A Basic Blackmagic Setup for Remote Teaching
The Plan
As anyone who knows me will know I’m a huge fan of Blackmagic Design and the products and services that they provide. I wanted to look into what product they have that the everyday gamer, Remote Teacher or anyone really could use to help make engaging streams or presentations.
I’m initially going to be basing this setup around my needs. I work as a client trainer with Sigma Connected working from home and as much as I love Microsoft Teams and the features it offers I would love to be able to bring some of my live production skillsets into my sessions.
A great start to this, in my eyes at least, is to be able to bring in outside feeds such as interactive quizzes with onscreen overlays (think Who wants to be a millionaire but on a very tight budget), use multiple camera angles and bring in presenters using software other than MS Teams.
Teams has a fantastic feature called spotlight that allows you to pin one camera feed for everyone so it shows up on their screen nice and big I intend to use this so I’m not having to share my screen unless I need to, for product demos for example.
Requirements
Before I go much further then, I should probably make a list of what I think I may require and then as we go through I can tweak and change this as needed.
As I mentioned I’d like this to be a multicamera setup with at least 2 angles. One main angle will basically be on top of my monitor and another “side” angle will coincidently be focused towards a green screen.
Next up I’m going to need a vision mixer to mix the camera feeds as well as feed from my two laptops and some sort of key and fill that can produce on-screen graphics such as lower thirds or scoreboards and such. I’m going to need a way to get the Key and Fill out of an iMac and into the switcher.
I’m going to need a way of getting the mixed video feed from the switcher into the Laptop. I do have a HDMI to USB adapter that I got off AliExpress for about £20 but if I’m designing a full rack I would like something a bit more reliable.
I’m going to need to be able to insert audio into the mix too so a microphone for me at least would be a good idea.
I could probably do with replacing my dodgy lighting setup (A Desk Lamp, the ceiling light and some Nanoleaf Lines) for something a bit more professional too. Having said that I like the Nanoleaf Lines I may just need to utilise them a bit more.
The Gear
Cameras
Once the cameras are set they aren’t going to be moved or change passion, so I really don’t need a camera with a built-in display or any control really. As I’m wanting at least 2 of them the camera also needs to be cheap. The cheapest camera that Blackmagic make is the Micro Studio 4K G2. It’s a broadcast-quality camera in a tiny body. It has an active Micro Four Thirds lens mount paired with a Four Thirds sensor with 13 stops of dynamic range giving it great low light performance allowing it to produce stunning Ultra HD images in all lighting conditions. It has 2 micro BNC connectors (one for output and one for input (inc camera control) and they support 1-bit uncompressed video up to 2160p at 60 fps and two channels of audio on the output. It can also record Blackmagic RAW files to an External USB-C drive. The Micro Studio 4K G2 has an RRP of £966 according to the Blackmagic Website.
Lenses and Accessories
As this is a barebones camera then we’re going to need some accessories so we can actually use it. First off we’re going to need a lens and the camera has an active MFT lens mount I’d like a small lens that can be controlled by the switcher. I’ve decided on the Panasonic Lumix 14-42mm F3.5-5.6 – MFT (available on CVP for £329) As its name suggests it’s a 14-42mm lens with a variable f stop of 3.5-5.6. Whilst it has built-in Optical Image Stabilisation built in, that won’t be used as it will be permanently mounted. One of my major reasons for this choice of lens is the Power zoom function that will allow the lens to be controlled from the camera.
Now we have a camera and lens we need to be able to mount it. I’ve decided that as the cameras are going to be permanently mounted I’m going to mount them to the wall, One behind my monitor and one to the wall to the right of my desk. Elgato makes a wall mount for cameras and lighting gear handily called the Elgato Wall Mount and it is available directly from them for £29.99. I’m not sure if the mount would give me enough room between the camera and the wall but Elgato dose supply the Elgato Flex Arm L for £49.99 which is a 4 pack of arms that can be attached to the wall mount that comes in a variety of sizes.
Finally, we are going to need to get the video feed out of the camera and none of Blackmagic Swicthers have SDI Micro BNC connections so We’ll need to convert the output to regular BNC. Canford makes a Micro BNC to Female BNC cable that’ll do the job nicely though it is a bit pricey at £58 a cable. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any cheaper options on CVP as the only other options fit the push connect Micro BNC found on Blackmagic’s older Micro Studio Cameras.
Graphics
Well now we have the camera setup, let’s look at getting graphics into the switcher. I’m going to be using a Mac Mini to produce the live graphics with things such as Lower thirds with important information as well as scoreboards and other bits and pieces. I would use the laptops I have been provided by work but one is a Chromebook which is nearly useless when it comes to this sort of thing and the other, while it’s a Windows laptop, is so locked down I can’t make any changes to anything.
I’d love to go with the base model iMac but I would really prefer to have the two additional USB ports and the ethernet connection to make sure I have a stable network connection as I’ll also be using the Mac outside of work for other things, which I may talk about in a post in the future. I’m also going to bump the memory up to 16GB as 8GB is a little rubbish in this day and age and as much as I would like to add more I really don’t want to pay for the Apple Tax. I’m not going to add this to the cost of this setup but for those that are interested the iMac setup is going to cost £1,958 on the Apple Website.
