Deck Link cards and Linux

[Yves De muyter]

I think you are better off with an AJA Xena card. Blackmagic doesn’t seem to want to support Linux at all…

-Yves

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Esteban,

We started a Linux project a long while ago but shelved it when there seemed to be little demand for Linux support in DeckLink drivers.

We might add support in the future but I am not aware of any immediate plans to do so. The Linux Cow forum is always very quiet whenever I check it so this is also a sign that there does not seem to be much demand. If that changes, we might well add support in the future.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Yves De muyter]

Luke,

There is no point in using Linux if there are no boards available. I am in the process of signing an NDA to use AJA’s Xena boards, but if there would be more cards available that are more easily accessible, linux-support would grow.
I hope you see the endless-loop problem here.

Even if you’d give away simply some specs so people can write drivers, that would be a big win. Right now, it’s just a bunch of DMA-space nobody knows what it supposed to do, and honestly, all that NDA-stuff, I don’t see the point really (but I have no problem signing them and not violating them). Maybe to hide the fact a Xilinx is easy implemented, fast and is cheap? You don’t need a DeckLink hardware-technote to know that.

– Yves

[Esteban]

Even with no cards, little user base, Linux keeps growing in the Digital content creation area, just look Autodesk releasing some of its big tools in this OS, Maya, Softimge (Avid), plus all the incredible open source already available.. all suporting Linux, Decklink cards apeal to lot more people , not only editors.
Also looking at the linux cow forum wont give you a clear idea of nothing..some veeery popular apps have small forums here..

Esteban

[Sameer Shrivastava]

Hi,
please, everybody intrested in linux drivers for decklink, send and request to blackmagic team to write them.
thanks
sameer

[Sameer Shrivastava]

Hi, Decklink team, please try to write the linux drivers as soon ass possible
thanks

[Sameer Shrivastava]

Hi, Decklink team, please try to write the linux drivers as soon ass possible
thanks.
we are very much intrested in it.

[Dries Desmet]

I would definitely definitely vote for a linux decklink driver. It is the ONLY thing lacking for creating quality motion pictures under linux. There is Maya, Houdini, Shake, Cinelerra, Nuke which all work so much better than in a windows environment. So much more scriptable, pipelinable. I really believe linux is helping to support my small but very competitive studio, the only thing lacking now is an affordable SD input output card. So please, I’m making a lot of noise here…

Dries Desmet.

[Pharaoh]

Hi Luke
We are not quiet about asking for Linux driver , I guess we lost hope of that issue , I emailed you guys 3 months ago about the same issue , my company is changing all to Linux now , and I am really thinking of selling my Decklink card and get AJA or so.
And then I guess you have to check the grown up demands on Linux itself
I guess Linux is getting more and more users every day.
Thanks
Waleed

[Yves De muyter]

Please beware, AJA won’t give you any Linux driver if you won’t be reselling 100+ boards a month or so.
Linux is still a niche market, and if you have a product that isn’t very mainstream, AJA won’t give you any driver (I don’t know why, in my case they will going to sell more boards, not 100 but maybe 20 a year…). Any hope for a Unix solution is either a BlueFish444 board, a DVS board (if you don’t have a bit overlapping product) or MacOS X right now.
Dektec is an alternative but really not that great since it doesn’t have genlock.

-Yves