computer that's not able to be connected via usb and you can actually have multiple people controlling the atm at once so if you have one person managing graphics one person managing mixing one person managing sound you can actually have a bunch of different people controlling the same mixer which is pretty cool then you have the the dedicated hdmi output which can go up to 1080p60 and then you have four hdmi inputs again up to 1080p60 and then you have two 3.5 millimeter microphone inputs which over here in the software if you go to audio actually it's just under settings audio general you can change the between whether they're a microphone input or a line level input so i have the line out of my go xlr route it here to the a10 mini set it to line level input and now i can use all of my mixing in my go xlr to the atem and so you can route this you can also utilize as you can see here the embedded hdmi audio if you want as well and that is some of the options available above the inputs here this second bank of controls well this first bank of controls is for your analog mic inputs so you can turn them on or off and then you can adjust the gain here and then you can also adjust the hdmi audio as well so you can have you can enable or disable hdmi audio you can choose whether audio follows video that's what afv is you can reset all your settings and then you have gain here and then you have your standard video mixing switch to a still image switch to a black frame and switch back to the camera angles so you have a lot of inputs and outputs now one of the marketing points with the hdmi inputs was this whole it automatically scales and adapts the resolutions and frame rates of your footage to fit your overall scene composition i was like okay great that means i don't have to worry about passing things through unfortunately these hdmi inputs still only accept up to 1080p60 so you cannot pass through 4k and as an example of that although anecdotally when i set up my a7 or a6400 here by default it's set to 4k output because that's what i use for my recording it would not show anything on the screen i had to go in and manually switch it to 1080p60 even though it's a 4k30 camera and i'm going to have some complaints about this in a minute but if we go over here to the xbox real quick just so i can show this go over to settings there's a lot of latency when it's not the direct output i will tell you that tv and display options no 4k available 4k tv details no 4k options so you cannot pass through and have it downscale 4k which is disappointing for something released in 2019 available in 2020 you want some 4k forward compatibility also in my opinion it should just support 4k 30 in the first place because most of the available available video hardware that was available for later gen 1080p 60 streaming and capture also supports 4k 30 by nature of just adapting to the hdmi spec so that was disappointing to see but a lot of how they're posing this product is basically again an entry-level atem they want you to get in the people who just need 1080p and the basics with a little bit of flexibility can do all of that right here with the atem mini and people who want more the power users like myself can then go on to pick up the higher end atemps and in a sense it kind of worked because everything that i'm going to state about being disappointed with this device i'm immediately kind of thinking in my head it's like okay what atm do i need to get to get exactly the workflow that i want because again this is a loaner unit from blackmagic i don't actually get to keep it and you know implement it into my workflow but i could see ways in which i could pull that off and then which atm do i actually want since 1080p is fairly limited going back over the controls real quick just to finish off the physical layout you have picture-in-picture modes as described so i can go ahead and turn that on and you can see my face here you get no control over it other than positions so i can pop around the four corners but i can't control size or do any cropping or anything like that it's just on and off and the four corners uh you can enable keying for chroma king which isn't going to do much in this context because i don't have any chroma keying set up but you can over in the software if you go back to the switcher you can go down to there's an upstream and a downstream key so you've got luma chroma pattern and dve and so the main one is of course chroma subsampling you can pick the color adjust all of it adjust for spill make color adjustments after the fact adjust the mask you have a lot of control over the chroma keying so that is really nice to see not something i'm going to mess with within the context of this video and then you have transition settings so by default it's set to cut but you can set it to auto and then you can control a few different settings you know transitions here so you've got wipe left to right which i can show you just like that wipe top to bottom like that and then you've got pushing left to right and then you've got this weird folding left to right and that are the different transitions and then you also have a just general fade to black and then it will hold on black and you press it again there you go something you may notice that there is enough latency that when it switches inputs you will actually see me hit the button so if i switch to xbox set it back to cut and then when i switch back to the gopro i have here you can actually you can actually see me press the button to switch it that's kind of disorienting but not a big deal so and then i mentioned the still and the black buttons so those are the physical controls but again over in the software