DeckLink SDI 4K problem

I received a new DeckLink SDI 4K card today but the Linux 10.1 driver will not let me use it.

The lspci command reports that the card is present:

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01:00.0 Multimedia video controller [0400]: Blackmagic Design Device [bdbd:a138]
   Subsystem: Blackmagic Design Device [bdbd:a138]
   Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 10
   Memory at fea00000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1M]
   Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 3
   Capabilities: [48] MSI: Enable- Count=1/16 Maskable- 64bit+
   Capabilities: [60] Express Endpoint, MSI 00


But the 10.1 driver will not successfully load it:

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[  378.145915] blackmagic: Loading driver (version: 10.1a11)


If I replace the DeckLink SDI 4K card with a DeckLink SDI card then everything is OK:

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01:00.0 Multimedia video controller [0400]: Blackmagic Design DeckLink SDI/Duo/Quad [bdbd:a11b]
   Subsystem: Blackmagic Design DeckLink SDI/Duo/Quad [bdbd:a11b]
   Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 18
   Memory at fe900000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1M]
   Memory at fe800000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1M]
   Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 3
   Capabilities: [48] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
   Capabilities: [58] Express Endpoint, MSI 00
   Capabilities: [100] Device Serial Number 00-00-00-01-00-00-0a-35
   Kernel driver in use: blackmagic_driver
   Kernel modules: blackmagic


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[   70.673833] blackmagic: Loading driver (version: 10.1a11)
[   74.020089] blackmagic: Successfully loaded device "blackmagic!dv0" [pci@0000:01:00.0]


I tried both cards in two very different systems (one AMD, one Intel) with the same 10.1 driver and with the same results.

Before I contact support I wanted to ask if anybody has successfully used a DeckLink SDI 4K with Linux.

Updated the firmware ?

> BlackmagicFirmwareUpdater status

Luc

I did try that. Unfortunately the blackmagic driver does not create the requisite device nodes under /dev/blackmagic. So "BlackmagicFirmwareUpdater status" does nothing and exits with exit status 1.

I have noticed something interesting though. An AMD Radeon E6760 in the PCIe v2.0 x16 slot is reported by lspci as "Speed 5GT/s, Width x16", whereas the DeckLink SDI 4K in the same slot is reported as "Speed 2.5GT/s, Width x4". So the DeckLink SDI 4K does not seem to be running at full speed: it should be 5GT/s per lane too (PCI Express 4 lane generation 2, according to the Blackmagic website).

Is this why the blackmagic driver will not let me use DeckLink SDI 4K? Because for some reason the PCIe interface is not running at 5GT/s?

The most disappointing aspect of all this is that the blackmagic driver just quietly ignores the card. The operating system found the card OK, so why doesn't the driver tell me something useful about it.

It is now one month since I received my new DeckLink SDI 4K card, and unfortunately I still have no working Linux driver for it.

Blackmagic Support EMEA did respond with this:

We are aware that some users on Linux are having problems with the newly released Decklink SDI 4K.

We are looking into this immediately and are hoping to provide a driver update very shortly.

The implication here is that other users on Linux are not having problems. Can anybody here confirm whether either of the new 4K cards - DeckLink SDI 4K or DeckLink Studio 4K - is supported on Linux yet?

An update for those interested ...

I have a solution to my original problem: I should have been loading the blackmagic-io.ko driver, which is used for 4K cards, instead of the blackmagic.ko driver, which is used for the older cards.

A second problem is that the DeckLink SDI 4K occasionally disappears from the lspci output, depending on reboot. This is exactly as described for a DeckLink Studio 4K here:

viewtopic.php?f=12&t=21909

I haven't yet verified whether this is fixed in the latest Desktop Video 10.1.4.

A third problem is that the DeckLink SDI 4K cannot capture video under Linux. It does capture video under Windows, but that is of no use to me. This problem is similar to one described for a DeckLink Studio 4K card here:

viewtopic.php?f=12&t=25434

We have been able to capture reliably with the new card on Linux on some of our Linux systems but not all. As discussed some of systems just don't pick up the card at all.

