About Desktop Video Software
This software includes everything you need to set up your DeckLink, Multibridge, UltraStudio, Intensity and H.264 Pro Recorder for any task in your facility.
What's new in Desktop Video 9.7.3
- Support for DeckLink Mini Monitor
- Support for DeckLink Mini Recorder
- Linux - General performance and stability improvements
Mac OS Specific
Minimum system requirements for Mac OS
UltraStudio Series, Intensity Shuttle Thunderbolt and Intensity Extreme
- OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion or later.
- OS X 10.7.3 Lion or later.
- Thunderbolt iMac, MacBook Pro or MacBook Air
- 4 GB of system memory.
DeckLink, Intensity and Multibridge products
- OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion or later.
- OS X 10.7.3 Lion or later.
- A suitable PCIe slot - PCIe x1 lane cards should work in any slot. PCIe x4 lane cards require a x4 lane or faster PCI Express slot.
- 4 GB of system memory.
H.264 Pro Recorder
- OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion or later.
- OS X 10.7 Lion or later.
- USB 2.0 connection.
- 4 GB of system memory.
Third Party Software Support
- Adobe Premiere Pro CS6
- Adobe After Effects CS6
- Adobe Photoshop CS6
- Apple Final Cut Pro X
- Apple Final Cut Pro 7
- Apple Motion 4
- Apple Soundtrack Pro 3
- Apple Color 1.5
- Apple DVD Studio Pro 4
- Autodesk Smoke 2013
- Avid Media Composer 6.5
- Avid Media Symphony 6.5
- Avid News Cutter 6.5
- Avid Pro Tools 8
- Avid Pro Tools 9
- Avid Pro Tools 10
- The Foundry Nuke
Installing Desktop Video Software
The drivers install components in to applications including Avid Media Composer 6, Final Cut Pro 7 and Final Cut Pro X, Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe After Effects. If you have installed the drivers prior to installing any of these applications, we recommend that you uninstall and reinstall the drivers. This will ensure that all relevant components are installed in their required locations.
To remove the Desktop Video software out of your system, simply run the "Uninstall DeckLink" utility which is included on the CD or disk image.
Windows Specific
Minimum system requirements for Windows 7 64-bit, Windows 8 and Windows Server 2008
UltraStudio Series, Intensity Shuttle Thunderbolt and Intensity Extreme
- Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit
- Microsoft Windows 8
- Microsoft Windows Server 2008
- Thunderbolt Motherboard or Notebook
- 4 GB of system memory
DeckLink, Intensity and Multibridge products
- Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit
- Microsoft Windows 8
- Microsoft Windows Server 2008
- A suitable PCIe slot - PCIe x1 lane cards should work in any slot. PCIe x4 lane cards require a x4 lane or faster PCI Express slot
- 4 GB of system memory
USB 3.0 Products
- Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit
- A suitable USB 3.0 port using a Renesas chipset
- 4 GB of system memory
H.264 Pro Recorder
- Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit
- Microsoft Windows 8 Release Preview
- USB 2.0 connection.
- 4 GB of system memory.
- Apple Quicktime 7.6.9 or later for Windows.
- Media Express 2.4 or later.
Third Party Software Support
- Adobe Premiere Pro CS6
- Adobe After Effects CS6
- Adobe Photoshop CS6
- Avid Media Composer 6
- Avid Media Symphony 6
- Avid News Cutter 6
- Sony Vegas Pro 9
- The Foundry Nuke
- eyeon Fusion 6
- Cyberlink Power Director
- Corel Video Studio X5
- Nero Video 11
- Magix Movie Edit Pro
- VLC
- Amcap
- Arcsoft ShowBiz
Installing Desktop Video Software
If you had a previous versions of Desktop Video software installed, use Programs and Features control panel to remove it before installing this version, and restart your computer. Double click the Desktop Video installer and follow the instructions that appear.
During the installation process, Windows might show three warning messages saying the driver has not been certified by Microsoft. In this case, select "Continue Anyway" so you complete installation of the software correctly.