you have more controls you can queue up what the next transitions are you can change your camera preview settings for the preview monitor and what's showing in the program monitor because those are two different monitors again i do wish it had multi-view but whatever you can adjust transitions a little bit more clearly you have a t-bar here and you can actually use other control surfaces to control this you can use other contr atm control services other than just the software and what's available on the hardware so you can combine and mix and match and things like that which is pretty cool uh you have controls for capturing but this only works for other because this is just the atem software control panel this only works for other atem devices not the atem mini so this will only read my decklink mini which i'm not going to do because it's going to mess it up but you can adjust time code capture stills and videos if you have one of the other atems that supports video capture this way then you have media player for adjusting your media and this is where i felt a little bit misled because everything describes a media player a media pool things where you might think you get to use videos unfortunately the only format supported in this media pool for the a2 mini are images so you can only use pngs tiffs tgas with alpha thankfully gifs jpegs things like that so even though you can set up transitions to be a video feed if i go back here real quick i don't want the key transitions oh yeah you have some other wipes you can set up as well and some dips but if i set up the dve transition and i believe it's from the media pool nope that's not the right one if i said mix one of these i had set up is an image transition i'm not sure exactly what i did with that yet oh here we go effects media player so you can use like an image as like a stinger transition here it's a little jerky you know it doesn't do the full cycle but it's kind of cool if that's something you're interested in implementing but again i do wish media or you know video files were supported but again they're limited by what's available on the physical device here and that's when they want you to upgrade but what is really cool is these images do say to save to flash memory on the atem mini itself so you will be able to use it you know if you unplug it take it somewhere else you will still have your media pool saved on the device up to 20 images which is really powerful and all of your settings are saved and things like that so lastly for limitations i do want to talk about the actual output because i was pretty disappointed to see this it outputs via usb type c which in these days especially for something that's meant to be more accessible you can assume it's 3.1 gen 1 so or 3.2 gen 1 or 3.0 not the 3.2 gen 2 or anything like that but that is enough bandwidth for 4k 30 and 1080p 60 uncompressed via yuy2 which is my favorite way i talk about this all the time the best way to get an image on your scene it is uncompressed low latency low cpu usage the best way to implement it in a program like obs studio especially you know on modern computers unfortunately if i switch over to a screen capture here and i'm not entirely sure how i want to do this actually we'll just do it this way if i switch over to the screen capture and go to the device properties for this it shows up as just blackmagic design it does not show up even as an actual blackmagic device source which is how i typically add my deck link it is a dedicated plugin that ships with obs it is not read as an actual blackmagic api device it is a video capture device if i go into the properties for it you know you have all the typical setup 1920x1080 5994 or 1080p 30. the only video format is mjpeg which i guess i understand if they want to make it super lightweight for on the fly for laptops or something to just push it upstream but when you have to you know this the mjpeg is useful for skype for discord for streaming programs that don't recompress your video but for dedicated live streaming apps like vmix obs xsplit wirecast any of those yuy2 is better so the fact that they only ship it with mjpeg encoding on it is extremely disappointing in my opinion this is a real bummer for me and then it does run the full color range which is a little weird it's mostly fine but you can see here if i set it to partial everything gets really punchy and dark and i ran into an issue with this by the way you have to manually choose custom audio device in obs here in order to use it that's fine but do take a note if you don't get your audio that's why but i did notice an issue with it i don't know if this will work here yeah let me i gotta deactivate it in obs so if you try to use it in a normal program and this may be the case with skype we can test this in a second but with something like the windows 10 camera app this is way more punchy and contrasty than it's supposed to look this is you know you can see side by side this is how it looks by default through a program like windows 10 camera app just using the like uwp settings this is how it looks actually running through the hdmi because it's reading the full range this is only pulling partial range this is a significant difference in the quality of your image and this is borderline unusable it's really disappointing i'll record a sample here so you can just see you know how it looks blown up full screen but this is not how this is supposed to look at all uh and in fact i'm curious now so i'm gonna pull up skype and just go to the video settings all right here we go this is what i wanted anyway yeah you can see even in skype it is super dark and punchy this is not how it's supposed to look and it's