Blackmagic HyperDeck Shuttle

[Brian Freesh]

I'd be totally down for your experiments, but I fear you're going to find the HDD does not work in the Hyperdeck, for the reason Will mentioned. so any discussion of HDD is still in regards to the Samurai.

 

Laptops are not a terribly convincing argument for movement safety because when you travel with one the hard drive is not active. On the steadicam the whole point would be for it to be spinning while you operate. Not every move has gradual acceleration, and not every shot will be safe from external factors that can bump it. I can think of far too many circumstances where the drive could be jostled enough to mess it up if it was recording at the time. And that's not counting the time my rig was hit by a basketball and the red raid drive (on a shock mount) died, losing all the footage on it. The good news is the drive would be cheap to replace, and you'd probably have a back up handy. So you lose whatever was on the first drive, but you're back up and running for cheap and quickly.

 

The Atomos website also recommends using relatively new HDD. I didn't see why, nor did I se what they define as relatively new, but regardless it means your replacing drives more often than in a laptop. Combine that with the unintentional bumps, and if you shoot steadi a lot you could be replacing a drive as much as every month.

 

So I don''t see the appeal of the Atomos, where you will spend more from the start, and continue to spend more on top of that over time if you choose to use HDDs with it. And you'll risk losing shots anyway. And if you do ever go with SSD you'll really be adding to that difference in price.

 

The initial price difference, if you buy the same size drive, and on the assumption we've all made that the consumer SSDs are fine for the Hyperdeck (not established by Blackmagic yet) the initial price difference could be as little as $300, so maybe it's not enough to matter. And the added benefit of having a screen on the Atomos and being able to record more before changing drives (more footage at risk, so you'll change as often as the Blackmagic anyway) might be worth $300. Of course, you're going to be spending another $50 or so every month or two or three. And there's more cost if you decide you need a shock mount. At least we know how to make one thanks to the egg cracking experiments in grade school!

 

Unless I'm missing something (and I probably am) it seems like the lower cost with better stability and better quality (if it floats your boat, I'm still fine with SD, just want a better recorder) is probably the way to go. Again, we're assuming the standard consumer SSDs will be fine. I guess we're also assuming the much lower cost of the device itself is not indicative of it's relative quality!

[William Demeritt]

Also keep in mind, at the data rates we're discussing:

 

Blackmagic HyperDeck Shuttle:

15 minutes uncompressed (1.6 Gb/s) = 180GB = 180GB ssd drive = $480. Sure, you can go back and delete bad takes, but you can't trim the pre-roll from those takes, so long takes are going to be long takes.

 

Atomos Samurai:

6 hours ProRes 422 (HQ) (220 Mb/s) = 2.5″ 640GB drive = $50.

 

It's not just a question of replacement, but rather making it through the day with your recorder.

 

They probably recommend newer hard drives with motion detection and technology that protects the needle and platters better in the event of sudden movement. Personally, I've put hard drives through absolute and utter hell... traditional platter drives will work just fine for me.

[Brian Freesh]

I addressed making it through the day, so no concerns there. And there are more possible solutions than i discussed.

 

Naturally I wasn't referring to newer drive technology. I don't imagine anyone will be grabbing drives out of their old computers for this. Atomos was referring to the age of the drive itself, and specifically to the actual use it had. So a 2 year old drive that has never actually been used might be okay to use. But if you run a drive all day every day for a few weeks, that might accrue enough hours that whatever Atomos is concerned about becomes a problem. It might not, I dunno. From Atomos' website: With spinning hard drives, use a new drive, or one that has very little usage. Do not use old drives. Do not use drives that have been dropped.

 

They also warn against high movement situations. "The drives will generally stand light/medium occasional bumps without problems" Someone please define 'generally', 'light', and 'medium' for my piece of mind. You better believe I want a shock mount and at least 2 spare drives on hand. Forget about vehicle work.

 

You keep noting drive cost as the great nullifier, while my point is that the SSD solution with Black magic is ultimately cheaper (again, assuming the drives we're looking up are valid for the hyperdeck). Additionally, the math you just included excludes multiple variables, while introducing unnecessary ones. I'm trying to understand what the big deal is about the Atomos that has you resolute, because I'd love to be convinced. So far I've only seen you repeat that the drives are cheaper. While I've pointed out they are less stable, will be usable for a shorter period of time, and the total package is more expensive.

 

512 GB SSD = $920 = $1220 initial investment b4 tax

500 GB HDD = $60 = $1560 initial investment b4 tax + $60/month (up to)

 

At 720, that 512 GB drive will get me almost 2 hours. I can't remember a day of shooting that I wanted 2 hours of footage for for my reel. I'm happy if there's one shot I want to think about using for my reel. So I'm already in the black. Anything more than 2 hours is just excess. The Atomos may get me more record time on an HDD but I don't need it, and will likely change it out at lunch to dump footage so that I don't risk losing the entire day when that extra backs into me on hour 14.

