Q-SYS ATEM control from any panel in the building

Normally you run it with Blackmagic's software on a computer, or a dedicated hardware panel. That works.

But maybe you want the switcher's controls right next to everything else in Q-SYS. Or you want to run it from a few spots around the building.

A2Q handles both. It's Q-SYS ATEM control in two pieces that ship as one product: a Q-SYS plugin, and a small box called the A2Q Bridge. The bridge talks to the switcher. The plugin turns the switcher into regular Q-SYS controls.

From there it's your design. A touch panel or the UCI Viewer on an iPad. One spot or several.

One switcher, more than one place to run it

For example, at a corporate town hall, the AV team runs the show from a touch panel in the booth. Put the same A2Q controls on a second panel backstage and the stage manager drives the switcher too.

The two panels stay in sync. Cut from the booth and the backstage panel shows it, because the plugin mirrors the switcher's state back into Q-SYS.

Show each person only what they need

Take a church with a volunteer media team. The volunteer in the booth gets a UCI with only the basics on it. Camera buttons, Cut, Auto and fade to black. No keyers or aux routes to get lost in.

The tech director gets every A2Q control in the UCI Viewer on an iPad. Instant access to the switcher, from anywhere in the building.

Full ATEM control

At a small live production studio, the director's on the switcher and everyone else wants to know which camera is hot. A2Q gives them program and preview tally for every input, ready to drive lamps or UCIs.

The floor manager can flip the confidence monitor's aux to program, clean feed or multiview from an iPad. On a 2 M/E or 4 M/E Constellation, there's an M/E selector too.

Then the switching itself:

• Every input on program and preview, plus bars, color generators, media players and SuperSource where the model has them
• Cut, Auto and fade to black, with mix, dip, wipe and DVE
• Upstream and downstream keyers on and off air

A2Q works with every shipping ATEM family: Mini, SDI, Television Studio, and Constellation HD, 4K and 8K. The plugin reads the model when it connects and shows only the controls that model has. If the wrong switcher shows up, it tells you.

Presets and macros

In a lecture capture room, the instructor doesn't want a switcher. They want "camera on me" and "show my slides."

The A2Q controls are regular Q-SYS controls, so Q-SYS snapshots and scripts can drive them. Put a "Start class" button on the wall panel that recalls a snapshot. Or have a script fire it on a schedule before class. One snapshot sets up the whole switcher. Sources, aux routes, keyers. After that the instructor gets two buttons, Camera and Slides, and teaches.

ATEM macros work too. At the town hall, the lower thirds and the walk-in loop live in macros. The booth panel gets a button for each. A2Q can fire up to eight ATEM macros from Q-SYS. You see every macro's name, straight from the switcher, and whether it's still running.

Why there's a box in the rack room

Back to the rack room. There's one extra box in there, the A2Q Bridge. Fair to ask why.

We install a lot of Blackmagic switchers, so we wrote a native Q-SYS plugin first. It couldn't keep up.

The ATEM speaks a chatty protocol. It wants constant back-and-forth. A Q-SYS plugin runs its Lua on one thread, and one thread can't keep pace. Tally lags behind the cut. Feedback drifts. Every so often a cut goes missing.

So the protocol work moved to the bridge. It holds the session with the switcher and hands Q-SYS short one-line messages over TCP. The A2Q plugin reads those with almost no work, so your Core stays free for the rest of the design.

If the switcher reboots, the power cycles or the network blips, the bridge reconnects on its own. Nobody has to walk to the rack.

Put the bridge on the network, point your Core at it, drop the plugin into your design. Setup, diagnostics and firmware updates live in the bridge's web UI. The plugin is licensed to the bridge it came with, so there's no separate activation.

So, that project you're thinking of

Maybe it's a booth and a backstage panel. Maybe it's a lecture capture room that sets itself up before anyone walks in. If your ATEM is in a rack and the people who need it are somewhere else in the building, that's an A2Q job.

A2Q is in beta. Leave your email on the A2Q plugin page and we'll tell you when it ships.

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