Live HDMI for your home cinema.

What the setup looks like

1. Install Blackmagic's Desktop Video runtime and a DeckLink card. The runtime comes from Blackmagic's support portal; Unplugged does not bundle it.
2. Connect the source to the card. A PC, camera, games console or AVR output that is not HDCP-protected.
3. Run Unplugged in Video Processor mode. It opens the port, identifies the signal and presents it full-screen with your picture applied.

File playback needs no capture card. The card is only for live HDMI.

The signal must be unencrypted. DeckLink inputs do not accept HDCP-encrypted HDMI, and Unplugged does not decrypt or bypass HDCP. Use sources you are authorized to capture.

The signal is recognised automatically

Every port on every card is listed with a live badge: locked with SDR, HDR PQ or HDR HLG, or no signal. Dolby Vision over HDMI is recognised as its own case — profile 7 and profile 8 — rather than being read as plain SDR.

HDR10 static metadata (MaxCLL, MaxFALL and the mastering display) is read from the card when the source carries it. The Info panel reports what was found, and the tone curve uses it.

It reconnects itself

Capture is automatic. Plug a source in, unplug it, or let it renegotiate from SDR to HDR mid-session, and the picture follows without intervention.

• Brief dropouts wait out a grace window. A source changing format does not bounce you to a spinner.
• Format changes are followed, not fought. SDR, HDR10, HLG and Dolby Vision over HDMI each get the right treatment.
• Ports can be named. “Camera”, “Console”, “PC” — the name is yours and appears everywhere the port does.
• Inputs switch live. Clicking a row restarts capture on the new port; nothing else about the session changes.

Built for live, not files

A file can be buffered ahead. A live source cannot. The capture path is deliberately pull-based:

• No read-ahead cache. A demuxer running ahead is the same as buffering, and it is latency you cannot spend.
• No long probe before the first frame. Live input is not seekable; there is nothing to learn by waiting.
• Late frames are dropped, not queued. If the consumer falls behind wall clock, the queue does not grow until the picture lags the sound.
• A capture ring sized for 4K. The default buffer in a naive path overflows on a 4K HDR signal. Unplugged sizes it for the bitrate.

These are implementation choices inside the FFmpeg DeckLink path, not settings you have to tune. They are listed because the source is public and the reasoning is part of the product.

The same picture for live and files

The live path and the file path meet the same video renderer, the same tone curves, the same display target and the same calibration LUT. A console and a film on disk are graded by the same code.