h265 4K recorder

Hello,

We're updating our stack from Full HD to 4K UHD. I need a recorder able to take our raw 4K UHD video, compress it in h265 (with the possibility to choose h264 instead) and write it on a NAS, on the fly. I must be able to control it with a custom software through the network / an RS232 link (ideally, using ROS). Having to use Media Express is not an option (expect if it can be controlled by our custom software, but I don't think so).

Would the UltraStudio 4K do the job?

We are currently using a Matrox Monarch HDX for Full HD / h264.

If the UltraStudio 4K doesn't fit, does anyone know any alternative?

Thanks in advance!

h265 hardware encoder is only on the UltraStudio 4K Extreme 3. I'm not sure if the Desktop Video SDK can be used to capture h265 with it, but if so, you could make it work with sufficient development.

H.265 capture on the UltraStudio 4K Extreme 3 is possible using the Desktop Video SDK, specifically the IDeckLinkEncoderInput interface. Other than Media Express though, I'm not sure that there is any 3rd party software that can capture using this interface in the SDK (since it is only supported on the UltraStudio 4K Extreme 3 hardware). So it would likely require some custom development to make this setup work for your application.

One other possibility to consider is that the newer NVidia graphics cards (Pascal architecture) are capable of 4K live H.265 encoding with their onboard NVENC encoder. And recent Intel Core processors also have hardware QuickSync H.265 encoding that is fast enough for 4K live recording (starting with 8-bit H.265 support in 6th Gen Skylake processors and 10-bit encoding in 7th Gen, Kaby Lake or newer processors).

So if you went this route, you wouldn't need to use the Desktop Video SDK directly and could use any of the 4K DeckLink or UltraStudio cards as an input source, combined with a suitable NVidia or Intel processor. You could probably use ffmpeg to do the recording since it supports both DeckLink capture, and NVENC/QSV hardware encoding, and is easily scriptable.

If you don't want to use ffmpeg, there are also some 3rd party commercial recording software tools that support this kind of system configuration (Blackmagic input / NVidia encoding). Cinegy Capture and Softron Movie Recorder are a couple of examples, both have REST APIs if you want to trigger recording from external software.

Thanks a lot guys! We were a bit in a hurry so we decided to use h264 for now, with an Epiphan Pearl 2 doing the work intead of having to do some development. Still your suggestions may serve in the future when we'll absolutely need h265.