webatem 1.1.0

Browser control for ATEM switchers. Run the server on a Mac, a Windows PC or a Linux box, and control your ATEMs from any device on the network — desktop, laptop, tablet or phone — in a browser. WebATEM finds the switchers for you and gives you the whole control surface: switching, keyers, audio, media pool, macros. Run the server, open a tab, cut the show.

_{Download it, open it, and your switchers appear.  ·  Windows is a zip: unzip the folder anywhere and run webatem.exe inside it.  ·  The Linux build runs on desktop and headless servers.}

Three ways to run it, all simple:

• Just you, right now → download it for your Mac or Windows machine and open it. It lives in your menu bar / system tray (with a Start at login switch), opens your browser, and your switchers appear. Like ATEM Software Control, but in your browser — and on every device on the network.
• Your whole team, always on → host it on a Linux box, VM or Raspberry Pi with one Docker command; everyone opens a URL — no installs, no accounts.
• Already have Python? → pipx install "webatem[desktop]", then webatem.

Every way of running it auto-discovers the ATEMs on your network (Bonjour/mDNS) and lists them by name, exactly like ATEM Software Control.

Get started

Option A — Download it (Mac, Windows)

1. Click your platform's Download button at the top (or the Releases page).
2. Open it. The icon appears in the menu bar / tray and the launcher window comes up: pick the interface and port if the defaults are not right, then Launch GUI opens the control page in your browser with the ATEMs on your network listed. Pick one and you're controlling it.

That's the whole setup — nothing to install alongside it, no Python, no Docker.

While it runs it is a small window plus an icon in the menu bar (Mac) / system tray (Windows), the way Bitfocus Companion works — nothing in the Dock or on the taskbar, only the icon. The window shows Running and the address other devices use, and holds the settings: Interface (all of them, one adapter, or this computer only), Port, Start minimized, Run at login, with Launch GUI (opens the control page in your browser), Hide and Quit. Closing the window just hides it; the tray menu is three items — Show/Hide window, Launch GUI, Quit. Changing the interface or port restarts the server on the new address right there; handy on a laptop with Wi-Fi, Ethernet and a VPN at once. Launch GUI opens the address shown — the real interface and port, the same one other devices use (this computer also answers at 127.0.0.1 whichever interface is chosen). Nothing listens until you have picked an interface in the window — at every launch: the window opens on Not running and waits for your choice; port, Start minimized and Run at login are remembered. The default port is 8880 (Bitfocus Companion has 8000); if the port is taken anyway, the next free one is used and the window says so.

Option B — Host it (a whole team; always on)

Run it on a Linux box, VM or Raspberry Pi on the same network as your ATEMs (the ATEM-Software-Control-on-a-server model). The published image is built for amd64 and arm64:

docker run -d --name webatem --network host --restart unless-stopped \
  -v webatem-data:/app/data ghcr.io/lucas-romanenko/webatem:latest

Open http://<that-box>:8880 from any device on the network. It comes back automatically on reboot. No .env file needed — every setting has a working default (SQLite DB + a generated secret key live in the webatem-data volume); see .env.example for knobs like PORT, TIME_ZONE, ALLOWED_HOSTS. (In Docker the address and port come from that environment.) Prefer Compose? The repository's compose.yml runs the same image: docker compose up -d.

Without Docker: the webatem-linux-x64 binary from the Releases page runs headless too — on a machine with no display it skips the browser and tray and prints the address to open from another device:

WebATEM is running.
  On this machine:      http://127.0.0.1:8880/atem/
  From another device:  http://192.168.1.50:8880/atem/

Keep it up with a systemd unit, tmux or nohup.

Why Linux for hosting? Discovery needs the app to see your LAN directly. That works natively on Linux (the container uses host networking). Docker Desktop on Mac/Windows runs containers in a VM that can’t see LAN discovery traffic — so on a Mac or PC, use the download (Option A) or pipx (Option C), not Docker.

Option C — pipx (you already have Python 3.10+)

pipx install "webatem[desktop]"      # or: uvx --from "webatem[desktop]" webatem, with no install at all
webatem

Same behaviour as the download: a native process on your real network, the tray icon and the launcher window appear where there is a desktop. Prebuilt wheels for every platform mean no compiler is needed. Upgrade with pipx upgrade webatem.

