HyperDeck Shuttle from Blackmagic Design

[Dom Stevenson]

Felix

Thanks for getting back. So this is not something i'm interested in. Just wanted to confirm that.

[Sanjin Svajger]

Originally Posted by Dom Stevenson

Sanjin

"if this was added then the price would probably triple."

Why would that be? surely BM would love to take business from their competitors, and this device with lower data rates would hit the spot. Bring it on!

Originally Posted by Felix van Oost

Dom, the entire reason the recorder is so cheap is because it does almost no internal processing apart from repackaging the file in a QuickTime wrapper. In order to offer compressed codec options, they've have to fit a powerful processing chip and that would increase the price to around the same as a Ninja.

Thank you Felix for answering that.

Originally Posted by Dom Stevenson

"I think that this is going to be used a lot all across the production segment."

Still don't understand this line of thinking. High end TV is already very happy with systems like Panasonic's 100 mbps AVC Intra. Who on earth wants to capture video at over 400 Gig per hour?

"Except for the very low end..."

low end like the BBC?

This is not going to be used by television companies if you ask me. I to can't imagine why they would need such a product... I would use this for promos and music videos and so forth when the benefit of uncompressed would make a difference. And in my opinion this is where it's targeted at.

As for the low end: I wasn't thinking of television off course. Low end promos, corporate, music videos, etc.

[David Stuart Shapton]

Originally Posted by Sanjin Svajger

4:2:2 uncompressed... Is there really such a diference betwen this and let's say prores from ninja at 220 Mbits?? Why not go 4:4:4? 4:4:4 would be great for chroma key work. But uncompressed 4:2:2 compared to prores 4:2:2 at 220 is it really worth it?

No, it isn't worth it. The Ninja's ProRes at 220mbps is visually identical to uncompressed, and makes storage six times cheaper. You can buy a Ninja with the cost of an hour's worth of uncompressed solid-state storage. And with a Ninja, you can use spinning drives: $50 for 2.5 hours of video that's visually identical to Uncompressed!

And it's got a monitor. And a carrying case. And it comes with batteries. And ProRes is much better for editing.

Dave Shapton
President
Atomos EMEA

[Bumki Cho]

It would be great if HyperDeck comes with an analog audio jack for cameras like XLH1 that doesn't include audio with HD/SDI.

[David Parks]

Dave,

I think your products and the BM products are both revolutionary in how that change the economics of quality. While I haven't worked with the Atomos products, they seemed to be designed for acquisition and ingest in a widely accepted Codec, ProRes. I look at the BM shuttle as a post edit, codec agnostic mastering and SDI playback device. Not everyone wants ProRes.

Both look like great products for the money. It wasn't long ago that you had HDCAM tape at 3:1:1, at 144 Mbits.sec (I think that was the bit rate) and at a 100 times the cost.

[David Stuart Shapton]

I don't disagree with anything you've said here, but my concern is that a lot of people on this forum and others don't realize the cost implications of recording uncompressed video to solid-state media, and the difficulty they will have with transferring and editing. Of course, for short shoots, blue-screen and adverts, there is a place for this sort of thing, and we welcome competitive products as a validation of the market space. I just want people to understand - whether they buy our product or someone else's - that they're not saving money with a low-cost device that records uncompressed onto SSDs!

Dave Shapton
Atomos

[Chris Hurd]

As promised, several BMD HyperDeck Shuttle topics have now been merged into one.

[Steve Nelson]

Nice to see some more competition in this market. Seems there are pros and cons with each so it's really a matter of which one works best for your particular workflow. Interestingly the Nanoflash holds it's own despite all the new offerings at NAB this year.

So from what I've seen so far we have the following:

Blackmagic Design - Hyperdeck Shuttle
Convergent Design - Nanoflash and Gemini
Atomos - Ninja and Samurai
Sound Devices - Pix 220 and 240
Aja - Ki Pro and Ki Pro Mini

Did I miss any?

[Simon Wood]

Originally Posted by Steve Nelson

Did I miss any?

Sidekick HD.
Cinedeck.

[Steve Nelson]

Ah thank you Simon,

I wasn't aware of the Sidekick HD and had forgotten the Cinedeck completely. Thank you!

[Steve Kalle]

About the Shuttle:

1) from what I have read, it requires a computer connected to it for adjusting and checking its settings.

2) It has no monitor or display so it would be crazy NOT to have either a monitor or computer connected to make sure it is working/recording properly.

