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(00:00):
Instant replay is a commonly needed feature in live broadcast and users have been asking for it for years for the Blackmagic ATEM. There are a few third party solutions, but in this video I'm going to show you how you can do instant replay on an ATEM using DaVinci Resolve. I'm going to show you how you can do instant replay on an ATEM using DaVinci Resolve and how you don't even need the new Blackmagic Replay Editor Panel. I'm breaking this video down into specific chapters that'll make it easy to follow and to revisit when setting this up yourself. I'll start with an explanation of how this works, which I haven't seen explained anywhere else, and while it'll seem obvious once I explain it, it really isn't before setting it up. Then I'll map out the hardware and software configuration showing what hardware is required, what's optional, and most importantly, how the software is set up.

(00:52):
This too is really not explained clearly anywhere else I've found. The other videos I've watched on the topic, including those from Blackmagic, conveniently skip the extremely specific setup requirements and jump straight into the fun part; the live demo. We're not going to do that today. I'll show you exactly how to set it up. Then I'll do a demo, but only showing you the basic features. If you want a bigger deep dive into the full functionality, lemme know in the comments and then be sure to subscribe. However, honestly, I feel like once you have it set up and running from there, the user guide and the official Blackmagic videos can take you the rest of the way. But I assure you by the end of this video you will know how to do instant replay. And finally, I'll talk about how you can do this with minimal and even no additional hardware; just your ATEM Mini Extreme ISO and a computer, but I'll also explain what you're giving up by going that route. So let's get into it.

(01:45):
Instant replays are most commonly used in sports, but can be used for any live event; weddings, graduations, interviews, anything with a potential for exciting and unexpected moments. So how does it work? At its core, an instant replay is the playback of recorded video of a live event. This presents a particular challenge because you need a way to use the file you're actively recording of the live event, but not stop recording the live event to access it. Well, this is where one of the most remarkable features of the ATEM Mini lineup comes to play. The QuickTime files being written to the SSD by the ATEM Mini are constantly being closed, ensuring that the files are always readable. Originally, this was a safety precaution, but now it means that we can actually read those video files while they're still being written, without having to stop recording. When you load those files into Resolve, you'll actually see the file continuing to grow.

(02:41):
We access the video files on the SSD attached to the ATEM and can play back any portion of them, even while the ATEM is still recording. And because the ATEM is an ISO model, which records ISOlated streams of all camera angles simultaneously, we can access any camera angle, even the ones that weren't being broadcast. Okay, so we use Resolve to read and play back these growing files, but how do we actually get the video from Resolve live to air? Well, this is where an additional piece of hardware, an external playback device, comes into play, which I'll show you at the end of this video how to do without that hardware, although you'll be giving up a few things. But let's start with the way this was designed to work. You'll need either the Blackmagic Media Player 10G or the Blackmagic UltraStudio 4K Mini.

(03:28):
I've got the UltraStudio 4K Mini here, so that's the hardware I'm going to use. The US4K Mini is a really flexible Thunderbolt connected I/O device that allows video capture and playback for about a zillion different use cases. What makes it special for us here though is its ability to do live KEY and FILL playback. That means it can playback video with transparency by outputting regular video on the first SDI output – that's your fill – and simultaneously outputting a black and white Alpha channel mask on the second SDI output – that's your key – which the receiving hardware, in our case, the ATEM, combines to make transparent video. But why do you need Key and Fill for instant replay playback? Well, technically you don't, but Key and Fill gets used a couple of ways. First, it's used to play a stinger before and at the end of the replay indicating to the viewer a transition from the live event to a replay and back again. And the Stinger, which if you watched my previous video on how to make Stingers, you'll know, is a video with an Alpha channel.

(04:28):
It's that alpha that lets us draw the Stinger animation onto screen over a live video. Again, technically this isn't required. You could certainly indicate swapping between live and replay other ways, but this has just become a standard to which the viewing audience is used to and it looks good, but that's only part of how it's used. When I first started exploring this, I couldn't figure out how Resolve would tell the ATEM to switch to the replay video input, but then I realized that it doesn't have to. Instead of switching to the replay input, the Resolve output is fed into a Downstream Key where the key output from the UltraStudio determines if the replay video is visible or not. When we're not supposed to be seeing the output from Resolve, the UltraStudio is sending solid black on the key, which means we don't see anything from Resolve. When we do want to show the replay, the UltraStudio outputs white on the key, which shows everything from Resolve. And on the transition in and out of the replay that key transitions from black to white to match the Stinger animation, so we get that beautiful video with transparency. If you're confused, don't worry, this will become much more clear in the setup.

(05:37):
Now that we know what it's doing, let's get into the specific hardware and software configuration for how to do it. Also, I've published a written version of this with screenshots on my YouTube member Discord channel. So if you click that “join” button right next to the subscribe button here on YouTube, you can gain access to that Discord. Alright, first, you'll need an ATEM Mini Extreme ISO; either the HDMI or the SDI version. You can also build a much more complex version of this on the larger ATEM switchers like the Constellation models, but since they don't have ISO recording to an SSD, you actually have to use a HyperDeck for each camera to feed the recordings to a Cloud Store, which is then accessed over a 10G network. So yes, you can absolutely do this with a much larger configuration and even in 4K, but that requires a lot more hardware, and

(06:23):
is not the configuration we're setting up today. Okay. Obviously, you'll need whatever cameras you use for your live shows as well. You'll need an SSD drive to connect to one of the USB ports on the ATEM. You'll need a computer running DaVinci Resolve. This does work on the free version of Resolve, but with the Studio version, you'll get better slow motion playback; more on that later. Then you'll need a Blackmagic Media player 10G or the UltraStudio 4K Mini. If you're using the HDMI version of the ATEM Extreme as I am here, you'll also need two SDI to HDMI Micro Converters to convert the SDI outputs from the UltraStudio into HDMI for the ATEM. If you're using the ATEM SDI Extreme ISO, then you've got SDI all the way through, so no converters are needed. The connections are pretty straightforward.

(07:08):
Cameras as usual into the ATEM… USB SSD into USB Port B… computer into USB Port A… Thunderbolt from the computer to the UltraStudio. Then dual SDI cables from the UltraStudio back into the ATEM and SDI to HDMI Mini Converters if you're using the HDMI model. SDI-A is the fill output and SDI-B is the key output. I put mine into inputs seven and eight on the ATEM, respectively. Finally, you can purchase the $495 DaVinci Resolve Replay Editor. This is very cool hardware that lets you control everything about replay from a dedicated control panel, including speed ramping, pre-roll shortcuts, camera angle switching, and a ton more. If you're going to take replay seriously, you'll want this. There are certain replay functions that you need the panel for, such as slow motion playback, but for the basics you don't. I think it's really cool that you can get started with replay without buying the panel and then only purchase it if you truly need it. I've got a link to that panel down below, so you can check that out if you want to.

(08:10):
Now to the software setup, this has to be just right or this won't work. I spent hours trying to figure out the right combination because this is not clearly documented even in the Replay user guide, which by the way, all the replay instructions are not in the DaVinci Resolve user guide, even though the features are built into Resolve. You need to download the Replay Editor user guide from the Blackmagic website to dive deeper into this. I'll put a link to that user guide down below as well. At the end of each segment here, I'll put up a collection of marked-up screenshots so you can grab one screenshot for each setup stage or again, this is all documented on my Discord. First, open the ATEM Software Control app. Open the settings. Under the general tab, ensure that your Switcher Video S tandard is set correctly.

(08:54):
In my case, it's 1080p25. Then go to the Sources tab and you'll want to name the inputs for your fill and key so that they make sense. I've named mine “Replay FILL” and “Replay KEY”. This will just make it a lot easier to identify them later. Next, go to the Multiview tab. As you'll see in a bit, you're actually going to be able to see the live multiview inside of Resolve, which is how you monitor the show in real-time. So think about how you'll want to look at the different live camera angles. Now, unfortunately, the ATEM only lets you have one multiview layout, so whatever is set in here is what everyone looking at the multiview will have to see, but it can be useful to remove what's unneeded and prioritize what is. For example, say I'm doing a three camera show.