Last time I looked (before the latest drivers) we did also see issues with doing full duplex where the output was locked to the input (i.e if there was an input and you disconnected it, the output would stop) even though they are meant to be independent.

I can confirm we are having the same issues on multiple machines where all machines detect the SDI 4K cards but not all can capture an input to disk.

Capture is working fine (albeit slow) on an ancient Foxconn G33MO2 motherboard, but not on a newer Gigabyte GA-Z68MA-D2H-B3. I am using the same Debian installation on a removable disk, with apt reporting everything is up to date.

Multiple cards are detected on the Gigabyte board:

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lspci | grep Blackmagic
02:00.0 Multimedia video controller: Blackmagic Design Device a138
03:00.0 Multimedia video controller: Blackmagic Design Device a138

desktopvideo seems to be correctly picking up the blackmagic_io modules for both cards.

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lsmod | grep blackmagic
blackmagic            551486  0
blackmagic_io         372105  2


I am using version 10.2.1a1 released on Friday 5th September

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dkms status -m blackmagic -k `uname -r`
blackmagic, 10.2.1a1, 3.2.0-4-amd64, x86_64: installed

It also appears to already be added:

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dkms add -m blackmagic-io -v 10.2.1a1 --all
Error! DKMS tree already contains: blackmagic-io-10.2.1a1
You cannot add the same module/version combo more than once.

When trying a sample capture at 1080i50 I receive a "hung" terminal on the newer motherboard, whereas on the older one I see capture info printed to the terminal and a valid output file is created:

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Decklink/Linux/Samples/Capture# ./Capture -d 0 -m 7 -p 1 -v out.raw
Capturing with the following configuration:
 - Capture device: DeckLink SDI 4K
 - Video mode: HD 1080i 50
 - Pixel format: 10 bit YUV (4:2:2)
 - Audio channels: 2
 - Audio sample depth: 16 bit



The latest Media Express also shows no input - I have triple checked the signal is valid by looping back into an ATEM 1/ME Production Studio 4K, so no issues there.

It seems this is a common firmware issue where some motherboards "just work" with these cards and others not at all. I think it would be a good idea to share our findings with different motherboards so we can start to drill down exactly why these cards are not behaving as they should on Linux, or if it even is the motherboard causing the issue.

I have chosen Linux as my desired platform as I am far more confident in using it for headless ingest server systems - I really don't want to implement these kinds of multi-server systems on OSX or Windows. It is a shame Linux support and infromation regarding supported hardware seems to be lagging behind here, it is potentially the most flexible and scalable platform for BMD to support.

I can provide more diagnostic information if required, I really want (and need) to get to the bottom of these issues - I currently have lots of non-functional cards lying around!

I'm appending some additional information on this hung terminal I described previously. This is on a clean install on CentOS 6.5 using Linux Kernel 2.6.32-431.el6.x86_64.

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./Capture -d0 -m7 -n 50 -v video.raw -a audio.raw


I am inspecting this process using gnome-system-monitor.
The process Waiting Channel is "futex_wait_queue_me", pretty generic as expected.
The following files are opened by the process:

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0 /dev/pts/1
1 /dev/pts/1
2 /dev/pts/1
3 /dev/blackmagic/io0
4 /home/ingest/dev/Blackmagic_DeckLink_SDK_10.1.4/Linux/Samples/Capture/video.raw
5 /home/ingest/dev/Blackmagic_DeckLink_SDK_10.1.4/Linux/Samples/Capture/audio.raw

The cards are only detected with the blackmagic-io drivers loaded. Is /dev/blackmagic correct in this instance or should something like /dev/blackmagic-io/io0 be opened?

The Memory Map for the process is split into the following images (no text exporting from system monitor, sorry!)

Adding some further disappointing results:

I've installed the same CentOS 6.5 disk on a HP Proliant DL160 G6 with limited success - on some boots the card can capture and on others the card is detected but not capable of previewing or capturing anything.

Rebooting until input is detected automatically is really not something I want to implement here.

Have others experienced this issue and is there a nicer solution to this? Is there anything I could implement to delay the initialisation of the blackmagic card?