Finding your switchers

Three ways, in order of magic:

1. Automatic (Bonjour/mDNS). On the same network as your ATEMs, they show up under “On Your Network” with their names, no typing. This is what ATEM Software Control does.
2. Scan subnet. For ATEMs that don’t advertise over Bonjour, type your subnet (e.g. 192.168.1) and hit Scan — it finds them by IP.
3. Manual IP. Type an address and connect. Recent connections are remembered for one-click reconnect.

Automatic discovery is same-network only — Bonjour/mDNS is link-local and doesn’t cross a router or VPN (this is true of ASC too). Reaching your ATEMs over a VPN? Auto-discovery won’t see them, but Scan and manual IP work fine over the tunnel.

WebATEM vs. ATEM Software Control

ATEM Software Control (ASC) is Blackmagic’s own free control app, and it’s excellent — WebATEM isn’t trying to replace all of it. The difference is access: ASC is a desktop app tied to one machine; WebATEM is a control surface any device on your network can open (and you can still run it locally like ASC if you want).

Reach for ASC when you need the full feature set on one operator’s machine — camera control, streaming/recording, SuperSource, recording macros.

Reach for WebATEM when you want the core control surface available to anyone on the network, on any device or OS — a second operator on an iPad, a Linux box in the rack room, a phone at the camera position.

Features

• Full switcher control — program/preview buses per M/E, cut/auto, transition styles (mix, dip, wipe, DVE, stinger) with per-style settings, fade to black, color generators, aux routing, source renaming that follows live switcher labels.
• Upstream & downstream keyers — USK 1–4 (luma, chroma, pattern, DVE with fly keyframes, masks), DSKs with tie/rate/clip/gain, on-air countdowns.
• Fairlight audio — per-strip faders, EQ, dynamics, master bus, and live audio meters streamed over WebSocket (tab-gated so idle pages cost nothing).
• Media pool — live thumbnails of every still slot, and drag-and-drop image upload straight onto a slot (validated and resized to 1080p server-side).
• Macros — browse and run switcher macros.
• Save/restore switcher state — full switcher profile export/import as XML, compatible with ATEM Software Control’s “Save Switcher State”, including media pool images and macro bytecode.
• HyperDeck transport — clip browser and play/pause/stop/loop for decks bound to the ATEM (TCP/9993), from the same page.
• Multi-operator by design — one pooled connection per switcher shared by all operators; state fan-out over WebSockets with adaptive polling (30 ms during transitions, relaxed when idle).

Deep per-switcher settings live in the Settings panel — color generators, each upstream keyer (luma / chroma / pattern / DVE), downstream keyers, transitions, video mode, input labels, outputs and HyperDecks:

Full Fairlight audio — a per-strip mixer with input gain, EQ and dynamics curves, faders, pan and live meters, plus a writable 6-band parametric EQ with a live frequency-response graph:

Running it for real

• There is no login — by design. Like the hardware panel, anyone who can reach the page can control your switchers. Keep it on the studio network. If you must expose it further, put your reverse proxy’s auth (basic auth, SSO) and TLS in front, and set CSRF_TRUSTED_ORIGINS=https://your.host.
• Web pages can’t drive it cross-origin. The control WebSocket only accepts browser connections from the app’s own pages (same-origin), so a malicious website open in an operator’s browser can’t reach the switchers. If your reverse proxy rewrites Host, list the browser-facing host in WEBSOCKET_ALLOWED_ORIGINS.
• It talks raw UDP to switchers on port 9910 (the ATEM protocol has no authentication — that’s the hardware, not this app), so it needs to be on a network that can reach them.
• Single instance, by design. The switcher connection pool, media-pool watcher, and channel layer are process-local; one instance handles many switchers and operators. Don’t run several against the same switchers.
• Stills upload/capture assume 1080p switchers (all production use so far). Non-1080p ATEMs connect and control fine; media features are untested there.

