[Tim Baldwin]

We have had reasonable results with the Dell Latitude E6420 which does have the Renesas chipset and the Blackmagic USB3 devices. However, with Thunderbolt looming on Windows laptops and Thunderbolt devices from Blackmagic available and Thunderbolt PCIe expansion boxes from Magma (in which you could install Blackmagic PCIe cards), it might make sense to wait a little longer and see how things settle out.

Tim Baldwin
Kulabyte
http://www.kulabyte.com
Twitter: @kulabyte

[Tim Baldwin]

It is true that Blackmagic often states that they do not officially support Dell hardware and even Windows Server 2008, however that does not mean it will not work.

We ship turn-key encoder systems every day with Dell hardware that work wonderfully. Below are configurations we use:

Dell R210 BM Intensity Pro, SDI, or Studio 2
Dell R310 BM Intensity Pro, SDI, Duo, or Studio2
Dell R610 Up to 2 – BM Intensity Pro, SDI, Duo, or Studio2
Dell R710 Up to 4 – BM Intensity Pro, SDI, Duo, or Studio2
Dell Precision M4500 – BM Intensity Pro, SDI, or Studio 2 with Magma ExpressBox PCI expansion
Dell Precision M6500 – BM Intensity Pro, SDI, or Studio 2 with Magma ExpressBox PCI expansion

That said, we have heard recently of a Dell Workstation (T7400) not working with Blackmagic cards.

Regarding the Ultrastudio Pro, the issue here was the first generation of USB 3 chipsets that all of the laptop vendors used did not work well with the Blackmagic devices. The next generation of USB 3 chipset is out now and Blackmagic has told me that there are several Dell and several HP laptops that now work fine with the Blackmagic USB 3 devices.

Tim Baldwin

Tim Baldwin
Kulabyte
http://www.kulabyte.com
Twitter: @kulabyte

[Tim Baldwin]

Ian,

If you need another portable solution, we use the Magma ExpressBox with BM Intensity/SDI/Studio2 inside all the time and it works great (for our application which is encoding). You just need a laptop with an ExpressCard slot.

Regards,

Tim

[Tim Baldwin]

I have heard of people somewhat successfully using the BM Decklink cards (SDI, Studio2) with FMLE, but I’m not sure about the Intensity Pro-it uses a different driver.

You may want to look into the live Flash encoder from Kulabyte called XStream Live as it supports the Intensity Pro as well as the Decklink cards.

[Tim Baldwin]

I get the same result on a Dell Precision M6500. It’s a shame to purchase such a nice and expensive USB 3.0 laptop and have Blackmagic devices not work on it. I also have an HP Envy 15 where the Blackmagic drivers do install properly, but this machine is otherwise not as capable as the M6500.

Below is the error:

Drivers/firmware were loaded per BM instructions: