Tutorial: Adding a remote guest to a Blackmagic Design ATEM Mini Pro live stream

As many know, I am an avowed fan of the Blackmagic Design ATEM Mini Pro.

But the other day I got to thinking; what if I wanted to do a stream that included a guest who was remote from me? How could I include that as a part of the overall Blackmagic Design ATEM Mini Pro setup seeing as it requires an HDMI feed to work in conjunction with the ATEM control software?

The obvious starting point was for someone to “phone in” using Skype or Facebook, but again, how could that be channelled into the Blackmagic Design ATEM Mini Pro?

One suggestion was to have the guest call via say Facebook and receive that call in the studio on a laptop. That in turn could have its external HDMI port connected to the Blackmagic Design ATEM Mini Pro.

Another was to receive the call on a smartphone or tablet, again using Facebook, Skype etc, and using a USB-C to HDMI cable, feed that into the Blackmagic Design ATEM Mini Pro.

The last, which I favoured as in my experience, USB to HDMI cables can be a hit and miss effect, is to use a Google Chromecast 2 into HDMI port 4 of the Blackmagic Design ATEM Mini Pro, receive the call on a tablet or smartphone and simply “cast it”.

You just need to have the Chromecast setup using Google Home and connected to wi-fi.

Works a treat!

By the way, I also tried it with a Chromecast version 1, but for some reason unbeknownst to me, the Blackmagic Design ATEM Mini Pro just refused to pick up the HDMI stream from it.

As you can see from the photo, I also use a Sandisk Extreme Pro SSD to record the streams.