Architecture

Browser (Alpine.js + WebSockets)
   │  ws/atem/ · HTTP
   ▼
Django + Channels (single ASGI worker, uvicorn)
   │  pooled UDP session per switcher (atemwire)
   ▼
ATEM switchers (UDP 9910) · HyperDecks (TCP 9993 / FTP)

• atemwire (PyPI) — the ATEM protocol library, a substantially modified fork of Martijn Braam's pyatem: declarative wire-format DSL, hardened UDP transport (in-order delivery, retransmit serving, clean session close), ref-counted connection pooling, native interleaved bulk transfers, macro bytecode transfer, and ASC-compatible profile save/restore. A small C extension does YCbCr↔RGB conversion. hyperdeckwire (PyPI) drives the HyperDecks. Both are pinned in pyproject.toml; a library change is a release there and a pin bump here (Dependabot opens it, CI runs, it merges itself).
• atem_control/ — the Django app: the WebSocket consumer, a declarative command dispatch table, the media-pool watcher, LAN discovery, and the UI.
• webatem/ — the project package: settings, the ASGI entry, the WebSocket origin guard, and launcher.py — the webatem command that runs the same web app locally and lives in the tray with its launcher window. The downloads are that launcher frozen per OS by PyInstaller (build/desktop/); the PyPI package is the same code installed by pip.
• One tag, three deliverables. A v* tag publishes the Mac / Windows / Linux downloads to the GitHub release, the Docker image to GHCR (amd64 + arm64) and the webatem package to PyPI.
• SQLite for persistence (connection history) — no external database.

Development

git clone https://github.com/lucas-romanenko/webatem.git
cd webatem
npm install && npm run build:css      # the stylesheet — without it the app renders unstyled
pip install -e ".[test]"              # Python 3.10+; the device libraries install as wheels
python -m webatem                     # the launcher: server + tray + window
python -m pytest tests/ -q            # the suite (no hardware needed)

Or entirely in Docker: docker compose up -d --build runs the app and docker compose exec webatem pytest tests/ -q runs the suite in it. The suite (the command dispatch table, the T-bar, the consumer's state-change and session-cleanup rules, upload policy, tally safety, profile dialogs, the media-pool thumbnail cache, LAN discovery identity, WebSocket origin checks) runs against fake protocol layers. CI runs it on every push. The protocol libraries carry their own suites in bmdwire.

python manage.py runserver works too for plain Django development. The per-OS downloads are built by the Desktop builds workflow (pyinstaller build/desktop/webatem.spec).

License

• Application code: MIT.
• The ATEM protocol library, atemwire, is a separate package (a fork of the OpenAtem pyatem library) and is LGPL-3.0-only; WebATEM uses it as an installed dependency, unmodified. hyperdeckwire is MIT.
• Bundled frontend assets (Alpine.js and its collapse plugin, Bootstrap Icons, Tailwind/daisyUI) are MIT and the Poppins font is OFL — notices in THIRD_PARTY_LICENSES.md.

Security posture and how to report vulnerabilities: SECURITY.md.

Not affiliated with or endorsed by Blackmagic Design. ATEM and HyperDeck are trademarks of Blackmagic Design Pty Ltd. Use against production hardware at your own risk.

Independent project. Not affiliated with or endorsed by the switcher manufacturer. The red and green are broadcast convention, sampled to their own values; the brand lives in docs/brand/.

Hosting the control app inside another Django project

atem_control is a normal Django app (label webatem_atem), and everything it needs from its surroundings goes through one class, atem_control.hooks.Hooks: who may open the page and drive the socket, where operator actions and connect/disconnect events are recorded, what a switcher is called, the switcher list for the suggestions, HyperDeck names, sightings (video mode, deck model, binding differences), where a dropped still goes, and extra template context. Every method has a working default — the standalone app is the defaults — so a host subclasses it and overrides what it has:

# settings.py
INSTALLED_APPS += ['atem_control']
WEBATEM_HOOKS = 'myplatform.webatem_hooks.PlatformHooks'

# myplatform/webatem_hooks.py
from atem_control.hooks import Hooks

class PlatformHooks(Hooks):
    def check_access(self, request):        # None = allowed, else the response
        ...
    def can_use(self, user):                # the WebSocket gate
        ...
    def record_activity(self, **event):     # the audit log
        ...
    def name_for_ip(self, ip):              # the inventory's name
        ...

Templates are overridden the Django way (a base.html, a control/_header.html in the host's own template directory), and control.html carries a control_extra block for the host's panels and scripts. Discovery is off with discovery_enabled returning False.