(09:38):
Maybe I want to see all three cameras big all the time. So I'll set this bottom quarter to be full size and set that to my overhead camera, and here I have my wide and my closeup. Then for this quadrant, I'll go ahead and set this one to be my Replay FILL and this one to be my Replay KEY, which is a good way for us to ensure that this is all set up properly, but once it is, you probably don't need to monitor that, but I'm turning it on for now. Then over here, let's show the Program, and here I'll leave it at Recording Status. Click Done. Next, go to the Outputs menu, Webcam out, and set that to multiview. Not only will this let us see the multiview output in Resolve, it also carries the time code that's critical to making all of this work. In the Output tab,

(10:24):
set your timecode generator to “time of day”. Finally, go to the Palletes tab and open Downstream Keys. Whatever is in the Downstream Key or DSK shows up on top of the program video. DSKs are most commonly used for persistent graphics like a network logo, so we're using it in a unique way here. Now, could you feed the replay into an Upstream Key instead? You totally could, especially if you wanted the replay to show up in a picture-in-picture instead of full screen. But in A DSK, it doesn't matter what's happening underneath it; this DSK will always be uninterrupted full screen video on top of everything else. So, we're using DSK1. Also, when you have multiple Downstream Keys, they are effectively stacked with the higher number being on the top of the stack. So if I wanted to have that persistent network logo on screen, even when the replay is playing, I'd put the replay into DSK1 and my network logo on DSK2.

(11:18):
So in the setup, go to Fill Source and set that to Replay FILL, and the Key Source to Replay KEY. Disable the Mask so we don't have any of our image cropped off, and enable premultiplied key. This will ensure that any soft edges you've built into your stingers will show up properly. And finally, turn on the DSK1. Don't forget to do that! DSK1, On Air. Okay, that's it for the ATEM setup. Here's a summary to make a screenshot of. Next, to Resolve. Launch Resolve, and before creating a new project, go to the Preferences, go to Video and Audio I/O, and set the Capture Device to Blackmagic Design – that's your ATEM – and the Monitor Device to the UltraStudio 4K Mini or of course, the Media Player 10G, if you're using that. You'll need to relaunch Resolve for these changes to take effect.

(12:13):
As a point of interest, you can also monitor the multiview from the ATEM by taking an HDMI out from the ATEM and sending that into the UltraStudio 4K and setting the UltraStudio as the capture device in the preferences we were just in. This is actually the way you have to do it if you're using a larger ATEM setup, but for this tutorial, we're keeping it as simple as possible. Create a new project and go straight to the Project Settings. Under the Master settings, make sure that your timeline resolution and frame rate are set accurately. In my case, again, that's 1080p and 25. Then we set up video monitoring. This is where it's easy to get hung up. Again, the resolution and frame rate have to be the same, so 1920 by 1080 and 25. Next, do not enable any of these other settings.

(12:58):
No, 4:4:4 and no Dual Outputs on SDI. Even though both of these might seem like they make sense to turn on, don't do it. Under SDI Configuration, set it to Single Link. “But Joseph, we're doing dual SDI output. Shouldn't at least one of these dual settings be on?” No, just no. I've lost hair over this! Leave them off, leave 'em off. Data levels need to be video and Video bit depth needs to be 10 bit. Click save. Now go to the Cut page and click this little icon here to enable the replay controls. Under this menu, make sure that Mute Replay Hardware SDI Outputs is enabled. What an odd thing. Why does that matter? Ha! So glad you asked. With that enabled, you now get dual SDI output meaning key and fill over your UltraStudio.

(13:57):
Congratulations, Blackmagic. You win the award for the least intuitive menu name anywhere, ever. Also enable Smart Render Cache. Now, when it comes to the slow motion settings and slow motion playback, unfortunately it doesn't seem that you can use the slow motion features for real-time live playback without the hardware panel. I think. If you figure out how to do it, by all means let us know in the comments, but if you do have the panel and you have a fast computer and you're on Resolve Studio, enable optical flow for replay and optical flow for timeline. That'll give you the smoothest slow motion playback. Okay, here's a screenshot summary for your screenshotting pleasure.