because it's relying on that full rgb range which most apps are not pulling so this is really weird and i'm going to submit it an email at feedback because i only just recently discovered this and hope that there's some way for them to fix it in the driver but or validate the apps to use i don't know it's not supposed to look like this and it's because it's putting out full rgb range which frankly it should not be doing nothing works well with full rgb range these days and so that's really disappointing to see so one part of the software that i didn't even touch on because frankly i'm not going to use a whole heck of a lot is the macros there's a whole menu here for you to set up and run dedicated and very detailed macros for actions to be played such as showing up an image activating a chroma key swiping swatching swatching swapping scenes you can do all sorts of stuff if i just add one here record you can actually record all the things that happen and then run them on their own so now i hit run play it's going to switch through all of those things which is pretty interesting there is a lot of power to this for actual live broadcast that i think if you're really gonna benefit from it you're probably going to see this and be like oh my god i can do anything and if you're like me it's like okay i'm gonna i want all manual controls there's not a whole lot i can come up with on the fly but the fact that they include this is really freaking powerful now i talked about blackmagic's limitation to 1080p here this is something that extends to another blackmagic device that i've actually been using to record this entire video i don't have enough time or capacity to make a full video on it right now but along with the a2 mini they sent out their blackmagic pocket cinema camera 6k i previously reviewed the 4k and freaking loved it beautiful camera the 6k is phenomenal like i really wish i could keep this or get it cheaper because it's a little pricey but for the price you're getting it blows many many many many many cameras out of the water in terms of like the stuff it's capable of and it is just phenomenal so it is a the same size as the pocket 4k camera mostly the same weight but super 35 or aps-c side sensor canon ef mount my favorite mount and so a much bigger sensor decent low-light performance and a beautiful freaking image now i will say up front that what you are seeing right now is not the best representation of how this camera can look simply due to the fact that it is recording the film color grading mode outputted here to traditional file that isn't going to be recorded as well typically i have this setup to record in 6k in blackmagic raw a freaking phenomenal kodak i've talked about that in my other videos to one of these usb s ssds uh usbc ssds so that i can use it and i've used it for the a-roll for all of my videos for like all of december through january and i've gotten so many comments about how freaking awesome it looks now i will say blackmagic sensors i do use the ursa mini pro as my main acam when i can blackmagic sensors are really awkward to color grade for for my personal skin tone i have found personally i've struggled with it my entire i've used it for a year and a half now with the ursa and i struggled with it with the pocket 4k and with this and so i actually had to consult my buddy gerald undone to get a real good color grade looking on my a-roll for this camera simply due to those kinds of weird finickiness like we had to set the uh white balance to like 4 400 even though i'm at a 5600 kelvin lights and some other weirdness but it is a beautiful freaking sensor in that camera and with some of the glass i have it going with at the moment at the moment i've been using this really weird 14 millimeter you know lens just to experiment with some super wide angle stuff i was posting some pictures on twitter typically i'm using this uh sigma art 18 to 35 f 1.8 lens with an nd filter on the front and that is how i was getting the great looks that i was using before it is phenomenal but back to my original point a huge limitation which i didn't even realize during my original pocket 4k review but the 4k the 6k and even the front sdi on my ursa mini pro are all limited to 1080p 60. which is ridiculous in my opinion all of these cameras should be outputting 4k 60. i've seen no excuse for that hdmi 2.0 technology is well beyond even just output 4k 30 and i would complain much less but i find it a little unacceptable for them to only output 1080p60 it's only really set up to be used as monitoring or in live environments which is why they figured no one's streaming 4k but as someone who typically has my main desktop cameras like my sony's and my panasonic g7s outputting add 4k30 to my blackmagic decklink recorder 4k which is a card that is many years old at this point still supporting 4k the fact that they don't let you output 4k into these and the fact that this thing is still so limited to 1080p it's just really strange for me and i'm super disappointed in that aspect but again this is to lead you into to build you into finding out what your needs are for a big you know for a big boy atem switcher and i guess in a sense it was actually really effective in that regard because yeah i immediately i now have a list of things that i want to make sure i have in my next atem if i were to buy one i may not have had that before i get to use this see all its flexibility and then be like okay what's my wish list for the next one so that is their kind of goal here is to lead you into the bigger ones if you actually need them but otherwise provide a great tool and i think for a lot of esports events and for you you'll want to use hdmi splitters