Gadgetory

excellent what's up guys welcome back to Pauls hardware today's video is going to be kind of a quick off-the-cuff I don't want to call it a review it's going to be more of an unboxing and a first look and some basic testing for this new little device the black magic deck link mini recorder 4k this is a brand new product from black magic and there's a very specific reason why I bought this very quickly when I spotted it and that's because I have two Panasonic Lumix gh4 cameras and these gh4 s have an HDMI out over here on the side and it's a kind of unique feature of this camera that it can actually output pretty high resolution but actually it can do for two to ten bit 4k resolution out of the HDMI out and you can use that with something like a Natomas Shogun optimist at the most I don't know how that's pronounced and with a Shogun which is an external recorder that you can get you plug it in here and that will allow you to record in that really high resolution with really good color depth however for some reason the existing version of black magics 4k capture card the 4k version of this guy right here this is the intensity Pro but for some inexplicable reason unless you use outdated firmware the Blackmagic intensity Pro 4k will not accept the 4k signal from the gh4 so I'm really hoping that this new one will work for that since it does support some new standards and then I'm also hoping that I can use it to capture direct 4k gameplay footage and then also hopefully even 21 by 9:30 440 by 1440 but again that remains to be seen I purchased this from Amazon it was about a hundred and ninety US dollars and again this only just came out so there's really not many reviews or anything like that on it so again Blackmagic Design has an SDI input as well as an HDMI inputs works with DaVinci Resolve Premiere Pro Media Composer and Photoshop Ultra HD six gig SDI connector I'm not going to be using SDI I'm going to mainly be using that HDMI because it is HDMI 2.0 the reason I'm hoping this might work whereas the intensity Pro 4k doesn't is it as hdmi 2.0 a 21 peas 30 resolution capture but also even very specifically lists 2160p 30 frames per second true 10 and 12 bit broadcast quality input with 16 channels of embedded audio so those are specs also down here Yub for 2 to RGB y UV 42 RGB 4 for 4 included in the box legged little welcome guide includes a four gig SD card with the software and manual installed on it it's kind of nice does come with a low profile bracket so for a smaller form factor capture system this could also be an option so this is a fairly small google capture card in and of itself and there it is you do have a not active cooling fan on there PCI Express by 4 interface sister Gen 2 by 4 it will still work in a gen 3 connection then of course just your very simple simple inputs hdmi 2.0 a right there and then a 6g SDI connector this is a connection type called BNC which is a locking connector which is actually a really nice connector but it's more used in professional video production environments so i do not have something that can connect up to that if you get like a professional camera for example it might have an SDI out and in fact that's another option besides paying two grand for the atomists Shogun for this there is actually an add-on piece you can get for the gh4 which you're getting costs about two grand adds like some SDI connectors and that kind of thing but i'm seeing if i can do this on the cheap so the atom of Shogun can do that really high resolution high bit rates high color depth capture but you need to spend $2,000 on a device like that if this works it might be a $200 alternative although this one does have some drawbacks so let me go over those real quick so one thing you might notice is this only has HDMI IN which means you can't use the pass-through so here's the Blackmagic intensity Pro has an end as well as an out so if you're capturing from a game console for example you can go in with the console and then out and then you can actually still play on whatever monitor you're using whatever this does not have that option although there is a display out that you can get as well as this which again costs another $190 so it is a more expensive solution since I'm capturing Creek Street to a computer that shouldn't be an issue for me I hope but again that is something that you lose is the pass-through to get a video out from whatever you're capturing from another potential limitation if you compare it to something like this which is the Elgato Game Capture HD 60 again has the HDMI in I believe that's inside yet in as well as out but this has the benefit of being external and connected via USB 2.0 this does have again some drawbacks since it is USB 2.0 but it is portable I also have this guy right here which is the Razer ripsaw which is also a pretty nice capture device so this one's nice because it's got the HDMI pass-through it's got USB 3.0 so you don't have to wait for buffering or anything like that but can't do 4k although it can do 1080 60 pretty nicely so I have installed the deck link mini recorder 4k in the capture system over here just in the PCI Express slot down there just going to have this installed for right now and I've gone ahead and downloaded the software from the Blackmagic website and installed it and now in the desktop video setup I can actually see the capture device listed so let's start the first test setup so I have an HDMI cable come in here plugged over into the input on the capture card if you have hdmi cables and you're worried about the hdmi 2.0 allows your hdmi cables hdmi 1.4 or newer it'll still work with hdmi 2.0 or at least from what i've read see if that actually plays out here and then on my gh4 i got to go over here into the settings for the HDMI output and here is where the connection set stuff like the bit mode so we want the bit mode to be ten bits can I record to the memory card with this setting well yeah yeah that's fine and then I don't care about inflow display and we want 4k done convert to be off because we want it to stay at 4k you just plug in the HDMI over here screen should go off for a second as it switches over to HDMI out and now lets you have to pick it up on the computer and it seems to have worked at least done initial inspection this is the desktop video sup setup software the Blackmagic is provide provided it's a seems to have been improved upon a little bit here too but you can tell SD ni and HDMI inputs and recognize this device and everything and we can already see right here HDMI 2160p 24 so it is outputting at 24 frames per second 4k let's see if we have the proper bitrate alright guys I just spent the last maybe two to three hours messing with this thing and I've had my share of ups and downs as I've gone along but I'm happy to say that at least what you're watching right now is being recorded and for gate and 4k directly through that capture card but there are some limitations there are some of course bits of quirkiness with it and I think what we're really suffering from right now is a lack of software support from the capture software side specifically with xsplit but anyway I'm going to do some ghetto recording of the screens right here and show you guys what I found out so first off after setting up the camera properly to output in 4k and 10-bit and all that good stuff it was recognized again by the Dec link mini recorder 4k software the desktop video setup and then the