(14:48):
That is the setup. Now we're ready to play. Let's see how it works. First, start recording in the ATEM. Go to the output tab and under record, give your live show a name; I'll call this “replay demo”, and make sure that ISO Record All Inputs is enabled. And start recording. Now, head to Resolve, and on the Cut page, click Import, navigate to Locations and find the ATEM Mini Extreme ISO. And there you'll see your connected USB drive. That's where it is on the Mac. On Windows; I'm not sure where it'd be, but I have faith in you. You'll find it. Double click that drive to mount it, and there's the show that we just started, “replay demo”. I'll open it up and there's the video ISO files, and there we can see all eight ISO streams that are being recorded. I only need the first three angles, so I'll just select those and click open.

(15:39):
Now we see those showing up in Resolve with this little red dot next to them indicating that it is a live or growing file. Now, if I click on the multisource icon, it'll automatically find all the shots with the same time code lining them up for me. From here, I can scrub through what's already been recorded and we can see the live show. What you're seeing here is a couple seconds behind real time, and while you could actually run the entire show from this view, it's much better to watch the live event in real time. And to do that, you click on this little button here, the Input View, and that brings us to the multiview. So now we're seeing that multiview as we set it up earlier. This works because in the preferences, we set the capture device to be the ATEM, which is showing us the webcam output, which we set to multiview.

(16:26):
So now we can see the live show directly inside of Resolve, which means we're ready to go. Here's the basics of what we're about to do. When something exciting happens; someone scores a goal starts a fight, goes in for the kiss, you'll want to mark a POI or point of interest. As soon as you do, Resolve takes you back to the Multisource view, shows you where the POI was marked and backs up the playhead a few seconds and waits for you to hit the RUN button. When you hit run, it changes the key from black to white, so your replay is visible and plays the video. When you're done, you click DUMP and that turns off the replay revealing the program again. Watch. I'm going to do this by just having a little thing that I throw. So there's the action and then I quickly hit POI.

(17:11):
Boom. You can see it took me back to the multi-view. I can see the POI marker and it's backed me up six seconds. From here, I can scrub through and see everything else that was recorded and choose a different place to start my pre-roll if I want to, and I can choose a different camera angle. Let's go for the wide angle shot here. When I click run, watch the multi-view output as well and watch the video fill and how that's going to play the video playback, and the key, and how it's going to switch from black to white. Here we go. I click run the key switches to white and the video plays back and there's the event. When I'm done, I click dump and it dumps me back to the main view, and then you're ready for the next shot. That's the core of it.

(17:53):
Mark your point of interest. Adjust the pre-roll time if you want. Change angles if you want and play it back. What I did here of course, was all in Resolve itself, but to give you an idea of some of the things you can do with the replay panel, you have preset buttons for pre-roll times, and at the end of a replay, you can trigger another replay of another angle, even with a different pre-roll time, all by hitting different keys on the panel. As far as I can tell, you can't do that in software alone. You can change the angle that's playing back in software, but as soon as you touch the timeline, it dumps back to live. Watch. I'll back this up before the POI again and hit run. Now while it's playing, I can go ahead and actively switch angles and we're seeing different angles on the replay.

(18:37):
However, if I wanted to back it up to look at another angle, as soon as I click in the timeline here, it dumps the replay. So now we're back to the live show. So let's see what else we can do just in software. Let's get stingers in play. To activate stingers. Go to this menu and choose Auto Stinger On. That opens up the Auto Stinger wells, and now we're ready to import our stingers. I've got a bunch of these sitting in a folder on the desktop, and I'm going to bring in these three here; one, two, and three. These are all stingers that I built in the previous video about how to build stingers, and one of these I've made extra long, two seconds long, just so we can see a little bit more clearly what's going on here. Once your stingers are imported, go ahead and drag and drop them into the wells.

(19:19):
These are all ProRes 4:4:4:4 videos, meaning these are videos with built-in alpha channels. You can technically import a series of PNG files and have Resolve treat that as a video file, but I found if you try to use those as stingers, it doesn't quite work. It plays the first half, but not the second half on the incoming and on the outgoing, it doesn't play the first half, but plays the second half. I dunno why. So just use actual ProRes 4:4:4:4 videos. To choose which stinger you want to play, simply select it here. I'm going to choose the long two-second one. I'll go back into my live input and let's do another event. So again, we're going to use this so… it throws back and forth, it's so exciting! And, we mark a POI. We're now ready to go. We'll back it up a little bit more and click run.

