How to build an ATEM Rackmount Case

I’ll be honest, we had one of those gigs back in March where everything went south.  It was cold, raining, and of course some of the gear wasn’t playing right with each other on location.

 

Reflecting upon that gig convinced me that I needed to streamline the live video streaming setup process and the best way would be to put all the live-streaming gear in a rapidly deployable rack case.  I filmed the whole process on the Blackmagics and my trusty iPhone 12.  Now this isn’t a totally step by step tutorial but more of an overview. I’m sure you can figure most of this out for yourself.  Anyway’s here’s the saga for you.  It’s really long so feel free to skip ahead to the end for the payoff!

 

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TRANSCRIPT!

I’ll be honest.

We had one of these gigs back in March

where everything went south.

It was cold. It was raining.

And of course, some of the gear

wasn’t playing right with each other

when on location. Reflecting upon that gig

convinced me that I needed to streamline

the setup process.

And the best way would be

to put all that livestreaming gear

in a rapidly deployable case.

I filmed the whole process on my black

magics and my trusty iPhone 12.

Now, this isn’t a totally step

by step tutorial, but more of an overview.

I’m sure you can figure most of this out

for yourself.

Anyways. Here’s the saga for you.

It’s really long, so feel free to skip

ahead to the end for the payoff.

 

Today for this tech talks episode, we are going to build a rig for the ATEM

mini extreme ISO.

So you see, I’ve got all this stuff

delivered from Amazon

along with some existing parts

I’ve got, which were probably

also delivered by Amazon.

I’ve already got this SEETEC 15

inch monitor installed here

and we’re going to put the ATEM here

and on the bottom the sliding rack.

It’s going to slide out

like this, hopefully.

And on top of that, we’re going to put the

hyper deck

and in the back

we’re going to have a plate

with all the HDMI

connections and Ethernet connections here

and the Furman power conditioner up here,

which hopefully I think when this leans

back, it’ll help support it for travel.

OK. This is my experiment.

I’ve never done this before.

Let’s see how it goes.

Here’s some B-roll of the gear

we’re going to insert later

There’s that.

Here we go.

This will solve some of our noise issues.

Oh, yeah.

Bunch of HDMI connectors.

This drawer,

which I’m not exactly sure where

I’m going to put right

now, but I think it’ll come in handy.

A couple of SDI connectors

and here we got a box full of HDMI cables

and dual lock, 3M dual

lock, low profile.

Reclosable Fastener instead of Velcro.

And I don’t dig Velcro.

I think this is better.

This drawer to be installed in here somehow

(Let’s) See if the ATEM fits

Boom

there we go.

Hey, I think it’s going to go up here

OK, so the cables are too short,

but I don’t want to stop the shoot.

I’m just going to couple them together

to make two feet

for now while I wait for the replacements

So you need one of these switches

because all these things

talk via Ethernet and this

mini router here, wifi router is great

so that you can connect your laptop

to this wirelessly

Maybe you put the router,

the switcher here in the router here

I’m hungry.

It’s time for lunch.

I’ve been working hard at this.

Thanks for sticking with me.

All right.

So the last piece of the puzzle came in

while I was at lunch.

Hopefully

the last piece is the Teranex mini rack shelf

one screw.

Well, I kind of like that. OK.

One screw sure

We’ve done a lot of damage today.

Everything’s in there

that needs to be in there.

I’m happy with the way

this is working out so far.

The only

thing I’m not happy with

is this mixer location.

I can’t access the one XLR port

on this side and the headphone jack.

The headphone volume I mean.

Other then that, this is good

So we’re going to call it a day.

Two foot cables are coming tomorrow,

and then we’ll revisit this.

We’re back a couple of days later.

I have the missing pieces to the puzzle

finally in

and changed a couple of things around.

Let’s get right into it.

Cat 5 cables. OK.

Cat 5  patch cables

and these XLR panel mounts.

My thought was maybe bypassing the mixer,

the audio mixer,

and just going straight

from the back.

Plugging these in here

It’s just give me a stereo connection

to the input of the A.T.M.

Mic one, since you can switch

between line and Mic on the ATEM

I may be able just to circumvent

having a mixer.

We’ll see.

Let’s finish this panel

Just have to Install these two and I’ll be done.

Look at that.

The first thing to do is run

the two foot cables

2ft HDMI cables

from the ATEM to here

Let’s

see if this is actually going to close

Oh, man. It’s heavy.

Yeah, that’s a good

50 or 60 pounds

Yeah.

Camera control.

Focus.

I think I’m done.

got the hyper deck,

the monitor

the LIVE U

and around the back

got the patch panel,

switcher, goodlife router,

Apple TV,

FURMAN

and…

2 SDI

One in, one out

2 XLR

A blank space for something else.

Probably USB C in the future.

And then Ethernet.

CROSSROCK

A case for the many.

There’s my plug.

Turn that puppy on everything turns on.

I love that.

voilà

tonight we added

two bidirectional converters

for the

can’t see, but the A & B output of the hyper

deck.

for doing chroma key,

so we’ve got the SDI

A & B, going into the hyperdeck going into the bi directional converter

and then out HDMI to the patch panel

into six and seven.

I also added these

modems here to the live U.

Maybe not the best place for them,

but we might need to get USB

cable extensions and place them out here

on clamps or something.

But so far so good

Inside this house they are…

at 2867 on one

and 2661 on another

plus we’re plugged in Ethernet too

super solid streaming.

I think this

just streaming that angle

and the hyper deck

has monitor out going into five

and A going into six B going into seven.