for your console input of course i'll have some latency tests on screen but i haven't actually seen the numbers yet but you know for a lot of esports events and for a lot of local event and sport broadcasts and things like that i really think you know this is an amazing tool for you know the live streaming world is very centered around 1080p so it won't be a big deal for a lot of people there are just some improvements that i would really love to see made namely well since you know there's a hardware limitation for some of it namely i would love to see you know the default output be set to partial range because that is what that's also what live streaming sites use and your browsers are going to decode best fool is not useful on youtube or twitch or i think even facebook at all like it just really messes up so everything's using partial anyway your obs should be set to partial nles don't interp interpret full range all the way colors completely shift uh so like the black level of say the background of youtube and dark mode is a completely different color than it is in partial lots of weird stuff there so i would like to see that change so that it works better with skype and ob and discord and other programs like that i would also like to see why ui2 compression options become available instead of just mjpeg i don't know if they can do that without a full hardware change unfortunately but i think it's really important even though i seem to be the only one who cares about this stuff most people don't look at it they just hook it up plug it in and run with it and if that's what you're doing this is a phenomenal value keep in mind a lot of people are going to be like 300 bucks i can do that with a stream deck and some capture cards yes but you're not getting three four capture cards a video mixer control panel like a stream deck and you know an audio mixer basically for three hundred dollars you know at minimum unless you're buying super used old stuff four capture cards that do 1080p 60 is at least 400 if not 500 or 600 due to getting the like 150 to 200 capture cards plus audio inputs plus a 100 to 200 to 300 stream deck depending on which one you want there is so much value packed into this little device i can be nothing but excited for it i just really hope the atem mini 2 has some 4k stuff and some uncompressed options and things like that honestly the thing that i am the most excited for with the atim mini is the fact that we are finally seeing big name production companies that would have typically been happy just making you know industry broadcast and production level gear that us youtubers would never be able to afford until they're 10 years old and on ebay or surplus auctions taking individual or you know smaller scale live streaming seriously and producing products that make that life easier and build a kind of upgrade path into the real stuff it's really freaking cool but thanks so much for watching this review and again the black magic pocket 6k is a phenomenal camera i was so tempted to just buy one for my webcam but i think i might be looking into the a7s2 for that we'll have some separate videos coming once i'm not so sick hopefully on my ultimate webcam guide for 2020 because i have many updates to make thanks so much for watching product links will be in the description below while you're down there hit subscribe for more tech education and streamall right so by far the most requested video capture and streaming product that i've had you know people asked me to review recently has been the blackmagic atem mini this is an all-in-one streaming capture device that in a sense might make capture cards obsolete i am super stoked on a product like this but i'm also kind of disappointed in a way that makes sense for what they're doing i'm eposvox and welcome back to stream guides blackmagic designs atem mini is a four input one output with a lot of controls mini atem video switcher they have an entire product line that's been going back like 20 or more years of a10 products which are their professional video broadcasting live video switchers and recorders and they do a whole lot of stuff this one is aimed to be more accessible and user friendly and you you know entry level at 300 for four inputs into one usb capture card this is a pretty compelling offer and like i said it's been one of the most requested topics that i cover on the channel and this video is gonna get a little weird because i have three different screen recorders going with four different cameras most of which are set up for color grading one of which is an xbox of course and i don't really we'll see how it goes and on top of that i also have a screen capture of the software itself so a lot going on here so the core technology as described is a video switcher and a capture card and in a way i could argue that for a lot of people this might make the idea of buying a dedicated capture card pretty obsolete especially for a lot of local broadcasts for like local sports or uh you know events things like that because you do get four up to 1080p 60 inputs and one 1080p 60 output technically two outputs so it's it's yeah i would say it's a four in two out instead of four and one out because you get both the usb output which is recording the side view right now but you also have dedicated hdmi output which is what's recording my main camera right here which you can assign to be any of the different things and in fact switching over to the software real quick under the output menu you can choose whether the hdmi is camera 1 camera 2 camera 3 camera 4 program monitor preview monitor or direct unfortunately there is no multi-view mode available that is unfortunate but there are a