Can you remind me again: What causes the ATEM UVC outputs to crush the blacks? What could you do about it?
ASKED BY · André Doelle · BERLIN · 30 OCT 2026 · ▶ 00:28:41
ATEM USB outputs use MJPEG compression with a hardware encoder chip that crushes blacks; workaround is to use a separate external encoder like Roland UVC that uses YUY2 color space with better fidelity.
Black crushing is an inherent hardware design problem; describes it as both stupid and long-standing, arguing Blackmagic should solve the root issue rather than requiring users to work around it.
Speculates the issue may relate to legacy UVC standard's need to preserve colors for computer UI; suggests manufacturers maintain backwards compatibility by continuing the old behavior.
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From the transcript.
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28:21claustrophobic look. You need a wide shot. But yeah, I'm sorry. We've talked about this in a round for way too long. Nevermind. Next question. This is also where Alex just talked about how nice it is to have an odd number of people on your roundtable because it makes it really nice to shoot the gaps. If you need another piece of inspiration, Paul, I would take a look at the Conan Needs a Friend podcast.
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31:37Can you remind me again what causes the ATEM UBC outputs to crush the blacks? What could you do about it? ATEM, remind me. Alexander. We have talked about this, I feel like, thousands of times over the last six years. I feel like, you know, this is probably a comment for the web team with that new website that we're developing. this should be a button at the top right hand corner, ATEM Black Crush, get your answers here.
32:05That should be right on the front page. Basically, Andre, it is just the encoder chip inside that product that is using MJPEG compression, which is basically compressing. I think it's every single frame is a compressed JPEG image. So it's not great. You cannot change that. That That is a hardware design. They chose to do that. Other USB to HDMI encoders, for example,
32:31like one of the reasons why I don't use the USB output on my ATEM is because of this. So I take the HDMI out of my ATEM and I go into a separate encoder. I have a Roland UVC encoder, and that basically uses YUV2, I think. Yeah, that's in the YUV color space, which separates chrominance from luminance. YUY. Yeah, YUY2 or YUV2.
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