brawsource (beta)

Dual VapourSynth / AviSynth+ source plugin for Blackmagic RAW (.braw), written in Zig against the official Blackmagic RAW SDK (CPU + GPU decode). Frame-exact random access, audio, frame properties from clip/frame metadata.

• VapourSynth: braw.Source + braw.AudioSource — Linux x64, Windows x64, macOS (x64/arm64)
• AviSynth+: BRAWSource (video + audio track) — Windows x64, AviSynth+ 3.6+ (interface V8)

Install

VapourSynth users can install straight from PyPI — runtime included, no DaVinci Resolve needed:

pip install vapoursynth-brawsource

The wheels are baseline x86-64; for the faster -v3 builds (AVX2/F16C) or the AviSynth+ plugin, grab a release zip below.

System requirements: macOS 13.4+ with the release zips; PyPI wheels require macOS 14+ because pip cannot express the runtime's 13.4 minimum. On Linux the bundled runtime additionally needs the system libGL.so.1 (Mesa) and libuuid.so.1 — present on practically every desktop distribution.

Runtime

The plugin loads the Blackmagic RAW runtime at run time. The release zips are batteries-included: they ship the runtime in a blackmagic_win_deps / blackmagic_linux_deps / blackmagic_mac_deps folder next to the plugin — extract into your plugin directory and you're done. For custom setups the same folder convention works with your own copy of the runtime; alternatively an installed Blackmagic RAW 6.0+ / a matching DaVinci Resolve runtime is found automatically, or use the libpath parameter / BRAW_LIBRARY env var.

x86_64 builds come in two flavors: the plain one runs on any CPU, the -v3 one (x86-64-v3: AVX2/F16C, Intel Haswell 2013+ / AMD Excavator+) has noticeably faster pixel-copy loops — prefer it on any recent machine.

Usage

clip  = core.braw.Source(source="clip.braw")        # bit depth automatic
audio = core.braw.AudioSource(source="clip.braw")

BRAWSource("clip.braw", bitdepth=32)                 # AviSynth, audio attached

Parameters (both frameworks):

Defaults decode "as shot": camera metadata plus an auto-applied <clipname>.sidecar next to the file (reported via the BRAWSidecarAttached prop; parameters override both).

Frame props: _DurationNum/Den, _AbsoluteTime, _Matrix, _Range (AviSynth: _ColorRange) (+_Transfer/_Primaries when the gamma/gamut has a standard code), plus BRAWTimecode, BRAWISO, BRAWWhiteBalanceKelvin/Tint, BRAWExposure, camera/clip info as BRAW*. Inspect everything with braw-probe --frame 0 --list-attrs --all-meta clip.braw (built by zig build into zig-out/bin/; not part of the release packages).

Building

Zig 0.17.0; BRAW SDK headers and the AviSynth binding are vendored. The binding includes a Zig 0.17 compatibility patch documented in vendor/avisynth-zig/README.md. Other pinned build dependencies are downloaded automatically on the first build.

zig build                  # plugins into zig-out/{vapoursynth,avisynth}, braw-probe into zig-out/bin
zig build test             # unit tests
zig build release          # all targets, ReleaseFast, into zig-out/release/
tools/extract-sdk.sh       # unpack SDK/runtime into third_party/ (dev/tests)

The SDK extractor expects the Blackmagic RAW 6.0 Mac, Linux and Windows archives in SDK-Sources/ and verifies them against tools/sdk-manifest.sha256. Use tools/extract-sdk.sh --force to replace an extracted older SDK.

Development/test environment (Python 3.12+; VapourSynth R81RC1):

uv venv --python 3.13 encode_test/.venv
uv pip install --python encode_test/.venv/bin/python -r requirements-dev.txt
tools/build-oracle.sh
BRAW_TEST_STRICT=1 encode_test/.venv/bin/python test/python/test_source.py

Strict integration tests require the SDK and Portrait sample plus CUDA and OpenCL devices; missing fixtures or devices are reported as failures.

License

Plugin code: see LICENSE. Vendored SDK headers (vendor/) are Copyright Blackmagic Design, license in their file headers. The Blackmagic RAW runtime ("API Libraries") is explicitly redistributable together with software built on the SDK (Blackmagic RAW SDK Developer License §1.1(d)), so plugin bundles may ship it in the blackmagic_*_deps folder. This repository just doesn't vendor the binaries — tools/extract-sdk.sh unpacks them locally, or take them from a Blackmagic RAW install.