Hi list,
we here in Osnabrück were quite happy to get a Blackmagic Design H.264
Pro Recorder [1] - finally, nearly 6 month after we ordered it. The
device sounded incredible interesting for many purposes and the price of
under 400 Euro sounded very reasonable.
Now that we have the device, we are incredible disappointed.
In general the device looks very well build. It is a plain metal case
like many (semi)-professional components of this kind has every input
that we would hope for (HDMI, HD-SDI, Component, S-Video and Composite).
When you use it (even if it's not recording) it gets quite warm, but not
too hot that you could not touch it anymore. I can understand that they
don't ship a driver CD with the device anymore, like many others, but I
guess it is cheap not to include an USB-cable.
We intended to use the device for two scenarios (A) as a capture device
for Opencast Matterhorn and (B) as a recording device under windows with
typical software like Adobe Premiere or an other common video software.
(A) Matterhorn
The website promised Linux drivers in the days when we ordered the
device, now they removed this from the tech specs, but still many
resellers have not updated their websites. I contacted the Blackmagic
support and they told me that "there was not sufficient interest in
Linux support for the product". The device is very different from other
Blackmagic products, so the commercial and open-source linux drivers for
the Intensity cards etc will not work for this device.
So there will be NO MATTERHORN SUPPORT for this device unless Blackmagic
rethinks its Linux policy for this device.
Is there any interest from the Opencast community to point out that
there is a "sufficient interest" for Linux drivers? We could write mails
to their support or form an online petition, what for example forced HTC
to change their bootloader policy [2].
(B) Windows software
The software Blackmagic Media Express software that comes with the
drivers allows you to record from the H.264 Pro Recorder without
additional capture software. The software needs Quicktime already
installed, but it does not come with the driver. It is a little strange
that this fact is not mentioned during the install, you simply get an
error message, when you press teh record button.
The Media Express UI is strange. I supports only two sizes "fullscreen"
which seems to be a 1920x1080 resolution and compact, which just fits
onto my laptop screen (1280x800). The window cannot be resized.
When you record the videos with Media Express you get a quite high cpu
load, because the video is always shown on the screen too, so the H.264
stream has to be decoded at least (60-70% percent cpu load even if the
device is not recording, 70-85% if the device is recording on a core 2
duo 3,3 Ghz). I don't know why the preview can not be turned off. But in
general the recording runs quite well on with this software.
When I wanted to use the device with 3rd party software it did not run
so well anymore. In the manual nearly no 3rd-party software is
mentioned. But at one point it says that Adobe presets and plug-ins are
part of the driver package. And I can select a "Blackmagic Capture
Device" in the recordings settings of Premiere CS5, but the capture
device is offline according to Premiere, although Media Express can
currently use it. On Location from Adobe did not find a capture device
at all.
There is Decklink DirectShow driver installed from the driver package.
But when we try to use ist, we only get a "Not enough memory" error,
even on a system with 8GB RAM.
I tried some other programs with video-input too (skype, windows live
movie maker) but, as expected these programs don't find the device at
all. Just to validate my results I installed a Epiphan VGA2USB LR, which
is a quite unusual capture device too, but this worked with all of these
programs I mentioned quite well (except Premiere).
I did not manage to test the device with MacOS yet, but I would not
expect too much there. I would guess that it will work very similar to
the windows version.
Conclusion:
I would not recommend the Blackmagic Design H.264 Pro Recorder
currently. It can only be with their proprietary software and still
needs quite a lot of processing power in your machine although the
hardware compression should allow captures even on very slow computers,
like netbooks.
The missing Linux drivers will prevent you from using this device with
Matterhorn.
We can only hope that Blackmagic will offer a better driver support for
Windows and Linux in the future. Currently there is not much use for
this device.
Regards
Rüdiger
[1] http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/h264prorecorder/
[2] http://www.groubal.com/htc-bootloaders-and-nand/
--
________________________________________________
Rüdiger Rolf, M.A.
Universität Osnabrück - Zentrum virtUOS
Heger-Tor-Wall 12, 49069 Osnabrück
Telefon: (0541) 969-6511 - Fax: (0541) 969-16511
E-Mail: [email protected]
Internet: www.virtuos.uni-osnabrueck.de
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