Linux Specific
Supported devices
- PCI Express based DeckLink cards (older PCI based cards are NOT supported)
- Intensity, Intensity Pro
- Multibridge Pro, Multibridge Eclipse
Minimum system requirements
Basic system requirements:
- 32 bit x86 running Linux 2.6.18 or higher
- 64 bit x86_64 running Linux 2.6.18 or higher (recommended)
For uncompressed capture and playback a RAID or other fast storage is needed. It is also recommended to use a filesystem that is optimized for large sequential I/O such as XFS.
Licensing
Some applications use the QT UI framework (http://qt.digia.com, http://qt-project.org) under the terms of the LGPL version 2.1. The QT dynamic libraries, built from unmodified source are included in the application bundle. A copy of the LGPL is included in the Blackmagic application support directory. The support note at http://www.blackmagicdesign/support provides further details including how to obtain the QT source.
Supported distributions
This release has been tested on:
- Ubuntu 8.04
- Ubuntu 8.10
- Ubuntu 9.04
- Ubuntu 9.10, 10.04
- Ubuntu 10.10, 11.04, 11.10
- Fedora 10/11/12 & 13 (See known issues)
- CentOS 5
Several different package formats are supplied:
- Native package (.deb) for Ubuntu and Debian based distributions.
- Native package (.rpm) for RedHat and RedHat based distributions.
- Tarball for expert/custom installation (or re-packaging).
Software dependencies
The driver package requires some additional libraries and packages including:
- dkms
- opengl (recommended)
- kernel-headers (or source) (for currently running kernel)
- gcc, make
- glibc 2.8
All packages above are included in most modern distributions. Consult your distributions documentation for more information. If your distribution doesn't include DKMS you can download it from http://linux.dell.com/dkms/.
NOTE: Fedora users may have to add the "updates" repo to find DKMS (link).Installing Desktop Video Software
Ubuntu, Debian and Debian distributions
Installation from Graphical User Interface
Locate and double click the downloaded Debian (end with .deb) package. Once the Package Installer window appears click "Install Package".
You need to reboot your system in order to activate the driver.
Installation from Command Line
Locate the downloaded driver Package. At the command prompt type:
# dpkg -i <name_of_driver_package.deb>
If there are messages about missing dependencies ensure that install those first.
You can type:
# modprobe blackmagic
to load the driver once the package is installed.
RedHat or RedHat based distributions
Installation from Graphical User Interface
Locate and double click the downloaded RPM package (end with .rpm) package. In the "Install" dialog window, click Install. You may be required to enter your root password to continue. Since the package is not digitally signed you may get a warning about a "Missing Security Signature".
You need to reboot your system in order to activate the driver.
Installation from Command Line
Locate the downloaded driver Package. At the command prompt type:
# sudo yum install --nogpgcheck <name_of_driver_package>.rpm
Once finished you can type:
# modprobe blackmagic
to load the driver once the package is installed.
Other Linux 2.6 based distributions (Experts Only)
No native package exist to support these distributions at the time of writing. It's however possible to install the driver manually by downloading the tar.gz archive.
Before you begin, ensure that your system satisfies external dependencies listed in section 2.
Once the archive is extracted follow these steps:
# sudo cp -R <extract_dir>/usr/src/DeckLink-9.7.3/ /usr/src # sudo cp <extract_dir>/usr/bin/* /usr/bin # sudo cp <extract_dir>/etc/init.d/* /etc/init.d # sudo cp <extract_dir>/etc/udev/rules.d/* /etc/udev/rules.d/ # sudo mkdir -p /usr/lib/blackmagic # sudo cp <extract_dir>/usr/lib/blackmagic* /usr/lib/blackmagic # sudo cp <extract_dir>/etc/xdg/autostart/* /etc/xdg/autostart/ # sudo ldconfig
There are two ways of installing the driver onto your system, manually or via DKMS. By using DKMS the driver will be automatically be updated for you when you upgrade to a new kernel. If your distribution doesn't include the 'dkms' package, you can obtain it free from the following website.
In either case ensure that you have the kernel header files installed for your current kernel. Check for the directory /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/build/.
For installing the driver using DKMS do:
# dkms add -m DeckLink -v 9.7.3 # dkms build -m DeckLink -v 9.7.3 # dkms install -m DeckLink -v 9.7.3
To activate driver once installed:
# modprobe blackmagic
Or installing the driver manually:
# cd /usr/src/DeckLink-9.7.3 # make
If there are any compilation errors, please check that you are running a Linux 2.6 kernel with version 2.6.23 or higher. If you still have problems please contact us.
