Thanks for the responses. I was hoping for something in the sub $1000 range but it is what it is I suppose.
[quote=“rolferrr, post:124, topic:5275”]
For those with the Mac Studio - are you running a broadcast monitor? how did you set it up?
[/quote]This...https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1578062-REG/blackmagic_design_ultra_studio_monitor_3g.html
Could be Flame limitation?? It’s not listed as a supported interface and may not be compatible. The BMD devices have slight differences in how they work which may require specific code. BMD’s roadmap is not the most logical on what devices does what based on their low-cost chip utilization.
I think this issue, which was asked on other forums, was related to Flame Setup not being correctly configured.
All BMD Thunderbolt & PCI cards should be seen by the BMD driver / SDK and usable in Flame Family products. We do not qualify all card models since, as you would imagine, that would require a lot of time but from what we have seen up to know, you should be able to use any of these cards. We only listed on our web site the cards we have validated, which are the cards mostly used by our users.
Please share your result here so others can benefit from your testing.
May be true on Mac. May not be true on Rocky 8.5. I was unable to make my UltraStudio 4K Mini TB work on Linux workstation despite it having TB interfaces. Maybe there are additional steps, but BMD driver saw devices, but Flame didn’t in my experience. But could have been my fault too. Ended up having to buy a DeckLink internal card for $1K.
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I do not have access to the UltraStudio 4K Mini TB but others TB cards on CentOS & Rocky Linux 8.5 are detected and work in our products. Do you remember which Flame version and BMD Desktop Video driver version you had used at the time of you test?
Good to know. It would have been 2023.1, not sure on the BMD driver version. Whatever would have been most current around June '22 as I downloaded it from BMD website.
Thanks for the information! Not clear why the card was not detected but we will have a look when we will have access to this card. The SDK & driver are the same between macOS and Linux and I know many are using this card with success on macOS so that should have work out of the box when Flame Setup is set to use the BMD card, which I guess was your case at that time.
Correct, was all configured in setup for BMD. The UltraStudio 4K Mini TB is external though, not a card.
I know from ADSK documentation there is this rare and weird card that fits into PCIe and the bridges to the external UltraStudio Extreme. Never seen that before, which is why I assumed that TB connections on Linux were problematic.
Thunderbolt support is part of the Rocky Linux distribution so there should not be any issues. The only limitation could be that you might need to reboot when connecting & disconnecting TB devices if the card is not visible at the OS level, but that should not be a big deal.
I will update the group when we know more about the card.
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BMD output via thunderbolt does indeed work on rocky linux OOTB. I have had success with this with both a titan ridge AIC and a titan ridge controller built into the motherboard.
Some possible gotchas are setting the security level in bios or having to manually rescan the PCI bus. This command is found in the desktop video readme file.
sudo sh -c 'echo 1 > /sys/bus/pci/rescan'
botlctl is also your friend for diagnosis as it has a bit more info than the settings page built into gnome.
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Hello Jan!
I was able to get a BMD Ultra Studio mini 4K and I have seen no problem using it with Flame 2023.3 Update on my Linux box with a Thunderbolt 2 card and a TB2 to TB3 converter under Rocky Linux 8.5 with Desktop Video 12.4.1. You should see no issue to preview UHD / 4K DCI up to 30 fps with this kind of config. For UHD / 4K DCI 50/60P, you would need TB3 connectivity and cable, which is normal due to required bandwidth.
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@Slabrie Oh, nice. Thanks for testing that. I must have made a stupid pilot error then when I tried it.
My Linux system has a Asus Z690 board with 2x TB4 ports, so that should totally work with that then. I’ll give it another try and report back.
My pleasure! Please let us know about what you will see.
As you would expect looking at our System Requirement page (Linux), we do not qualify TB cards since our qualified configurations do not come with TB connectivity by default. This will probably change in the future since HW vendors are adding capabilities. But from Flame standpoint for BMD card, if the OS and driver can see the card, we should be able to use it. We might not be able to use all capabilities offered by the card (i.e. if you connect a 8K Decklink, you will not get 8K Preview since we have not implemented it) but the other formats should work.
Have fun!
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@Slabrie Yes, I understand the limitation on qualified configurations. At the time when I urgently needed that system, lead times from the big brands were long, plus they tend to lag 6-12 months on adopting latest CPUs and other hardware due to their long qualification/build cycles.
Several of my systems are from PugetSystems (About Us | Puget Systems). A very well regarded system builder that specializes on high end creative AV workstations. They do their own extensive qualifications and move a little faster than the HP/Dells. If you ever were to consider adding another specialized hardware vendor to your qualification matrix, this would be an excellent candidate. As of recent they also now ship to Canada 
Can confirm that this works on mac studio with 2023
Has anyone tested Flame2024 on one of these yet? Interested to see how it stacks up against a Linux box given it now runs to the metal.
It stacks up quite well against my Linux box with an RTX A5000… It’s not using metal atm… if it would, I’m guessing it might even run better…
it doesn’t run on Metal
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