 

I would likely buy 2 256gb SSD drives ($460 ea, $920 total) and change them out at lunch.

 

But I dunno, waiting for an argument against this, which as shown seems to be the clearly better solution to me. :P

 

I'm continuing to post to this discussion even though it's going in circles because I still am holding out for a revelation, and that revelation may be useful to someone else as well as myself. For those who don't know, I have a great respect for Will, who is a very intelligent person. I am trusting that he has good reasons for his opinion and I'm just not seeing it yet. If anyone else sees it, please let me know. As of right now I see a $340 savings, which turns into a $400 savings, $460, $520, etc, as the better solution. If I felt there was reason for the extra cost, I'd understand, but with the hyperdeck, there's far less risk of losing footage, and the footage is of higher quality (so I'm told, though to be fair I personally don't care). I don't see the downside save for the unknown variables I have repeated: wether the consumer drives will work with the hyperdeck, and wether the hyperdeck's lower cost is indicative of lower quality.

 

By the by, if there are any better solutions than theses two or the sound devices, I'd love to hear about them!

[Sydney Seeber]

HyperDeck Shuttle by Blackmagic

Considering its intended purpose, that thing looks so good to be true I can't help but think there's something wrong with it. I added it to my B&H wishlist. With a couple of 240GB SSD (One drive is not an option) drives you can get what is on paper an incredible setup for under a grand. Most companies these days are putting HDMI or HDSDI into their prosumer cameras and I can't help but think even the next generation of the HDSLRs will have optimized HDMI output. There's really no need for it on high end cameras which probably justifies the price point.

 

On the other hand, I don't think it's a very good onboard recorder for Steadicam at all. The footage is 10 bit HD, great for post production, not so great for simply playing back to check shots. The data rate is massive and unnecessary for that. One can easily find a CF card solution that's half the size for less $ using h264 or something that would work great for playback.

[Alfeo Dixon SOC]

Robert Orff (Tiffen engineer) and I went over and took a quick peak at the BM HyperDeck Shuttle and it did not look the part of using out in the field. The guts where completely open to air and should best remain on a desktop

[Eric Fletcher S.O.C.]

Robert Orff (Tiffen engineer) and I went over and took a quick peak at the BM HyperDeck Shuttle and it did not look the part of using out in the field. The guts where completely open to air and should best remain on a desktop

 

 

Except they make it as a field recorder

[Sydney Seeber]

Robert Orff (Tiffen engineer) and I went over and took a quick peak at the BM HyperDeck Shuttle and it did not look the part of using out in the field. The guts where completely open to air and should best remain on a desktop

And Ziploc® makes an affordable solution for the budget conscious. Like I said earlier, this thing is kind of useless for medium to larger budget shoots as well as a playback recorder on any level. It seems to be aimed at prosumer cameras. Cameras that primarily use shitty codecs but have the HDMI/HDSDI option which significantly increases the quality of the codec. I am buying it for this very reason... I've got several cameras lying around that can take advantage of this thing. I can't wait to try it out. Outside of that realm though, I can't imagine anyone really needing it. There are all sorts of recorders using that same shitty codec I mentioned earlier that would work much, much better than this as a playback deck. The codec works great for playing back video, just not for editing/color grading.

[Eric Fletcher S.O.C.]

Like I said earlier, this thing is kind of useless for medium to larger budget shoots as well as a playback recorder on any level.

 

Why do you say that? Personally I think that your wrong, I has huge data rates so it's great for reel material and anytime that you don't need to go back to the dit to playback it's a good thing.

[Sydney Seeber]

Like I said earlier, this thing is kind of useless for medium to larger budget shoots as well as a playback recorder on any level.

 

Why do you say that? Personally I think that your wrong, I has huge data rates so it's great for reel material and anytime that you don't need to go back to the dit to playback it's a good thing.

But are you color grading them? That's what a high end "Uncompressed" (I quote that because it's probably still compressed somewhere within a prosumer camera) image will do for you. A true RAW format will give you as many as 5 stops extra in latitude, a codec like this will probably give you at least a couple stops more than the camera's original codec. Trying to bring down highlights in the clouds, get more detail out of some shadows, compositing video layers by getting a nice clean key due to the lesser compression, somebody fucked up the white balance, well I can fix it with a mouse click... Those things, along with the ability to punch up the colors, giving you a richer fuller look than what's otherwise possible is where less compression comes in handy. All of the things I mentioned don't work well with most codecs that are MPEG based, h264 or otherwise. Those are the reasons I want this thing... If my camera's only 5 grand, it doesn't make much sense to me to spend thousands on improving the codec. I'd rather just have someone rent a better camera. Also, the space saved... This thing will give you HUGE files. It'll fill up a couple of terabytes right quick once transferred. I have an idea this won't be at all editable without a decent RAID setup either. My RAID setup alone was like 3 grand. So the cost here isn't just with the recorder, it also significantly increases the requirements of your editing system, something I know most camera operators could really give a shit about. (I used to be an editor, that's my interest in all of this... I still do it on side projects). MPEG on the other hand can easily be edited and stored on any laptop these days. Anywhere from 13-35 GB/hour is pretty typical, of course dependent on the codec used.