3) I am very very interested to see what SSDs BM says are ok to use because current non-enterprise SSDs are not designed to handle a constant stream of data being written. Further, most SSDs greatly lose write speeds with a constant stream of data being written. Several websites tested this by using a hard drive speed testing program such as HDTach or HDTune. After about half full, many drives dropped from 200+MB/s write speed to half or less. However, most enterprise SSDs don't have this issue (these SSDs use SLC memory) but cost 2-4 times more. For example, a 64GB Intel X25-E Extreme (SLC) costs $725. Also, MLC drives have 'up to' write speeds and 'sequential' write speeds with the latter far lower and usually not high enough for uncompressed 10bit. A good example is the $500 120GB Vertex Turbo, which has 'up to' write speeds of 200MB/s and 'sequential' write speeds maxing out at 120MB/s.

A good read about SSDs is here: SLC vs. MLC : Solid State Drive Buyer's Guide

4) I bet Convergent Design's 256GB and 512GB SSDs would work great but I don't know if they will have the same interface as a regular SSD. Their prices will be $749 (256GB) and $1349 (512GB). They are sourced and made in the US so no price fluctuation with Japan. These prices should give an idea as to how much a regular SSD should cost in order for it to work with the Shuttle.

5) I really can't believe anyone wants to record uncompressed from a Canon DSLR with all of its noise and aliasing problems.

About other recorders:

1) People should realize that Pro Res HQ uses a different Variable Bitrate for each frame rate and frame size. For example, 720 24p has a 'Target Bitrate' of 88Mb/s and Apple says the actual bitrate is 5-10% lower. Also, 10bit uses about 20% of the bitrate for the extra data. With 1080 24p, it has a 'Target Bitrate' of 176Mb/s. So, doing the math, subtract the 10% of the extra VBR and then subtract the 20% overhead of 10bit, and you get only 127 Mb/s I-Frame for 8bit material. This explains why 50Mb XDCAM HD looks just as good as Pro Res HQ (Long GOP vs I-Frame).

This drops to only 84 Mb/s for regular Pro Res 1080 24p which is visually equal to 35Mb XDCAM EX.

From Apple's whitepaper: "Except in the case of unusually complex material, actual bit rates are typically 5 to 10 percent lower than these targets."

2) Realize that all HDMI camera outputs are 8bit only.

[David Stuart Shapton]

You're making some rather sweeping statements here in what is a very interesting post. You're comparing worst cases with best cases: the lowest bitrates of ProRes with the highest bitrates from Long-GOP cameras. Long-GOP is a very efficient way to get good quality from a low bitrate, but that doesn't make it immune from motion artifacts and problems around sharp edges, etc: all the things we're familiar with. Recording at high bitrate ProRes (HQ at 220 mbps, for example) is unarguably better than any Long-Gop format if you have the higher bitrates available. You can see the difference immediately when there is a lot of motion with a complex background, and text and sharp edges look cleaner. No-one claims that any of the Long Gop formats is "visually lossless", but that is a justified claim for ProRes HQ. Of course, if you lower the bitrate of ProRes, then you will find that quality drops off.

Another area where ProRes shines above both Long-GOP and uncompressed is in ease of editing. ProRes is optimised for low CPU use. What this means in practice is that you can play more layers in real-time, scrub more fluidly, and yet retain the highest-possible quality. ProRes is good for many generations, and is extremely popular for high-end post-production. Uncompressed undoubtedly has advantages in that there is no generation loss, but it places great demands on the quantity and speed of a computer's storage, and, compared to ProRes, which even at HQ level is one sixth of the size, is very much harder to live with on a daily basis, and very much harder to afford.

Long-GOP formats based around h.264 were only ever designed for delivery. Quality tails off very quickly with multiple generations, which is exactly what you'd expect if you start cutting material in the middle of a GOP, losing important I-frame data and having to base new I-frames on what were previously only predicted frames. This is not to say that you can't get good results from Long-GOP; surprisingly good, in fact, but it will always be a restricting factor in any high-quality workflow.

As far as the number of bits is concerned: this is a more complex subject than it would appear to be at first sight. ProRes will add 2 bits to any 8 bit recording. On the face of it, this might appear to be wasteful, but there are advantages. All subsequent processing will be done at 10 bit resolution. All grading and dissolves will have additional levels. This is not going to improve the quality of incoming material but will make the overall project more robust.

HDMI is intrinsically capable of receiving 10-bit material and 10-bit HDMI recorders are ready to receive this resolution should any camera manufacturer decide to output it.

Dave Shapton
Atomos

[Sanjin Svajger]

Originally Posted by Steve Kalle

2) Realize that all HDMI camera outputs are 8bit only.

That's why the Nano is great. It's 8 bit...

[Ray Bell]

and if the Nano only cost $350... it would be even greater. :-)

[Chris Hurd]

Smilies aside... Nano is already priced competitively for what it does.

The $345 cost of the BMD Shuttle is an anomaly. Basically they're giving
it away. It would be a mistake to assume that other manufacturers are going
to follow suit... they're not about to do that.