# sudo cp blackmagic.ko /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/drivers # sudo depmod -a
Reboot your system or:
# sudo modprobe blackmagic
To active the driver once installed.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I check that the driver/device was loaded successfully?
You can check that your computer find your device by entering the following from a terminal:
# lspci | grep Blackmagic 02:00.0 Multimedia video controller: Blackmagic Design Device a11b
You should see entries like the above if the device was recognized by the system.
To test if the driver is loaded properly, type:
# lsmod | grep blackmagic blackmagic 2082944 1
If you get no output, that means that the driver is not loaded.
Also check that the device file: /dev/blackmagic/card0 is present. If it is not, and the driver appears to be loaded, the UDEV rule (/etc/udev/rules.d/20-blackmagic.rules) may not be installed properly.
The TestPattern application does not output anything?
Make sure the installed driver's firmware version matches that of your cards firmware. See section 3.3 for details.
How do I update a cards firmware version?
Installation from Graphical User Interface
If the Driver package was installed correctly, the firmware update utility should popup automatically when a card needs its firmware updated.
If not see section 3.3.2 on how to update manually.
Installation from Command Line
First check if your card really needs updating by issuing the following command from the terminal:
# BlackmagicFirmwareUpdater status /dev/blackmagic/card0 [DeckLink HD Extreme 3] UPDATED /dev/blackmagic/card1 [DeckLink HD Extreme 3] NEEDS_UPDATE
Cards listed with NEEDS_UPDATE can be upgraded by typing:
# BlackmagicFirmwareUpdater update <card_id> (1 in this case)
Or if runnning under an X window enviroment simply type:
# BlackmagicFirmwareUpdater update_gui
Which will launch the GUI firmware update tool.
The driver crashed my system
Look for kernel output messages in dmesg and /var/log/messages.
TestPattern is flashing black every second
This is by design to demonstrate audio/video sync.
The RPM package installed, but the driver was not loaded.
Try the following command:
# dkms build -m DeckLink -v 9.7.3
This should allow you to determine what the problem is. A common cause is a version mismatch between the installed kernel image, and the kernel source/headers. If they do not match, simply bring either the source/headers or the image update to date, and reboot your system.
Once the system is back up, the driver should be built for you at startup.
Known issues
Multiple Blackmagic PCI cards in the system on 32 bit platforms
Multiple cards may not work very well on 32 bit platforms, due to limited amount of kernel space memory (from the vmalloc).
Possible solutions:
Reconfigure kernel to allow more vmalloc memory, or use 64 bit Linux if possible.
Driver fails to build against certain version of linux-rt
Some versions of the linux-rt patchset may be incompatible with the driver.
Fedora 12 (and higher)
Some PCI-e cards (1x lane cards) does not function properly by default under Fedora Core 12, including DeckLink SDI and Intensity Pro. To work around this please add kernel boot paramter "pcie_aspm=off" to your bootloader (for GRUB in /boot/grub/menu.lst).
Additional Information
Please check www.blackmagicdesign.com for additional information on third party software compatibility and minimum system requirements.
© 2001-2012 Blackmagic Design Pty. Ltd. All rights reserved. Blackmagic Design, Blackmagic, DeckLink, Multibridge, Intensity, H.264 Pro Recorder and "Leading the creative video revolution" are trademarks of Blackmagic Design Pty. Ltd., registered in the U.S.A and other countries. Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe After Effects and Adobe Photoshop are registered trademarks of Adobe Systems. Avid Media Composer and Avid Pro Tools are registered trademarks of Avid. Apple Final Cut Pro, Apple Motion and Apple Soundtrack Pro are registered trademarks of Apple Computer.
Some applications use the QT UI framework (http://qt.digia.com, http://qt-project.org) under the terms of the LGPL version 2.1. The QT dynamic libraries, built from unmodified source are included in the application bundle. A copy of the LGPL is included in the Blackmagic application support directory. The support note at http://www.blackmagicdesign/support provides further details including how to obtain the QT source.
Updated May 22, 2013.