With the ecosystem that Blackmagic Design has built around the ATEM, do you see a market for the OC products?
ASKED BY · Douglas Carmichael · 25 SEP 2026 · ▶ 00:46:37
Chris notes the ATEM ecosystem integration (with Blackmagic cameras) is important and feels seamless like Apple's ecosystem. He argues OC lacks this broader ecosystem, though sees potential for new entrants without existing tech debt to consider OC as a versatile option.
Courtney argues OC addresses weaknesses in ATEM: no analog audio, poor audio inputs on minis, HDMI-only or SDI-only per line. OC offers both HDMI and SDI per channel, XLR audio, USB-C, NDI, and SDI output—capabilities ATEM won't add due to philosophy differences.
Jason acknowledges there may be a market for OC products but notes they're too new and most panelists already use Blackmagic gear.
Summarised by AI from what the panel said. Watch the moment for the full answer.
From the transcript.
Machine-transcribed, so it may contain errors. Every timestamp opens the episode at that second.
46:22Kudos to Guy for giving us breaking news. I feel like we need a stinger or something. Next question. Douglas Carmichael asks, with the ecosystem that Blackmagic Design has built around the ATEM, do you see a market for the OC products? Jason. I'm sure there is one, but they're too new and we all have Blackmagic. So, I mean, I don't think – I certainly don't have one.
46:46Courtney? Yeah, I think for the individual creator or someone like us who are just, you know, sending stuff up to a Zoom meeting or a podcast with live podcasts with interaction or, you know, if you're producing stuff for, you know, videos, educational videos, et cetera. I think the OC addresses – what they've done is they've taken all the weaknesses of the ATEM line, which no analog – no decent analog audio inputs on the ATEM minis.
47:17All those problems, SDI or HDMI but not both on the ATEM mini lines and even the extreme lines. So they've solved all of those problems. They have, you know, USB-C inputs, video inputs for webcam inputs as well. You know, so they've covered all the weaknesses in the ATEM switcher line, which an NDI output, which is another, not SDI. It does have SDI output with the OC-12, the one that I showed earlier.
47:50But it has SDI and HDMI outputs and NDI outputs. So it covers all the bases, which ATEM will never do because, you know, they're at war with new tech. They don't want to support NDI. So, yeah, I don't think ATEM is going to be able to catch up. Maybe they will. Maybe they'll add good audio inputs. We'll see. Fenwick? I think Douglas is absolutely right, though.
48:18I think that the ecosystem is important. And the way the ATEM talks to the Blackmagic cameras is really awesome. And I think that it's sort of a thing kind of like, you know, I know you hate this, Courtney, but it's sort of like the Apple ecosystem. I love the way my phone and my computers interact and that I don't have to, you know, have a PhD or download a bunch of additional, you know, utilities or whatever to be able to copy and paste between things.
48:50And the ecosystem is not something that shows up well on a spreadsheet or a balance sheet. It's a feeling that you take away. And yes, I know that everything I do between my phone and my computer, you could do between an Android and a Windows machine. But I like the fact that it's all in one. And I think the ATEM ecosystem is really great.
49:19And I look at companies like OC and I go, yeah, it's great. You know, it's great. But you don't have the rest of the ecosystem. And, you know, maybe they have an intention to build the OC camera, but that's a big, that's a big. Now, Chris, the Windows phone was amazing, okay? Was. That was a joke. It was terrible. It was the worst thing ever.
49:40I look at the OC stuff and I think about much like some of the folks in the chat are saying, I think about somebody who's just getting started who doesn't have any ecosystem or tech debt that they have to like mold into. into. And if I were making a recommendation to somebody that was, like a local school or a local house of worship is starting a video program from scratch and they've got
50:11kind of hand-me-down stuff that's a hodgepodge of different things, I would be more inclined to recommend a product that can do SDI and HDMI and have XLR in than something that they need to build a bunch of individual components around. Or if I wanted to have something that was fairly inexpensive that I knew I could get a dozen of and then either send them out with students or put one in a truck or put one
50:35at each school, the ability to connect two more things and be a little bit more versatile, even if the software isn't as nice and even if it doesn't have as many things that can can go around it. I think there's something to be said for, okay, you're going to have to muddle through some of the harder to use parts of this product, but it's going to be able to be glue in
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