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.
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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!