Blackmagic Design ATEM Mini and Pocket Cinema 6K: Creative ideas for DIY video production

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We look a wildly powerful, but inexpensive video switcher and an astounding 6K video camera that can be used solo in a lockdown home video studio.

As we begin to settle in for what may be a long run working from home, many of us are finding we need to replicate some of the professional resources we had in the office, but at home. If you’ve been watching the late night talk show hosts post-pandemic, you’ll see Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, Trevor Noah, and more — all recording their shows from rooms in their homes.

Even if you don’t have a late night comedy audience, you may find you need to up your game with some broadcast-level gear to present a professional image. While everyone is making allowances for the “new normal,” it’s more important than ever to be professional, especially when working from a home environment.

As the attached video shows, I brought in two of their devices:

The Blackmagic ATEM Mini: The ATEM Mini is a powerful video switcher that can bring in four HDMI sources and switch among them, outputting video that appears to programs like Zoom and Skype as a webcam. The big key for me is that the ATEM Mini, a $295 device, contains the exact same broadcast quality green screen chromakey software found in their much higher-end devices.

The Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K: This is a camera used by pro videographers to shoot professional video. You’ll find Netflix shows filmed using this camera, for example. While all I’m doing is filming me in a lab or workshop, my interest was very much the 6K resolution of the camera. I was also very intrigued, because the camera uses the same EF lenses as my Canon DSLR, which meant that I wouldn’t need to buy new glass to use the new camera.

I ran some tests filming with the Pocket 6K in 6K resolution. The idea with this is that I can set the camera in place and then, in post production, move around the scene captured by the camera, including getting in tight on a portion of the image. You can see a very cool example of that in the attached video.

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