(20:04):
Now we'll see the Stinger playback with that alpha channel. There's the playback of what we just did, so building up to the big event, and hoo hoo, there it is. And when we're done, we click on dump and it dumps us back out again. There's another really cool thing you can do in software and that's queue up a series of replays on a timeline or really any video you want, and play that back as a replay. First, there's a feature to drop whatever replay you just did onto a timeline. This could be a great tool to build a highlight reel or even to save multiple replays out for shorts. In fact, you could, during a live event, mark a POI play it back for the live audience, dump that to a timeline and render it out to a shared folder and have someone else grab it to post on the social media while the live event is still happening.

(20:48):
So cool. But let's look at how to make and playback a timeline. I'll start by dumping the replay that I just did. This button right here drops the most recent replay into a timeline, and there it is. I could trim this if I wanted or to, but I'm just going to leave it as it is. Now I can scrub through and just look for any other event that I might want to add. Let's go to a different angle. I'll mark an IN point and an OUT point there, and then add that to the timeline. Let's do another one. I'll go here, find some other event, mark another IN point, mark an OUT point, and add that to the timeline. Now I've got three different clips all queued up and ready to go. To play these in my live show. Make sure the timeline is selected. Click queue; that puts a red box around what is queued up to play next.

(21:32):
And then when you're ready, click on RUN. And just like before, it'll go ahead and do the stinger transition with the Alpha channel; bring that in and start playing that back. At any point when you're done, you can DUMP that and get back to the live show. That's enough to give you an idea of what you can do. There is more, especially if you have the Replay panel, including slow motion. But as you can see, even just in software, you can do quite a lot. So now let's see what you can do with the most minimal of hardware. The UltraStudio 4K Mini is what gives us the ability to have key and fill, which means not only can we have the stingers, but it also means that replay sits on a Downstream Key so you don't have to touch the ATEM when it's time for replay, but what if you don't have one of these?

(22:14):
Well, instead of putting the replay video on a Downstream Key, you can just switch to it in the ATEM like any other input. So if you wanted to do a replay, I'd start the replay in Resolve, then manually switch that input on the ATEM. And once the exciting part has passed, switch back to the live event again on the ATEM. But without an UltraStudio, how do you even get video from Resolve into the ATEM? There's at least two good ways to do this. The first would be to use an UltraStudio Monitor 3G, which just like the UltraStudio 4K Mini is a Thunderbolt playback device, but unlike the 4K Mini, it's playback only, it's single channel only, so no key and fill, and it's HD only, but it's also only $125 versus the $1,055 for the 4K Mini. And it has both SDI and HDMI output,

(23:03):
so no matter which ATEM Extreme model you have, it'll work. Again, you're giving up key and fill for stingers, and you'll have to switch the ATEM to the replay input manually, but you can do it. You could even do a limited Stinger animation in the ATEM itself, following tips I gave in the last “How to Make Stingers” video. But you can also do this without any extra hardware at all. Simply take an HDMI output from your computer directly into the ATEM, make sure it's not mirroring, so the computer sees the ATEM as a second monitor, launch Resolve, and set the Video Clean Feed to BMD HDMI, which is the ATEM. Now, whatever you play on a timeline in Resolve will show up full screen with no UI elements on the ATEM. One caveat is that while you can still view the ATEM's multi-view in Resolve, and you can still mark a POI, if you click RUN to play the playback, you'll see all camera angles at once on the output.

(23:59):
So instead of selecting the angle and clicking run, you have to double click on the angle to open it full size and click play instead. Small difference, but it works. You get your replay on the ATEM. So that's how this works. It's a lot, but it's really cool. I put a lot of time into figuring this one out since it really wasn't well documented. So if you've gotten this far, I hope you can reward me with a like and a subscribe and even consider joining the channel and gaining access to my Discord group. Lemme know in the comments how you'd like to use this, especially outside of the obvious sports ball games. And if you have questions, drop 'em in the comments below, or even better, in the Discord. Here's that Stinger video I've been talking about, so check that one out next. See you in the next video.