Blackmagic Forum

I have just installed Decklink in an Intel based PC (Gigabyte GA-B85M-HD3 mobo, 16GB RAM, i5 processor, 4TB SATA drive). I have read the Desktop Video PDF and installed v 10.11. I am only interested in capturing composite PAL at this time, so I have set the Blackmagic control panel for composite video / analog audio I/O, and default system is PAL.

When I run Media Express and go to Prefs, my project type is PAL, and I can capture in AVI 8-bit YUV, or 10-bit, or AVI Motion JPG, or DVX. If I run the Speed Test, it's flying, and sure enough I can capture any of the above formats with no dropped frames (I'm using a Hi-8 camera as test source).

Because I want to capture to ProRes, I installed QuickTime v7.75 and verified that a ProRes MOV plays OK in QuickTime Player. Now, I run Media Express again, expecting to see all the QT codecs that I can use for capture, but it's still just the 4 AVI ones. How can I use Media Express to capture in ProRes MOV format on Windows? Or is ProRes capture a Mac-only thing?

The Decklink specs at blackmagicdesign.com/au/products/decklink/techspecs say it supports (...) Apple ProRes 4444, Apple ProRes 422 (HQ), Apple ProRes 422, Apple ProRes (LT), Apple ProRes 422 (Proxy) etc.

The blurb at blackmagicdesign.com/au/products/decklink/mediaexpress says that Media Express capture 'supports uncompressed YUV and RGB QuickTime, AVI and DPX plus compressed ProRes, DVCPRO, MJPEG formats'. It's touted as a fully cross-platform app, with Mac, Windows and Linux supported.

I will be getting a Mac and another Decklink and can use this for ProRes if that's the only way.. it just seems to me that it should be possible in Windows. I'm a Decklink newbie, so any input gratefully received!

quicktime for Windows have only ProRes codec playback .. not recording ..

As Pytkin said Quicktime for Windows is limited to Prores playback. This is down to Apple not releasing the encoding side to Windows. It may be possible to use a 3rd Party Prores compatible codec to capture by using something like Medialooks Direct Take

viewtopic.php?f=18&t=22480

I think the vanilla Quicktime is limited to ProRes playback only. But Apple has been loosening up a bit with licensing ProRes. Take a look here at a list of ProRes Authorized Products: support.apple.com/kb/HT5959 (sorry, not allowed to post URLs yet). Some of these solutions are Windows only (MTI Film Cortex, DVS products, Quantel Pablos to name a few) and export ProRes MOV files. So I think Blackmagic just needs to jump on board and get authorized for Windows Resolve.

Getting 'authorized' probably costs a hefty fee otherwise other editing packages would have already done it

Hi folks, thanks for the replies. I emailed Blackmagic support, and got a reply from Warwick Morris from New Magic Australia, who said 'Medialooks Direct Take is a 3rd party application that can be downloaded for free' and pointed me to http // blog.medialooks.com/8m1X56/ (excuse the mangled url).

I tried Medialooks Direct Take, and it works beautifully; I can capture any QuickTime codec directly in Windows, including ProRes. However Direct Take does not provide deck control (via Sony 9-pin) and this is needed for my application. That being said, Direct Take is written using the 'MPlatform SDK', and the developers seem to be very responsive to feature requests; I will ask about machine control on their blog.

Maybe some of the users here can test the Direct Take app and feed the results back. Thanks again for your thoughts.

We have the DeckLink SDI 4K card and we cannot seem to activate any QT recording codecs. Is there something we're doing incorrectly? We've installed the QT pro and the DeckLink 10.1.4 SDK software, but we still just get
DNxHD and AVI for the record options.

If you are on Windows then this is normal as Windows can't record into ProRes natively.
What software are you trying to use to capture with?

There is one way to capture with blackmagic cards to prores 422 10bit hq in windows. Google youtube prores 422 capture and you will see a detailed video how to capture camera source and verify 422 10 bit color in file. Then do a simple container change and import into davanci resolve. Works great.

The video is called
BlackMagic Decklink 4k 422 10bit capture In ProRes DNxHR HQ 422 10Bit To Davanci Resolve in windows

I actually own blackmagic decklink 4k mini capture card and licence of davanci resolve studio 15.2

I was going to buy atomos recorder until I figured it out. I run 2 500g ssds in raid 0 and capture rate is 405 mb/s prores. With this size you can manage these files easy. Media express is crazy. 10 gig every 5 sec lol

For some reason there censoring Google search for this. Search gereral1 and it's on youtube. Got to love Google! It was listed top 5 last night....

