ATEM Controller

The ATEM Controller plugin gives Q-SYS programmers a full, stateful interface to a Blackmagic ATEM switcher without the latency and CPU-load problems of running ATEM control directly in Lua.

Ships with the ATEM Bridge hardware. The plugin and the bridge are sold and shipped as one product. The plugin will not function without the bridge, and the bridge is purpose-built for this plugin. See the ATEM Bridge product page for the hardware side of the pairing.

The bridge terminates the noisy ATEM UDP protocol on a dedicated single-board computer and exposes a clean TCP command stream. The plugin consumes that stream, mirrors switcher state into Q-SYS controls, and exposes program, preview, transition, keyer, macro, aux, and tally surfaces to any UCI or script.

Supported switchers

Every shipping Blackmagic ATEM switcher is supported, and the Q-SYS UI adapts itself to the model. Input counts, M/E count, USK and DSK counts, aux outputs, multiviews, clean feeds, color bars, and SuperSource all light up or hide based on what the connected switcher actually has:

• Mini family: ATEM Mini, Mini Pro, Mini Pro ISO, Mini Extreme, Mini Extreme ISO
• SDI family: ATEM SDI, SDI Pro ISO, SDI Extreme ISO
• Television Studio: HD, HD8, HD8 ISO, 4K8
• Constellation HD: 1 M/E, 2 M/E, 4 M/E
• Constellation 4K: 1 M/E, 2 M/E, 4 M/E
• Constellation 8K

The plugin reads the live model on connection and surfaces a model-mismatch indicator in the connection sidebar if the running switcher does not match the model declared in Q-SYS Designer. No surprises mid-show.

What you get in Q-SYS

• Program and preview source selection across every input, plus black, bars, color generators, media players, and SuperSource (model-dependent)
• Transitions: Cut, Auto, Fade-to-Black, plus style selection (Mix, Dip, Wipe, DVE) and rate control
• Keyers: per-DSK on-air and tie controls, per-USK on-air and type controls
• Macros: trigger up to eight macros, with live macro name and running state mirrored back from the switcher
• Aux outputs: route each aux to any input, program, preview, clean feed, or multiview, on switchers that support them
• Tally: per-input program and preview booleans, ready to drive lamps, UCIs, or downstream tally outputs
• Multi-M/E support for 2 M/E and 4 M/E Constellation switchers
• Connection diagnostics with model-mismatch detection so you know if the wrong switcher shows up on the other end

Why a bridge

If a Q-SYS Core could run this plugin on its own, we would have shipped it that way. We tried. Lua is single-threaded, and the ATEM protocol is chatty enough that one Lua thread cannot keep up with the polling rate without dropping events: switcher state goes stale, tally lags, and cuts get missed. The bridge moves that protocol work onto a dedicated single-board computer, leaves the Core free for everything else in the design, and gives Q-SYS a stable TCP surface that feels like a native peripheral.