So I actually three inputs from the hyper deck

eight is

the Apple

TV which doesn’t seem to be on anymore

and that was 1234 for cameras

5 can also be an SDI camera

if in fact this is going through 5

hyperdeck’s like a extra SDI converter

and could also play like a video track.

Here we go.

The last piece of the puzzle for real

this time is here.

This USB C port with two USB-Cs

ended up being like $40

with shipping and handling and everything.

So we’ve got that

one hooked up to the hard drive.

Their both hooked into the USB-C outs

and have 928 gigabytes left

on that drive

sweet

That’s it not doing anything else

It’s time. I finally completed this

amazing Rack Mount case for the ATEM

and wow, super happy about it.

Last part finally came in today.

I’m going to give you guys a quick tour

and then we’re going to

put it all together and take it out

to the car and go to Sunset Cliffs

or some kind of beach

and do a livestream test from there.

Just one switch

there you go.

Got the rack panel here

with eight HDMI inputs

and two outputs.

One SDI in, one SDI out

2 XLR

line level ins

and 2 USB C

ports right here,

plus another Ethernet port

and Ethernet switch eight

channel Ethernet switch, the good life,

little wi fi 5G router thingy

furman power conditioner.

These cool little lights that come out

come in handy.

Eventually at a gig

extra outlet source here

up here we’ve got two black magic

bi directional converters

monitors.

Cool because it has four HDMI ins

and four HDMI out.

So that can be used

for some kind of signal distribution later

plus V-Mount here

we got the dual USB C connections.

One’s going to the hard drive

so this place right here

and the other

is going to the laptop

for the software control.

This port is connected

directly to the Live U Solo

so if I had to run a second

internet connection straight to the Live

U solo,

but for now I’m just patching it into the

switch over here.

And this is the one

main internet connection

Apple TVs in here

that’s connected too

Here you go, here’s our Apple TV on camera eight

this is my red shots of the black magic

bi directional converters

also have a

five volt

to 12 volt adapter for powering the Accsoons

from USB. Got some USB adapters in here

super clean.

I’ve got everything hooked up.

I feel very confident about it.

Time to pack

this sucker up, put her in the car,

take her to the beach

and do some live streaming. See you there

Boom. Good to go

See you at the beach.

We’re about to drive to Fiesta Island

and see if we can do

a totally battery powered livestream.

bringing this

to see how it works as a battery backup

system.

And I’m

also going to plug it into the car.

And there’s this little guy here

and then two cameras

computer

guitar.

Fiance,  dog.

Alright, see you at Fiesta Island

Hey.  Made it out to Fiesta Island and I”m about to see  how long it takes

to set up my livestream rig

with 2 wireless cameras

Blackmagic 6K Pros

and start the timer now

Ok. So the timer says 14 minutes and 47 seconds

let’s call it 15 minutes

2 camera wireless livestream up

streaming to Vimeo

with the Live U Solo

the one thing I notice it’s

hard to see the monitors

we need to do something about that

or I need a brighter monitor

8000 up, 2 cameras

drawing 100 or 110  watts of power

OK so as you can see we’re streaming

very high quality

consuming 9277

kilobits per second of bandwidth

using LRT

one modem is significantly faster

5760 for USB 2

OK it’s bouncing balancing them out right now

after about

10 minutes of streaming

and this is what it looks like

streaming the Vimeo

checking the stream out on Vimeo

it’s doing it 29.97 frames

per second good connection

so I could even control the switching

from the driver’s side here

if I had a monitor.

I do have a USB C monitor

I could put right here and

try that next time we go out

after like an hour and a half down to

still at half level

a laptop wirelessly connected

recording

2 Accsoons

hey so it’s

been about 2 hours.  Stream is still going

strong. Did lose this camera just didn’t

have the batteries charged

well enough but here

the camera is still recording

still streaming to Vimeo

laptop still going

the battery is at

11.5 volts,

100 watts about halfway through.

So maybe we have another hour, hour

and a half, 2 hours.

I’m not sure it’s getting late though.

It’s time to head home.

So the camera is still going strong.

Probably go another hour

The Accsoons

seem to last forever.

OK, that’s my story for today.

Thanks for watching.

Hey, if you’ve made it this far

through the video,

you must be a real tech geek like me.

Cheers to you.

Yeah.

I ended up doing a test at the studio

with the Duracell Power Station,

and it ran the setup for three and a

half hours after a full night of charging.

Which is probably long enough to diagnose

a power outage, but at the same

time was a bit disappointing

for such a large and heavy system.

I think I’m going to explore some lithium

battery options for backup power.

I want something that will run this rig

for at least 5 hours.

But I’m so glad I took the time

to make this ATEM rackmount case.

I looked at a couple of pre-made options

out there,

but none of them really fit what I needed.

So I went out and created my own vision.

At the end of the day, all the parts

cost around $4600 for everything,

minus the extreme ISO and the hyper deck,

which I already had.

Money well spent though and I can’t wait

to take this out for real gigs.

It’ll make my life so much easier.

As always, thank you for watching

Please share and subscribe.

I’ll try to answer any questions in a

timely manner and I want to hear from you.

What would you do differently?

What would you add to this rig?

Let me know.

The affiliate links are listed

below as well

should you wish to support our cause here

at Cinema Viva.

as we’re taking Tech Talks on the road

to NAB the National Association

of Broadcasters in Vegas,

this week, so stay tuned for live streams

and coverage from there.

As always,

I wish you the best and mucho success!

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