lot of sacrifices made to make this product as cheap as it is i'll try to remain positive about it even though a lot of them are disappointments for myself but i do want to talk about them now what is interesting here is this direct output mode for camera one direct here this is actually a compelling use case for game streamers in a sense although i find it a little confusing for it to be camera one only can be direct because camera one is also the only one you can do picture-in-picture so for example if i switch over to my game console input here and then i turn on picture and picture now i can have you know basically a live commentary kind of format going here where i can do gameplay streaming and add a couple images overlaid and things like that which is kind of neat but only camera one can be the picture-in-picture camera or at least by default i haven't actually found the option to change that it the manual says it's the default camera i haven't found any option in any of the screen capture settings or anything like that to actually change which one might work for picture and picture and perhaps that is a fault of my own i only had a short while to review this but i don't see any actual control for that unfortunately this is a problem because it seems camera one direct is the low is the only one that can do low latency pass through most blackmagic devices have a frame buffer of sorts between the input and the output because you can assign different things to the hdmi output and they specifically wanted a lag free pass-through for game streamers here but something about this isn't adding up for me because i don't want the game play in the picture in picture i want my camera and picture in picture like you're seeing now i i i don't know i have i have some issues with this here so input and output wise if we go around the back of the device it is a very small control panel you can kind of see it here and actually if i switch on over to my gopro you can see it here i have it with my stream deck another micro pad the a10 mini and then my go xlr as far as actual inputs and outputs go you have a power input which can actually screw on in order to be you know more securely attached so nothing accidentally yanks all your power you've got ethernet hookup for remote management from another computer that's not able to be connected via usb and you can actually have multiple people controlling the atm at once so if you have one person managing graphics one person managing mixing one person managing sound you can actually have a bunch of different people controlling the same mixer which is pretty cool then you have the the dedicated hdmi output which can go up to 1080p60 and then you have four hdmi inputs again up to 1080p60 and then you have two 3.5 millimeter microphone inputs which over here in the software if you go to audio actually it's just under settings audio general you can change the between whether they're a microphone input or a line level input so i have the line out of my go xlr route it here to the a10 mini set it to line level input and now i can use all of my mixing in my go xlr to the atem and so you can route this you can also utilize as you can see here the embedded hdmi audio if you want as well and that is some of the options available above the inputs here this second bank of controls well this first bank of controls is for your analog mic inputs so you can turn them on or off and then you can adjust the gain here and then you can also adjust the hdmi audio as well so you can have you can enable or disable hdmi audio you can choose whether audio follows video that's what afv is you can reset all your settings and then you have gain here and then you have your standard video mixing switch to a still image switch to a black frame and switch back to the camera angles so you have a lot of inputs and outputs now one of the marketing points with the hdmi inputs was this whole it automatically scales and adapts the resolutions and frame rates of your footage to fit your overall scene composition i was like okay great that means i don't have to worry about passing things through unfortunately these hdmi inputs still only accept up to 1080p60 so you cannot pass through 4k and as an example of that although anecdotally when i set up my a7 or a6400 here by default it's set to 4k output because that's what i use for my recording it would not show anything on the screen i had to go in and manually switch it to 1080p60 even though it's a 4k30 camera and i'm going to have some complaints about this in a minute but if we go over here to the xbox real quick just so i can show this go over to settings there's a lot of latency when it's not the direct output i will tell you that tv and display options no 4k available 4k tv details no 4k options so you cannot pass through and have it downscale 4k which is disappointing for something released in 2019 available in 2020 you want some 4k forward compatibility also in my opinion it should just support 4k 30 in the first place because most of the available available video hardware that was available for later gen 1080p 60 streaming and capture also supports 4k 30 by nature of just adapting to the hdmi spec so that was disappointing to see but a lot of how they're posing this product is basically again an entry-level atem they want you to get in the people who just need 1080p and the basics with a little bit of flexibility can do all of that right here with the atem mini and people who want more the power users like myself can then go on to pick up the higher end atemps and in a sense it kind of worked because everything that i'm going to state about being disappointed with this device i'm immediately kind