 

Playback is another story. were you to play back video right out of the camera alongside the recorded footage from this Blackmagic device they would look nearly identical. I'm really only referring to the prosumer level of cameras as the image from a high end Sony, Arri, etc. can of course look very different from the final product. h264 after all is what's used on Blu-Ray... Which looks great on my 106" projector. The real difference here is the codec from the Blackmagic has the ability to be manipulated much, much easier and better in post production. The many h.264 recorders that can record to compactflash cards are, in my opinion, a better solution. They're smaller, are nearly bullet/weatherproof, don't require a much larger (And more expensive) SSD and still record a great looking image at 1080p. Some of these devices even record at a higher bitrate than some cameras at 4:2:2. (Except Canon... Their new codec is fantastic) I've got one for a Sony camera that was about $750. Works freakin' great, even attaches to the battery on the back of the camera. It's not even noticeable. I'm simply of the opinion that this Blackmagic device is a bit overkill for what's needed in a playback deck. ,

[Eric Fletcher S.O.C.]

Like I said earlier, this thing is kind of useless for medium to larger budget shoots as well as a playback recorder on any level.

 

Why do you say that? Personally I think that your wrong, I has huge data rates so it's great for reel material and anytime that you don't need to go back to the dit to playback it's a good thing.

But are you color grading them? That's what a high end "Uncompressed" (I quote that because it's probably still compressed somewhere within a prosumer camera) will do for you. A true RAW format will give you as many as 5 stops extra in latitude, a codec like this will probably give you at least a couple stops more than the camera's original codec. Trying to bring down highlights in the clouds, get more detail out of some shadows, compositing video layers by getting a nice clean key due to the lesser compression... Those things, along with the ability to punch up the colors, giving you a richer fuller look than what's otherwise possible is where less compression comes in handy. All of the things I mentioned don't work well with most codecs that are MPEG based, h264 or otherwise. Those are the reasons I want this thing... If my camera's only 5 grand, it doesn't make much sense to me to spend thousands on improving the codec. I'd rather just have someone rent a better camera.

 

Playback is another story.

 

BLAH BLAH BLAH More incorrect info

 

I'm simply of the opinion that this thing is a bit overkill for what's needed in a playback deck.

 

Sydney,

 

Respectfully, go reread the blackmagic site because you don't understand what the hyperdeck shuttle does. It records a UNCOMPRESSED HD-SDI Signal the same RAW signal that comes out of a F23/35/65/Genocide/Alexa, there is no codec, it's a bitbucket that why you need a SSD for the data rate.

 

You will get a perfect clone of what is coming out of the HD-SDI spigot, perfect for editing or color correcting or even viewing on your 196" TV.......

[Jay Kim]

I don't think "it is a bit overkill for what's needed in a playback deck" because, compare to other camera mounted (field) recorder, it is really cheap.

 

Please check the following comparison chart made by AbelCine.

http://blog.abelcine.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Recorder_Comparison_Chart_051611.pdf

 

The cheapest uncompressed deck except BlackMagic Hyperdeck is Conversion Gemini ($6,295). Personally I think ProRes HQ 422 or LT is fine for playback but If I can get a uncompressed QT recorder, why not. People buy compressed Qt file recorder because they cannot afford CODEX, S2 or even Cinedeck (uncompressed QT is even option for this $9K recorder).

 

I see the ways to use this recorder and it is really fantastic option for its price.

 

Case 1: Use with Alexa.

Connect a Hyperdeck to Alexa's REC OUT A or B HD-SDI Connector and record Uncompressed 422 1.5G YCbCr. It is probably a better quality option than Alexa's SxS Pro Card recorder which only records ProRes QT. However, you cannot record ARRIRAW since it requires HD-SDI Dual Link connection.

 

Case 2: Use with Sony F3

Connect a Hyperdeck to F3's HD-SDI out connector and Record Uncompressed 422 QT which has a much better quality than it's MPEC-2 MP@HL (35Mbps/VBR).

 

The only problem I see from the above two cases is the editor may beg you to give your uncompressed QT to them instead of you begging them footages to edit your reel.

