Decklink Quad HDMI or Atem Mini for mobile conference live streams?
Hi there, I'm looking to build a lightweight, mobile live streaming kit for the conferences our company travels to around the world. As far as cameras, audio, and lighting goes, i'm all set:
- 3x camera sources (1x Sony FX6, 2x FX3, all in 1080 30p)
- MacBook Pro M4 Pro, 48GB RAM
- RØDECaster Pro II for audio + 3x shure mb7db
- Blackmagic DeckLink Quad HDMI card in a Sonnet Echo SE T5 enclosure
- Streamdeck
- OBS for switching + broadcast, using Singular.live for graphics + lowerthirds as a browser source.
+ lighting changes depending on venue
My issue:
Every "livestream setup" tutorial on YouTube uses an ATEM Mini / Pro / Extreme as the switcher. Not one shows a DeckLink + OBS workflow like what I'm building. We generally do remote live streams so I'm very used to using OBS and software switching. To me, it seems like simply having the four video sources always available in OBS, like I would in a remote online stream would be way easier and more flexible than having to run everything through the ATEM, and only having one video feed possible at a time.
But It's making me nervous I'm overcomplicating things or missing something obvious.
The only real downsides I can see now is the lack of ISO recording, or offloading the video processing to dedicated hardware. but since my streams will just be 1080 30p, I think my computer can manage this quite easily.
Has anyone actually run a DeckLink Quad HDMI → OBS workflow for live conference / event production?
Am I right that the ATEM Mini Pro ISO can't do native multi-box composition (host + guest + graphic simultaneously) without SuperSource?
Is the ATEM simply more reliable and thats why people choose it?
Am I missing anything? Quite new to doing this "IRL" so any advice would be appreciated
Thanks in advance.