of thinking in my head it's like okay what atm do i need to get to get exactly the workflow that i want because again this is a loaner unit from blackmagic i don't actually get to keep it and you know implement it into my workflow but i could see ways in which i could pull that off and then which atm do i actually want since 1080p is fairly limited going back over the controls real quick just to finish off the physical layout you have picture-in-picture modes as described so i can go ahead and turn that on and you can see my face here you get no control over it other than positions so i can pop around the four corners but i can't control size or do any cropping or anything like that it's just on and off and the four corners uh you can enable keying for chroma king which isn't going to do much in this context because i don't have any chroma keying set up but you can over in the software if you go back to the switcher you can go down to there's an upstream and a downstream key so you've got luma chroma pattern and dve and so the main one is of course chroma subsampling you can pick the color adjust all of it adjust for spill make color adjustments after the fact adjust the mask you have a lot of control over the chroma keying so that is really nice to see not something i'm going to mess with within the context of this video and then you have transition settings so by default it's set to cut but you can set it to auto and then you can control a few different settings you know transitions here so you've got wipe left to right which i can show you just like that wipe top to bottom like that and then you've got pushing left to right and then you've got this weird folding left to right and that are the different transitions and then you also have a just general fade to black and then it will hold on black and you press it again there you go something you may notice that there is enough latency that when it switches inputs you will actually see me hit the button so if i switch to xbox set it back to cut and then when i switch back to the gopro i have here you can actually you can actually see me press the button to switch it that's kind of disorienting but not a big deal so and then i mentioned the still and the black buttons so those are the physical controls but again over in the software you have more controls you can queue up what the next transitions are you can change your camera preview settings for the preview monitor and what's showing in the program monitor because those are two different monitors again i do wish it had multi-view but whatever you can adjust transitions a little bit more clearly you have a t-bar here and you can actually use other control surfaces to control this you can use other contr atm control services other than just the software and what's available on the hardware so you can combine and mix and match and things like that which is pretty cool uh you have controls for capturing but this only works for other because this is just the atem software control panel this only works for other atem devices not the atem mini so this will only read my decklink mini which i'm not going to do because it's going to mess it up but you can adjust time code capture stills and videos if you have one of the other atems that supports video capture this way then you have media player for adjusting your media and this is where i felt a little bit misled because everything describes a media player a media pool things where you might think you get to use videos unfortunately the only format supported in this media pool for the a2 mini are images so you can only use pngs tiffs tgas with alpha thankfully gifs jpegs things like that so even though you can set up transitions to be a video feed if i go back here real quick i don't want the key transitions oh yeah you have some other wipes you can set up as well and some dips but if i set up the dve transition and i believe it's from the media pool nope that's not the right one if i said mix one of these i had set up is an image transition i'm not sure exactly what i did with that yet oh here we go effects media player so you can use like an image as like a stinger transition here it's a little jerky you know it doesn't do the full cycle but it's kind of cool if that's something you're interested in implementing but again i do wish media or you know video files were supported but again they're limited by what's available on the physical device here and that's when they want you to upgrade but what is really cool is these images do say to save to flash memory on the atem mini itself so you will be able to use it you know if you unplug it take it somewhere else you will still have your media pool saved on the device up to 20 images which is really powerful and all of your settings are saved and things like that so lastly for limitations i do want to talk about the actual output because i was pretty disappointed to see this it outputs via usb type c which in these days especially for something that's meant to be more accessible you can assume it's 3.1 gen 1 so or 3.2 gen 1 or 3.0 not the 3.2 gen 2 or anything like that but that is enough bandwidth for 4k 30 and 1080p 60 uncompressed via yuy2 which is my favorite way i talk about this all the time the best way to get an image on your scene it is uncompressed low latency low cpu usage the best way to implement it in a program like obs studio especially you know on modern computers unfortunately if i switch over to a screen capture here and i'm not entirely sure how i want to do this actually we'll just do it this way if i switch over to the screen capture and go to the device properties for this it shows up as just blackmagic design it does not show