Magewell Pro Capture Mini SDI

About this product

For system builders who need an SDI camera feed inside a small computer, the Pro Capture Mini SDI puts capture and pass-through on a card of only 30 × 51 mm. It is an SDI capture card in the Mini PCIe format, the small internal card slot found in compact, industrial and embedded computers. It takes one SDI signal (the single-coax connection used by broadcast cameras and equipment) into the computer and passes the same signal on through a loop-through output.

What goes in

• One SDI input. SD, HD and 3G-SDI, including the 2K (2048×1080) mode. Input resolution goes up to 2048×1080 pixels.
• Audio on the same cable. Up to eight mono audio channels at 48 kHz are carried in the SDI signal, so there is no separate audio wiring.
• Long cable runs. Cable equalisation supports up to 330 m of SD-SDI, 190 m of HD-SDI and 150 m of 3G-SDI, which lets you place the computer a long way from the camera.
• Compact MMCX connectors, with BNC cabling supplied. To suit the size of the card, the connections are miniature MMCX, and the supplied MMCX to BNC cabling takes you to standard SDI leads.

What comes out

• Loop-through. A second MMCX connector carries the SDI signal on to a monitor or other equipment, so you can add capture to an existing signal chain instead of buying a splitter.
• To your software. Capture formats go up to 2048×2160 pixels, with frame rates up to 144 frames per second depending on resolution. An SDI source up to 1080p at 60 frames per second (3G-SDI) is within what the card accepts.
• Processing on the card. 10-bit video processing with cropping, scaling, de-interlacing, aspect ratio conversion, colour format conversion, frame rate conversion and OSD composition, which saves the small computer’s processor for your application.
• More than one stream. The input supports unlimited capture streams, so two programs can take the same source at different sizes.
• Low delay. Latency is 64 video lines.

Where it earns its place

• SDI capture for the smallest systems. The whole card is 30 × 51 mm, so it goes where a full-size card has no room.
• Power to suit the build. Choose the high-performance firmware (about 3.62 W maximum) or the low-power firmware (about 3.19 W maximum). Power comes from the slot’s 3.3 V supply, so the card needs no power lead of its own.
• Heat sink options. The card is available with three different heat sinks, each under its own SKU. Tell us about your enclosure and we will confirm which version suits it.
• Built to stay on. The card is rated for continuous operation, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, in ambient temperatures from 0 to 60°C.
• Several in one system. Multiple cards per system are supported, so a computer with more than one Mini PCIe slot can take more than one feed.

Setting it up

The card goes into a Mini PCIe slot and is fixed through its mounting hole. Then install Magewell’s driver. Software sees the card through the standard capture interfaces of the operating system: DirectShow on Windows, V4L2 on Linux and AVCaptureSession on macOS. You can therefore work in familiar programs including VLC, OBS, XSplit, vMix, VidBlaster and Wirecast. Supported systems are Windows 10, 11 and Server 2016 to 2025, Linux with kernel 2.6.35 or later on x86, x64 and ARM, and Mac OS X 10.9 or later.

Where it sits in the range

This is the Mini PCIe card for SDI. Its HDMI counterpart is the Pro Capture Mini HDMI. If your computer has a standard PCIe slot, see the Pro Capture SDI and the rest of the Pro Capture range. For an M.2 slot, see Eco Capture.