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Blackmagic Cinema Camera Live Streaming – Overview
Typical broadcast cameras have SDI ports, which are more secure than HDMI and can use longer cables.
In addition, SDI cable connections carry other information, such as commands to change camera settings and a tally light that shows whether the camera is live or on standby.
BMD pocket cinema cameras, such as the 6K and 4K, don’t have SDI ports; instead, they have HDMI, an interface that only carries audio and visual signals.
However, Blackmagic has figured out how to convey additional info on HDMI cable connections.
They have updated the firmware on the Pocket Cinema 6K and Pocket Cinema 4K, transforming them into broadcast cameras.
However, you must connect either camera to a broadcast switcher such as the ATEM Mini or ATEM Mini Pro.
You need the broadcast switchers because you can’t directly connect Pocket Cinema 6K and Pocket Cinema 4K to your PC and begin live streaming. After all, they don’t have inbuilt IP encoders.
The switcher helps decode the signal. So, let’s examine how to live stream using Pocket Cinema 6K or Pocket Cinema 4K.
Using Broadcast Switchers to Live Stream On Cinema Camera 6K and 4K
The Pocket Cinema 6K and 4K are competent cameras. Both have an impressive 13 stops of dynamic range, which means they preserve more detail in the brightest and darkest areas of a video than typical camcorders.
This allows you to set the exposure to an indoor scene while still retaining the details of outdoor light, making both cameras ideal for live streaming.
In addition to the ATEM Mini and ATEM Mini Pro, Blackmagic Design offers other broadcast switchers, such as the Web Presenter and Ultra Studio 4K Mini, which can be connected to the Pocket Cinema 6K or Pocket Cinema 4K and used to live stream.
The Setup Process
As expected, connecting the Pocket Cinema 6K or 4K to a broadcast switcher like the ATEM Mini Pro is relatively easy.
Connect the HDMI cable to your Pocket Cinema camera on one end and the ATEM Mini Pro on the other.
The ATEM Mini Pro has four HDMI ports to connect up to four Pocket Cinema Cameras and live stream with them. You can switch among all your cameras using the numerous buttons on the ATEM Mini Pro.
Using Live Streaming Software
You need to adjust a couple of things for live streaming. First, you’ll need to download a streaming application.
One of the best streaming applications out there is OBS; it’s a free application, and it works well and is also reasonably simple to use.
- Start by downloading the OBS software from the OBS website and installing it.
- Next, turn on your Pocket Cinema Camera and launch the OBS application
- At first, you won’t see any images, but there is no need to panic; you have to add the source. To do this, click on the plus (+) sign in the sources tab and choose ‘video capture device.’
- OBS won’t detect the exact camera linked to the ATEM Mini Pro, only the ATEM MINI itself. However, once you add the source, you can rename it to BMPCC 4K or 6K.
- You might encounter an issue; both the preview display and source display show the camera’s user interface. It’s crucial to remember that you’re not recording videos, just running information from the monitor on the camera to the computer.
- Even if you hide the UI (user interface) by swiping up on the screen of your Pocket Cinema 6K or Pocket Cinema 4K, you will still get the info you want to be conveyed. As a result, head to the Menu on your Pocket Cinema camera, click on HDMI, and turn on the ‘Clean Feed’ feature.
- From this moment, the footage appearing on OBS should be clean.
- Now that you’ve finished configuring the settings, you can decide which streaming platform you’d like to use for live streaming. The options are vast, including Facebook Live, Twitch, and YouTube Live. As soon as you sign in, you can click on ‘Start Streaming.’
Final Thought
To sum up, thanks to firmware updates by Blackmagic Design, the Pocket Cinema 6K and Pocket Cinema 4K can now be used as live-streaming cameras via a broadcast switcher.
This is a very beneficial addition because you can live stream on one camera and connect up to four of them and live stream with no glitches.
See Also
How to Connect Blackmagic to Computer
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