up even as an actual blackmagic device source which is how i typically add my deck link it is a dedicated plugin that ships with obs it is not read as an actual blackmagic api device it is a video capture device if i go into the properties for it you know you have all the typical setup 1920x1080 5994 or 1080p 30. the only video format is mjpeg which i guess i understand if they want to make it super lightweight for on the fly for laptops or something to just push it upstream but when you have to you know this the mjpeg is useful for skype for discord for streaming programs that don't recompress your video but for dedicated live streaming apps like vmix obs xsplit wirecast any of those yuy2 is better so the fact that they only ship it with mjpeg encoding on it is extremely disappointing in my opinion this is a real bummer for me and then it does run the full color range which is a little weird it's mostly fine but you can see here if i set it to partial everything gets really punchy and dark and i ran into an issue with this by the way you have to manually choose custom audio device in obs here in order to use it that's fine but do take a note if you don't get your audio that's why but i did notice an issue with it i don't know if this will work here yeah let me i gotta deactivate it in obs so if you try to use it in a normal program and this may be the case with skype we can test this in a second but with something like the windows 10 camera app this is way more punchy and contrasty than it's supposed to look this is you know you can see side by side this is how it looks by default through a program like windows 10 camera app just using the like uwp settings this is how it looks actually running through the hdmi because it's reading the full range this is only pulling partial range this is a significant difference in the quality of your image and this is borderline unusable it's really disappointing i'll record a sample here so you can just see you know how it looks blown up full screen but this is not how this is supposed to look at all uh and in fact i'm curious now so i'm gonna pull up skype and just go to the video settings all right here we go this is what i wanted anyway yeah you can see even in skype it is super dark and punchy this is not how it's supposed to look and it's because it's relying on that full rgb range which most apps are not pulling so this is really weird and i'm going to submit it an email at feedback because i only just recently discovered this and hope that there's some way for them to fix it in the driver but or validate the apps to use i don't know it's not supposed to look like this and it's because it's putting out full rgb range which frankly it should not be doing nothing works well with full rgb range these days and so that's really disappointing to see so one part of the software that i didn't even touch on because frankly i'm not going to use a whole heck of a lot is the macros there's a whole menu here for you to set up and run dedicated and very detailed macros for actions to be played such as showing up an image activating a chroma key swiping swatching swatching swapping scenes you can do all sorts of stuff if i just add one here record you can actually record all the things that happen and then run them on their own so now i hit run play it's going to switch through all of those things which is pretty interesting there is a lot of power to this for actual live broadcast that i think if you're really gonna benefit from it you're probably going to see this and be like oh my god i can do anything and if you're like me it's like okay i'm gonna i want all manual controls there's not a whole lot i can come up with on the fly but the fact that they include this is really freaking powerful now i talked about blackmagic's limitation to 1080p here this is something that extends to another blackmagic device that i've actually been using to record this entire video i don't have enough time or capacity to make a full video on it right now but along with the a2 mini they sent out their blackmagic pocket cinema camera 6k i previously reviewed the 4k and freaking loved it beautiful camera the 6k is phenomenal like i really wish i could keep this or get it cheaper because it's a little pricey but for the price you're getting it blows many many many many many cameras out of the water in terms of like the stuff it's capable of and it is just phenomenal so it is a the same size as the pocket 4k camera mostly the same weight but super 35 or aps-c side sensor canon ef mount my favorite mount and so a much bigger sensor decent low-light performance and a beautiful freaking image now i will say up front that what you are seeing right now is not the best representation of how this camera can look simply due to the fact that it is recording the film color grading mode outputted here to traditional file that isn't going to be recorded as well typically i have this setup to record in 6k in blackmagic raw a freaking phenomenal kodak i've talked about that in my other videos to one of these usb s ssds uh usbc ssds so that i can use it and i've used it for the a-roll for all of my videos for like all of december through january and i've gotten so many comments about how freaking awesome it looks now i will say blackmagic sensors i do use the ursa mini pro as my main acam when i can blackmagic sensors are really awkward to color grade for for my personal skin tone i have found personally i've struggled with it my entire i've used it for a year and a half now with the ursa and i struggled with it with the pocket 4k and with this and so i actually had to consult my buddy gerald undone to get a real good color grade looking on my