Blackmagic Design Pty. Ltd. has announced the Blackmagic DeckLink. It’s a PCI-based uncompressed video capture card that works in QuickTime, and costs less than US$1,000. Blackmagic said it’s aimed at the low-cost professional market, providing a simplified workflow while retaining advanced features.
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The 10-bit video PCI card is designed specifically for connecting to digital broadcast tape decks, according to Blackmagic. The card sports SDI video and audio in and out, and a Sony-compatible RS422 serial deck control port. No external equipment is required for system setup, and no fast disk array is needed when used with DeckLink Online JPEG, either.
All video and audio channels are sent through a single BNC-type video cable, and video sync generators aren’t necessary since DeckLink provides SDI video sync internally. In addition to uncompressed 10-bit video, the card also does uncompressed 8-bit video capture and playback.
DeckLink sports a 2x PCI interface operating at 66MHz, and means that users can operate at full speed with devices like ATTO’s UL4D 66MHz PCI SCSI card. Blackmagic claims that the DeckLink is the first standard definition video card to feature a 66MHz PCI interface.
Blackmagic’s codec supports 64-bit rendering in software like After Effects. It also supports NTSC and PAL, renders YUV natively in supported applications, and works with Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar. The universal free software code works on Mac OS 9, Mac OS X and Windows.
Blackmagic’s DeckLink costs US$995, and is available now.