Blackmagic RAW Player 5.1

Blackmagic RAW Player is Blackmagic Design's free app for watching .braw video clips on Windows, macOS and Linux without opening an editor.

If someone sent you footage from a Blackmagic camera and Windows says it cannot open the file, this is the quickest way to see it.

Version 5.1 is the build hosted here, and it shows each clip with the colour and dynamic range the camera recorded.

Why Normal Players Cannot Open .braw Files

A .braw file is RAW video, closer to a digital negative than a finished movie. Before it can be shown, the sensor data has to be turned into a picture using the camera's own colour science.

Only Blackmagic's decoder knows how to do that. VLC, MPC-BE, the Windows Media Player app and other general players do not include it, so they show an error or nothing at all.

Because the player uses Blackmagic's own decoder, which carries the camera's colour information, a clip looks the same here as it does in DaVinci Resolve.

What You Get in the Download

The player ships inside Blackmagic's Blackmagic RAW package, so the installer adds a few things besides the player itself:

• Blackmagic RAW Player - opens and plays .braw clips.
• Blackmagic RAW Speed Test - checks how well your computer decodes BRAW at different resolutions, and how many streams it can handle at once.
• The BRAW decoder and SDK - the shared engine the player and other apps use.
• Plug-ins for Premiere Pro and Media Composer - so those editors can import .braw clips too.

For the format itself, compression settings and editing support, see our Blackmagic RAW codec and SDK page.

How to Play a .braw Clip

1. Download the 5.1 package for your system. Windows and macOS builds are zip archives, and the Linux build is a tar archive.
2. Extract it and run the installer. It sets up the player, the Speed Test, the SDK and the editing plug-ins together.
3. Open Blackmagic RAW Player and load a clip. Choose your .braw file and it plays in the player window.
4. Run the Speed Test if playback stutters. It shows whether your computer can keep up at that resolution.

What Is New in Version 5.1

Version 5.1 plays BRAW clips that a Blackmagic Video Assist 12G HDR records from the Leica SL3-S, Sony FX3 and Sony FX30. Blackmagic released it on 4 November 2025.

Version 5.0 before it added clips from the Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive. Recent 4.6 builds added Panasonic LUMIX S1II, S1IIE and S1RII clips and faster playback of URSA Cine 12K LF and 17K 65 footage.

When Playback Stutters

BRAW is decoded on the graphics card, through CUDA, Metal or OpenCL. A current driver often makes the biggest difference, so update the NVIDIA Studio Driver or AMD Adrenalin before blaming the file.

Not sure which graphics card is in your PC? GPU-Z tells you in a few seconds. Very high resolutions such as 12K and 17K need a strong card however recent the driver is.

Blackmagic lists Windows 10 or later, macOS Big Sur or later, and Linux CentOS 7.3 or later.

When to Use DaVinci Resolve Instead

The player is for watching clips. To trim them, adjust ISO, white balance or exposure, or turn them into a normal video file, use the free DaVinci Resolve, which reads BRAW natively.

A normal export from Resolve, such as H.264 or H.265, then plays in VLC on any computer. That is the easiest way to share BRAW footage with someone who does not have the player.

If you are choosing an editor, our guide to the best free video editors without a watermark compares Resolve with the alternatives.

Who Should Look Elsewhere

• Your clip ends in .mov, not .braw. It may be ProRes RAW, which needs Apple ProRes RAW for Windows.
• You want to change camera settings or update firmware. That is Blackmagic Camera Setup, not the player.
• You filmed on a phone with Blackmagic Camera. Blackmagic Camera for Android saves ordinary H.264 or H.265 video, so any modern player opens it.

Quick Questions

Download Blackmagic RAW Player 5.1 and see how it plays your clips, or tell us how you got on if you have used it before.