a-roll for this camera simply due to those kinds of weird finickiness like we had to set the uh white balance to like 4 400 even though i'm at a 5600 kelvin lights and some other weirdness but it is a beautiful freaking sensor in that camera and with some of the glass i have it going with at the moment at the moment i've been using this really weird 14 millimeter you know lens just to experiment with some super wide angle stuff i was posting some pictures on twitter typically i'm using this uh sigma art 18 to 35 f 1.8 lens with an nd filter on the front and that is how i was getting the great looks that i was using before it is phenomenal but back to my original point a huge limitation which i didn't even realize during my original pocket 4k review but the 4k the 6k and even the front sdi on my ursa mini pro are all limited to 1080p 60. which is ridiculous in my opinion all of these cameras should be outputting 4k 60. i've seen no excuse for that hdmi 2.0 technology is well beyond even just output 4k 30 and i would complain much less but i find it a little unacceptable for them to only output 1080p60 it's only really set up to be used as monitoring or in live environments which is why they figured no one's streaming 4k but as someone who typically has my main desktop cameras like my sony's and my panasonic g7s outputting add 4k30 to my blackmagic decklink recorder 4k which is a card that is many years old at this point still supporting 4k the fact that they don't let you output 4k into these and the fact that this thing is still so limited to 1080p it's just really strange for me and i'm super disappointed in that aspect but again this is to lead you into to build you into finding out what your needs are for a big you know for a big boy atem switcher and i guess in a sense it was actually really effective in that regard because yeah i immediately i now have a list of things that i want to make sure i have in my next atem if i were to buy one i may not have had that before i get to use this see all its flexibility and then be like okay what's my wish list for the next one so that is their kind of goal here is to lead you into the bigger ones if you actually need them but otherwise provide a great tool and i think for a lot of esports events and for you you'll want to use hdmi splitters for your console input of course i'll have some latency tests on screen but i haven't actually seen the numbers yet but you know for a lot of esports events and for a lot of local event and sport broadcasts and things like that i really think you know this is an amazing tool for you know the live streaming world is very centered around 1080p so it won't be a big deal for a lot of people there are just some improvements that i would really love to see made namely well since you know there's a hardware limitation for some of it namely i would love to see you know the default output be set to partial range because that is what that's also what live streaming sites use and your browsers are going to decode best fool is not useful on youtube or twitch or i think even facebook at all like it just really messes up so everything's using partial anyway your obs should be set to partial nles don't interp interpret full range all the way colors completely shift uh so like the black level of say the background of youtube and dark mode is a completely different color than it is in partial lots of weird stuff there so i would like to see that change so that it works better with skype and ob and discord and other programs like that i would also like to see why ui2 compression options become available instead of just mjpeg i don't know if they can do that without a full hardware change unfortunately but i think it's really important even though i seem to be the only one who cares about this stuff most people don't look at it they just hook it up plug it in and run with it and if that's what you're doing this is a phenomenal value keep in mind a lot of people are going to be like 300 bucks i can do that with a stream deck and some capture cards yes but you're not getting three four capture cards a video mixer control panel like a stream deck and you know an audio mixer basically for three hundred dollars you know at minimum unless you're buying super used old stuff four capture cards that do 1080p 60 is at least 400 if not 500 or 600 due to getting the like 150 to 200 capture cards plus audio inputs plus a 100 to 200 to 300 stream deck depending on which one you want there is so much value packed into this little device i can be nothing but excited for it i just really hope the atem mini 2 has some 4k stuff and some uncompressed options and things like that honestly the thing that i am the most excited for with the atim mini is the fact that we are finally seeing big name production companies that would have typically been happy just making you know industry broadcast and production level gear that us youtubers would never be able to afford until they're 10 years old and on ebay or surplus auctions taking individual or you know smaller scale live streaming seriously and producing products that make that life easier and build a kind of upgrade path into the real stuff it's really freaking cool but thanks so much for watching this review and again the black magic pocket 6k is a phenomenal camera i was so tempted to just buy one for my webcam but i think i might be looking into the a7s2 for that we'll have some separate videos coming once i'm not so sick hopefully on my ultimate webcam guide for 2020 because i have many updates to make thanks so much for watching product links will be in the description below while you're down there hit subscribe for more tech education and stream\n"