[Jay Kim]

Or you can use a Panasonic's AF100 with it but you can only record 8-bit HD422 due to AF100's internal data limitation. However, you still get uncompressed HD422 files instead of AVCHD compressed files.

[Sydney Seeber]

 

 

Respectfully, go reread the blackmagic site because you don't understand what the hyperdeck shuttle does. It records a UNCOMPRESSED HD-SDI Signal the same RAW signal that comes out of a F23/35/65/Genocide/Alexa, there is no codec, it's a bitbucket that why you need a SSD for the data rate.

 

You will get a perfect clone of what is coming out of the HD-SDI spigot, perfect for editing or color correcting or even viewing on your 196" TV.......

 

Please point out the incorrect parts instead of writing blah blah blah. That is not helpful. I read it all just fine, thanks. Nothing on that site disagrees with my posts. I know exactly what it does, and it fills a very needed role - In the Prosumer realm. You get the "Uncompressed" signal that the camera manufacturer gives you. Typically the higher end the camera, the higher end the signal, they are not all the same. Some cameras will give you 4:2:2 1080i out of that port. Some cameras will give you 1080p. Still other cameras intentionally degrade the signal from the HDMI port. The high end Sony and Arris can output an uncompressed signal... But this device is not capable of recording that signal to its full potential, hence my use of quotes when typing "Uncompressed". Rather, the Sony, Arri, etc. outputs a separate, processed 1080 signal to a device like this one.

 

In essence, the signal it records is not considered RAW, nor is it of the same quality that some of the cameras you quoted are capable of exporting... Specifically, this is my reason that this device is somewhat useless on a high end set.

 

It records to 4:2:2, not RAW. That is called subsampling. Both Sony and Arri can significantly top that through their external ports to higher end recorders.

 

It records a 10 bit signal. All high end camera companies are capable of 14 bit and higher these days, also a significant difference. So while this device can record the basic 1080p signal most cameras are capable of, it cannot record the highest quality signal the cameras can output and it should in no shape or form be considered RAW.

 

When Blackmagic says their signal is uncompressed, they're basically stating their device will not compress the signal any further than what the camera sends it. But that signal was compressed/processed prior to hitting the device.

 

At the same time, it's a great product if it delivers as promised. If one spends, say, 15 grand or less on a camera, this thing can improve the post production work flow significantly. MPEG codecs suck to edit with if one wants to improve dynamic range or do some compositing. For around a grand, there's another solution now.

 

I still do not get why a camera operator needs a 200 MB/s video file for a reel. How is MPEG not good enough for that? As I said earlier, without the need to do some heavy post production work, The MPEG file will look nearly identical to the original. Seems to me that buying a decent RAID system simply to handle the files this thing gives you is an unneeded expense, unless you're also an editor. You will not edit these files on a Macbook without some external hardware. And you will need lots of that.

[Sydney Seeber]

 

Case 1: Use with Alexa.

Connect a Hyperdeck to Alexa's REC OUT A or B HD-SDI Connector and record Uncompressed 422 1.5G YCbCr. It is probably a better quality option than Alexa's SxS Pro Card recorder which only records ProRes QT. However, you cannot record ARRIRAW since it requires HD-SDI Dual Link connection.

 

The Alexa can record 12 bit ProRes 4444 to the SxS card. I will take that over a 4:2:2 10 bit file (I call everything a codec like some people call video "Filming", but for this purpose I won't anymore) from the Blackmagic. Again, I pose the question... What does a camera operator need with such a large file? I can understand it if you're looking for another piece of gear to rent to a production or you're playing a bigger role than just the operator, but I'm going to be honest... On my little film shorts and such, I don't want some guy I barely know taking high quality footage away from my set unless there's a very good reason to do so. As far as real paychecks are concerned I may not work for James Cameron Et al. so I don't know how they feel about that. I suppose that brings up another subject entirely and one I don't really have the expertise in to make any related assumptions. But my original point still is that I think this thing is a poor choice for a playback deck. SSDs are much more expensive and larger than Compactflash. The post requirements are significantly higher as well, and a camera operator has absolutely no need for uncompressed video when it's simply for a reel. I mean, uncompressed is great when you need a file to withstand multiple loss-less generational passes within a post production facility, but if you're just dropping in some clips into a Final Cut timeline, you will never see any real difference between any of these files, codec, "Uncompressed" or not. There's a reason the codecs are termed "Visually lossless".

[Eric Fletcher S.O.C.]

Sydney,

 

We get it, it's not for you, move on, seriously give it a freaking rest. Like you said in your post, at this point in your career you're not exactly qualified to tell me what I need on the shows I do

 

It doesn't work for you, but for me and quite a few others it's the perfect solution. Now drop it