Blackmagic Design
TouchDesigner supports Blackmagic Design devices through the Video Device In TOP and Video Device Out TOP.
Blackmagic Design builds a wide array of high performance input and output video devices. They offer devices for PCI-e and USB 3.0 interfaces that are available in a variety of input/output connections such as HDMI, SDI/HD-SDI, DVI, Component, and more.
Blackmagic Products can be found here.
Blackmagic Support in TouchDesigneredit
TouchDesigner has built-in native driver support for Blackmagic devices providing better performance and lower latency than WDM/DirectShow capture devices.
Requirements
- Decklink or Intensity hardware device
- Install the Blackmagic Design Desktop Video drivers.
Ways to interface with Blackmagic Design in TouchDesigner
- Video Device In TOP - Captures video and timecode streams from capture cards and input devices such as the Decklink and Intensity.
- Audio Device In CHOP - Captures audio streams from the capture cards.
- Video Device Out TOP - Outputs video, audio and timecode from the Decklink and Intensity devices.
Tips for Working with Blackmagic Designedit
- For additional support and troubleshooting refer to the Blackmagic Design Community.
ST2110 Supportedit
The Decklink IP devices allow using ST2110 for both input and output. Unlike SDI/HDMI workflows, the configuration of these streams is mostly done externally or automatically. In particular for input you need to tell the input device to read from a specific source using NMOS. This is not done using parameters on the Video Device In TOP. A simple to use tool to try out working with NMOS is available from Riedel, called NMOS Explorer.
8K Supportedit
Capture and output at 8K requires all 4 of the 'devices' on the 8k cards to be grouped into one. This is achieved by going to the Blackmagic Video Setup tool, going to the 'Connectors' page for device (1), and choosing 'SDI 1 to 4 In or Out' as the connector selection. Inside of TouchDesigner only one device will now be visible on the menu for this card.
Firmware Updatingedit
If your Blackmagic device is not working, ensure it has the correct firmware installed for the drivers you are using. As long as your driver is version 11.5 or later, you can use the following commands from the driver installation folder (usually C:\Program Files\Blackmagic Design\Blackmagic Desktop Video):
List the devices and their firmware version:
DesktopVideoUpdateTool.exe --list
To perform updates (-u) on all devices (-a), use:
DesktopVideoUpdateTool.exe -ua
GPU Direct For Video Supportedit
With the switch to Vulkan we are able to achieve similar performance via Vulkan features directly using something called Pinned Memory. This works on most GPUs (even non-Quadros), so GPU Direct For Video support is no longer needed.