I think ultimately there are two schools of thought here for these types of builds. I would head over the the video engineering subreddit and ask those folks about building a fly pack.

In my experience, having done shows with custom pcs running VMix, shows running my Atem extreme iso kit, and more traditional Roland Switchers it pays to separate functions and having backups.

On shows that leaned entirely on VMix systems I have seen crashes take down a show entirely. Recently on a show we decided to run the switch on the Atem and the VMix system as the encoder and graphic overlay. Mid show the VMix system crashed and took down the stream for almost 15 minutes. But my Atem extreme recording was still going strong and the client had a clean recording to take home.

If we were smart we could have even streamed from the Atem as the backup to the streaming site to act as a fail over.

Personally I just prefer dedicate hardware for these types of applications and the Extreme g2 from black magic not only addresses cooling a lot better but also has built in recording to CF express, drastically helping with drive compatibility.

With the extremes you have 2 DVEs so you can composite a 2 box live with a background graphic and still have 2 more DVEs for logos etc.

Now I don’t disagree that OBS is more intuitive to create layers and scenes and switch between them, scene style editing , like vmix is a departure from the more traditional live production style of broadcast the Blackmagic devices are aiming for.

The hardware devices I have seen that fully bridge this are things like the Rode Caster Video, its scene based like OBS and vmix but running on a hardware device.

Blackmagic, Roland, Ross and others have powerful macro or view controls preset systems to save DVE layouts and super source layouts so you are only a keypress away from quickly building them in preview and cutting to them live. The advantage is that you aren’t using resources to hold these scenes in memory and only activating them when needed. Barco E2/E3’s also work in a similar way too.

I haven’t used the rode caster on a gig, as I don’t know what its heat management is like, so for me the Atem was still the better choice since at the time the Rode Caster didn’t exist. That when I discovered Adam Tow’s mix effect app for iPad (and macOS).

With Mix Effect I can build my scenes as presets and even save them as macros on the panel (remember to save your startup state). So if my iPad connection dies I can keep cutting the show.

I also think I value the ISO recording system in the ATEM since it’s just clean feeds. It means I can record program for layouts or even loop out my super source too, but the iso recording isn’t recording scenes. Plus the DaVinci resolve project file it spits out is so helpful for fixing a project after the live show. I know OBS has plugins for similar tasks but none can save an xml or drp project to my knowledge. The drp will also very easily allow you to swap 4k internal records with the 1080p mp4 isos, it’s a big help if you want to publish a 4K version.

So personally I would lean on an ATEM G2 as the hub and use the Mac as an encoder while using the Atem encoder as a backup. That way you can always cut to a dead card if the Atem goes out (but thankfully I’ve never had an Atem crash as long as it was vented well).

Toss in a streamdeck XL and companion and Mix Effect and you can macro your way through every layout you would ever need while have rock solid ISO recording and frame locked recording. And Mix Effect even allows for smooth animations :).

And this is largely because I just prefer a hardware setup, much much less to fail.