I know this is a really old topic, but does anybody still have this free version?
I have an old Win 7 machine, old Betacam hobby tapes and I want to capture them in ProRes 422, but I can't with Media Express and Davinci Resolve Studio (of which I have a license for) doesn't allow me to capture with my Decklink mini recorder...

And now the software you linked to is like $500, while it was free in 2014. As all I use is old stuff anyway I'm more than happy to use this old version. Hope there is someone with an archive (through archive.org I could only obtain the 2.1 version that needs registration, it will show a watermark if you don't).

So long story short: I have a Decklink mini recorder, I want to capture in ProRes 422 from SDI, source is Betacam (SP or Digi, usually 2-4 audio tracks) in Windows 7. But nothing will let me.

Any luck? Trying to do the same.

FWIW I seem to have been able to get this working using OBS. If you select advanced encoder settings, you can use ffmpeg and select the ProRes Codec. Then, I know it's not the default audio codec for ProRes, but I've selected alac (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) which should be the same quality wise as 16 bit Linear PCM.

I'm sure some old video engineer will tell me why this doesn't work or is a bad idea, but as far as I can tell I'm getting a 444 file in the proper color space. As far as I can tell, it satisfies the "Visually Lossless" criteria of a ProRes file. The resulting file, so far, has been able to be opened in any program I'd need it to.

CSMichael wrote:I'm sure some old video engineer will tell me why this doesn't work or is a bad idea

Not a video engineer, but this subject does come up in the Resolve forum from time to time. The general consensus is that because FFmpeg's ProRes codec is reverse-engineered, it does not fully match the Apple ProRes in subtle ways. Apple are also fairly rude about it as you might expect. Also, the file metadata apparently has different licence header data from Apple's ProRes which might possibly cause some picky applications to not recognise it.

But if it it works for you then go for it! I'm sure FFmpeg and/or OBS would put up a warning in the docs if there were any serious issues with it, but there are no such warnings. It has been the go-to unofficial Windows ProRes encoder for years now. It's about time Apple set it free for for all platforms - it's not like they need the money.

bobosola wrote:It's about time Apple set it free for for all platforms - it's not like they need the money.

100% agree.

It is free money wise, as has been said time and again. If software vendors don’t wish to comply with official prores license requirements it is their choice, but it is not about money.

Hendrik Proosa wrote:It is free money wise...

Is it really? Then why doesn't Resolve on Windows support ProRes? All of their products, for the most part support ProRes, so why not on Windows? It really doesn't make sense, especially if Adobe can do it. Are you sure it's free? If it's free, why would DJI charge a $500 activation fee for the privilege of recording to a "free" codec? I'm sure you could argue developer costs...but c'mon...

That’s a question for BMD. Fusion has authorized prores encoder on windows. Almost every other NLE has it too. People actually working in engineering of softwares that have official prores encoder have stated that license itself has no fee. I am yet to see someone working in engineering in one of those stating there is a fee and how much it costs.

CSMichael wrote:

Hendrik Proosa wrote:It is free money wise...

Is it really? Then why doesn't Resolve on Windows support ProRes? All of their products, for the most part support ProRes, so why not on Windows? It really doesn't make sense, especially if Adobe can do it. Are you sure it's free? If it's free, why would DJI charge a $500 activation fee for the privilege of recording to a "free" codec? I'm sure you could argue developer costs...but c'mon...

decode (import) is free, but encode (export*) is not free

* also record in a camera

Mark Foster wrote:decode (import) is free, but encode (export*) is not free

Here we go again. Do you have any source besides internet activists who can tell it has a fee attached and how much does it cost?

Let me quite Mazze Aderhold from Assimilate here, from Scratch (the one which has authorized Prores encoding on windows) engineering team:

Thing is, there is no license fee. It's free. Apple does not charge for it.
Certain requirements have to be met in order for one to get the license, that's all.
The difficulty with that is, that a few of those requirements might not fit or be in conflict with your own company policy,
and are therefore not easy (or even impossible) to fullfill.

Quote is from: https://liftgammagain.com/forum/index.p ... ost-130818

ok, you are right
both are free, but licensing is necessary

interesting that adobe does not have a valid proresRAW license

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT200321

Mark Foster wrote:interesting that adobe does not have a valid proresRAW license

Probably ProresRAW is just too new at this point. A lot of softwares which have Prores encoders don't have raw added yet.

apple keeps this page very up to date though