next thing that I did was I actually loaded up the actual deck link software so the first thing I want to show you is the actual media Express software which hello reflection in there which is right here and which shows thankfully that it's working so there's me recording the screen of me recording the screen this is getting crazy but anyway so this worked and this showed that this is 4k this is functional and and it's working so that's good that means that my capture card works now what I did was I use the actual capture feature down here and there's a different there's a few different options you can do in here in the preferences to determine what your actual video settings are what the resolution is as well as the capture file format so I went through all these file formats and I found that if I'm using avi 10-bit y UV or RGB it basically captures in lossless format which ends up being really large file size avi motion JPEG records and does some compression but it does not do 10 bit what this meant was that my test files I was running here are like insanely huge this is like over 2 gigs per second that it's recording at that is using that's using avi 10 bit y UV switching over to AV or RGB 10 bit was even worse and in fact led to this file being almost 3 gigabytes per second so these are like 20 15 or 20 second clips and this one is 5 point 2 3 gigs this one is six point seven four gigs that's pretty insane the third test I did was again using avi so what that ends up being is a much more reasonable file size more like 200 megabits which is a lot more reasonable for 4k but then it also was not doing actual 10 bit though and that in that case so these media I used media info here to scan the file and we can see here some of the details of it such as the bit rate that's going at 242 megabits per second and then we also have the actual color depth and chroma subsampling so chroma subsampling is for two two and bit depth is 8 bit so we are recording in a reasonable format but the problem here was that with these other videos here and I can kind of start to start to play them back you might notice they are insanely choppy and basically dropping frames all over the place I think what this is a result of is the fact that I'm not using really high speed storage I'm recording to an external USB 3 SSD why this is huge crazy according to an external USB 3 SSD but that's not fast enough for the bit rates that these are actually recording it so that was my downfall there so I'm going to need to set up some high-speed storage on the system if I want to capture directly probably a couple SSDs in rate the good news though I mean upshot here is that it is working I am capturing straight from the gh4 I'm doing it at 4k and I'm doing it at or at least have the availability for the higher bit rates and color deaths so that's cool like although of course was to use this with xsplit and possible well ideally xsplit because I occurred exploit can do 10 bit unfortunately xsplit is just completely non-functional at least when it comes to getting video with this capture card i have tried literally just about every single possibility i've tried using dec link video capture i've tried black magic WM WDM capture I have tried going into the video input settings for all of these deck link video capture does not even have 4k listed down here as an option so I think that is a software update that needs to be made when you do the WDM option WDM capture it does give you some more options or at least you can go in there and manually tell us before k but it's still the same results I am getting audio through the camera it does actually pick that up but it's just black video and I found no way around that so xsplit a date your so it works with this capture card OBS on the other hand was working for me unfortunately although I was encountering really weird kind of crazy issues with the studio version so I ended up going to just the classic OBS and this seems to be working so as I was able to use this to record myself and it worked and I recorded that too I use this to record the stuff that you might have heard just a few moments ago and look there's me hoping things will work as I start talking but it did work I was able to compress it on the fly and I ended up with a file over here which is not as high a bit rate as I would have wanted it's only about 15 megabits but it's still 30 frames per second it's still 3840 by 2160 the only downside here though is that this is not recording using the full color chroma options so yeah down here it's only recording at or to go four to zero for chroma subsampling and it is only recording at 8 bits but it is recording and if you compare that to using a gh4 with the Blackmagic intensity Pro I suppose that is an improvement well guys just to sort of sum up the additional tests I've done after my capture test with the gh4 which were somewhat successful unfortunately I have had bad luck since then so my first attempt was with my Acer predator x34 monitor back there and I was hoping what I could do is take this system here output it to 3rd at 34 40 by 1440 20m by 9 to that monitor and then cloned the output to the HDMI outs to send over to be captured that did not work so I decided to take the predator exit a 4 out of the mix and I disconnected it I originally had a longer cable going here with an extension and then I started to get worried because it wasn't working that I didn't have a fully compatible hdmi 2.0 cables or that my my coupler wasn't fully compatible or whatever so I moved this whole system over here so I could take the one cable that I know work because I had it connected to that camera and it was working there and just that is connected to this via HDMI was not able to clone 4k monitor and then 4k captured was not able to use extended mode like like it's set up right here and capture the extended monitor was not able to even plug just the HDMI in directly and capture that at 4k 30 frames per second I am pretty much given up trying right now I have literally spent two hours going through different settings and everything so initial thoughts on the deck link many recorder 4k are not good at this points well it has succeeded in getting a fork a 10 bit signal from my gh4 which I give it a thumbs up for and I guess I'm going down pros right now a little fan that's on there even with my capture system over here in the side panel off not audible at all I mean haven't got enough right next to it but it's definitely not something that's loud so that's good that was a complaint on the intensity Pro 4k um but the fact that it simply cannot capture a 4k 30fps signal from my mic like friggin gaming system right here which I know it's a 1080 it's running out of GTX 1018 there I know it's outputting the right signal because it's coming through just fine on here so I have no idea what else is going on but I pretty much run out of time anyway thanks you guys for watching this video I hope it's been illuminating to some of you any of you who are interested in capturing 4k footage for example hopefully I'll be able to come back to it in the future after I've done some more testing a little bit more time may begin the software a chance to update and when it comes to stuff like xsplit OBS because those are giving me issues - anyway though I hope you guys have learned a little bit from this video hit thumbs up button if you did enjoy it and thanks for watching we'll see you next time