Getting Started
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The other concept that is important to know about M/E style switchers, including ATEM, is the video on the
program and preview rows is technically called the background video. This is because the upstream (effects)
keyers and downstream keyers will overlay on top of this source. So you can load graphics into the keyers
and see them with the preview video and when keys are turned on, you will see the overlay on top of the
program video. This is very powerful and allows multiple layers to be built up.
Another great advantage of the ATEM M/E style of operation is you can tie keyers to the transition. This
means when you do a mix transition, you can also fade on or off keyers at the same time. This allows you to
build up a composition, and then bring the whole lot on air at the same time. This is what the next transition
buttons do, and you can select background for normal transitions, or select one or more keyers to transition
them on air.
You can even press multiple buttons on the hardware control panel to tie multiple keys and the background
at the same time. There are also dedicated downstream key tie buttons to tie downstream keyers to the
transition. Downstream keys also have dedicated cut and mix buttons and so are very flexible. Downstream
keyers are always layered over the top of everything including the transition, so are a great place to key bugs
and logos!
Finally, when your live production is finishing, it's nice to have a dedicated fade to black (FTB) control to fade
everything to black! You can see the dedicated fade to black control on the right side of the keyboard. This
lets you fade everything to black, and helps make sure you don't miss a layer. Fade to black is at the extreme
end of the processing chain so you get a clean fade of all sources.
The last part of an M/E style switcher is the select bus. This is above the program row, and simply allows
sources to be selected for effects processing and other purposes, and there is a label above this to show
what you’re switching. The select bus is commonly used to select key inputs, and aux outputs. It's a clean
switch, so when used to select aux outputs, you get a clean cut.
As you can see by this quick overview, M/E style of operation allows confident live production with good
feedback on what's going on and the state of your switcher and programming at any point in your production.
Once you learn the M/E style of operation, you can move between models of production switchers with little
retraining as they all work the same!