I’d love to go with the base model iMac11 but I would really prefer to have the two additional USB ports and the ethernet connection to make sure I have a stable network connection as I’ll also be using the Mac outside of work for other things, which I may talk about in a post in the future. I’m also going to bump the memory up to 16GB as 8GB is a little rubbish in this day and age and as much as I would like to add more I really don’t want to pay for the Apple Tax. I’m not going to add this to the cost of this setup but for those that are interested the iMac setup is going to cost £1,958 on the Apple Website.
With that detour out of the way let’s look at how we are going to get the graphics out of the iMac and into the switcher. Black magic once again comes to the rescue here. They make a Thunderbolt 3 device called the UltraStudio HD Mini that has a RRP of £558. The UltraStudio range of products gives you the option to be able to either take one SDI feed and feed it into a computer or take a video feed from the computer and send it to the switcher with transparency information (key and fill).
These are great for producing graphics on the fly and I tend to use live graphics at events and productions rather than premade as anything can happen at the last minute. I’m only going for the HD option here as there is no way I’m going to be able to send a 4K stream out of the house with my wife complaining I’m breaking the internet.
I’m going to need to be able to connect the ultraStudio to the iMac. All we need is a single Thunderbolt 3 Cable. Apple Sells a Belkin Connect Thunderbolt 3 Cable for £24.99 that will do the job perfectly.
- I Suppose, you’re wondering why I’m going with the iMac rather than a Mac mini. In that case, this is going to be a pretty much permanent install so I’m not worried about portability and I’d rather not have a million wires going across an already wire-filled room… It’s becoming a bit of a hazard. ↩︎
Switcher
As I have at least 6 video feeds coming into the switcher (2 Cameras, 2 Laptops and Key & Fill from the Ultra Studio) I’m going to be going for the ATEM SDI Extreme ISO that has an RRP of £1518. I’ve gone for the ISO version as occasionally I record sessions that will be going out to the company as a whole and would like to be able to edit the session beforehand. The ISO model records each video feed separately and also produces a Davinci Resolve File that has all of the feeds in it already along with an edit that is identical to the live feed. this will massively cut down on the post-production time as I will only need to make a few tweaks here and there.
Getting the Camera feeds into the ATEM is really simple, just a pair of 2M BNC cables (£44.54 each) to and from each camera. As I mentioned earlier this will give me control of the cameras remotely the only thing I wouldn’t be able to do is change their position which will be locked off anyway.
The laptops though are a little different as they don’t have an SDI output on them only HDMI. Once again though Blackmagic has a solution for that. Enter the Terranex Mini HDMI to SDI 12 Converter with an RRP of £558. A 2M BNC cable and a 1M HDMI Cable (£17.99 Each) connected to the converter and to either the switcher or the laptop and away we go.
I went with the Terranex version of the converter rather than the micro converter as again I’ll not be using these elsewhere and they will be installed permanently. I’m going to convert one of my sets of shelves into a mini rack as part of this process as they will fit nicely in there also with the UltraStudio. The downside to this approach is that Blackmagic only makes a 12G version of the converters in the Terranex form factor so no cost savings to be made by going this route.
The Cost
As you can probably guess already, this setup isn’t exactly going to be cheap. That does come with using broadcast gear to produce content though, nothing broadcast is ever cheap.
| Product | Cost Ex VAT | Cat inc VAT | Qty | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Micro Studio Camera 4K | £805 | £966.00 | £2 | £1,932.00 |
| Panasonic Lumix 14-42mm F3.5-5.6 – MFT | £274 | £329.00 | £2 | £658.01 |
| Elgato Wall Mount | £29.99 | £2 | £59.98 | |
| Elgato Flex Arm L | £49.99 | £2 | £99.98 | |
| Canford Micro BNC to BNC Female Cable | £48.33 | £58.00 | £4 | £231.98 |
| UltraStudio HD Mini | £465 | £558.00 | £1 | £558.00 |
| Belkin Connect Thunderbolt 3 Cable | £24.99 | £1 | £24.99 | |
| ATEM SDI Extreme ISO | £1,265.00 | £1,518.00 | £1 | £1,518.00 |
| Terranex Mini HDMI to SDI 12 Converter | £465.00 | £558.00 | £2 | £1,116.00 |
| 2M BNC cable | £37.12 | £44.54 | 8 | £356.35 |
| 1M HDMI Cable | £17.99 | 2 | £35.98 | |
| Total | £6,591.27 |
Just under £6,600 is quite expensive for what is basically a couple of webcams and a switcher. I don’t know if I would ever go down this route unless a) work decides they are going to be really nice and give me the money, b) someone at Blackmagic sees this post and goes you know what this guy is awesome, let’s send him some stuff or c) I come into some money and this would all be bought as part of a larger kit that I would use to start my own Live production business.
So with that in mind, I think another post in the not-so-distant future may be in order where I look into other solutions. I hear the Elgato have just brought out a new range of products they are calling Neo. Might be worth a look.
As per usual I’d love to know your thoughts. Do you think this is too Expensive? What would you change? What suggestions do you have for a non-blackmagic setup on a cheaper budget? let me know below or pop a comment on your social platform of choice.
