Blackmagic Design adds Avid DNxHD Recording and Playback to HyperDeck Studio

[Nigel Barker]

I am surprised that nobody else seems to have picked up on this announcement as I in common with a lot of others on seeing the Hyperdeck Shuttle went through the gamut of "Wow! Amazing value" - "Oh dear it only records uncompressed" - "If only it recorded in an editing codec". OK, it's not ProRes but it's a start.

Kudos to Blackmagic for offering this as a free upgrade.

Blackmagic Design today announced HyperDeck Software Update 2.0, a new software update for it’s popular HyperDeck Studio that adds broadcast quality compressed 10 bit recording and playback to the Avid® DNxHD® format.

HyperDeck Software Update 2.0 will be available at the end of November 2011 free of charge for all HyperDeck Studio customers.

Here is the full press release Blackmagic Design: View Press Release

[Chris Medico]

That is only for the larger Studio product that isn't as field friendly. Still good news though.

[Nigel Barker]

Originally Posted by Chris Medico

That is only for the larger Studio product that isn't as field friendly. Still good news though.

I knew there was a catch:-) I had missed that it was only the rack-mount version that was getting DNxHD. Possibly there isn't enough processing power in the Shuttle?

[Tony Partamian]

Do you think they could do the same with the smaller shuttle with just a software update?
I think it should be the same hardware...

[Nigel Barker]

Looks like Blackmagic were listening, It's a year later & they just announced ProRes on the Hyperdeck Shuttle 2 which for only $345 just became a very interesting option especially with Canon announcing clean HDMI out from the 5D3 for next April.
Blackmagic Design: View Press Release
Blackmagic Design: HyperDeck Shuttle Tech Specs

[Kent Nguyen]

I have had the device for 5 months and still can't put it to use. The problem due to
- lack of universal bracket for shoulder mount
- the SDI out control is not effective in some cameras (even just for record and stop)
- not a weather proof device

Yes, it is very unfriendly for field videography
Any other thought would be appreciated. I don't wan to sell my new BMD

[David Knaggs]

Originally Posted by Nigel Barker

Looks like Blackmagic were listening, It's a year later & they just announced ProRes on the Hyperdeck Shuttle 2 ...

Thanks for posting that, Nigel. ProRes is a big improvement and I was just crunching some numbers looking at "bang for the buck" for large sensor video cameras (other than DSLRs) and was looking at the FS700 but was put off by the codec (bitrate). With the Samurai at about $1600 for ProRes, it's more of a stretch. But the $345 Shuttle 2 with ProRes makes it much more attractive.

Although they only seem to offer ProRes HQ (as far as I can tell) with the Shuttle. For the footage I work with (1080p25), ProRes HQ is 184 Mbps as opposed to the 35 Mbps of XDCAM EX that I currently work with.

Final Cut Pro 7 Professional Formats and Workflows

This would require 5 times the editing storage (and I also edit with a RAID 0 so that everything is always fully backed up on a duplicate drive). So the "savings" over the Samurai would probably be eaten up fairly quickly with extra purchase of editing hard drives if you didn't need to always work with HQ. I'd use HQ for green screen work, but would prefer something closer to the broadcast 50 Mbps for the workaday stuff. So ProRes LT with its 85 Mbps would be a great choice for the more routine shooting and I hope Blackmagic add this as an option. (Similar to how the Samurai offers 3 flavours of ProRes: HQ, LT and "regular".)

As I said, I'm just crunching numbers at the moment ...

(I wonder how the Scarlet, which had a recent price drop, would work with the Shuttle 2?)

[Kevin Duffey]

I know this was last posted on a while ago, but I find it interesting that so many people want to record in very low quality formats.. by that I mean, if I had the option to record RAW, I would go that route. The cost for extra drives and such to me is worth the far better archival/editing quality you get to work with. I am not rich by no means, but I'd rather buy a few 256GB or 512GB SSDs and record RAW if I could (well RAW compressed.. so visually lossless) than lossy compression. I am however not the norm I don't think.. I want the absolute best I can get, for the money I can afford or try to afford. I can't afford the 3K+ recorders myself, so the next best thing is the Shuttle 2 at $345 giving me 220mbps DNxHD, or uncompressed. I know not everyone feels the same way, or maybe schedules don't allow for the extra time to work with a lot more data and such. I just tend to think HDs are cheap these days.. I barely make any money and I've racked up about 12TBs of HD space mostly not used yet (buying HDs on sale when I can). Of course, I don't work in the business professionally either as much as I'd like to, so I can't speak from experience. Just would think the ability to record at 220mbps in DNxHD would be loathed over as opposed to 35mbps. Maybe it's just me. :)

[Chris Medico]

Originally Posted by Kevin Duffey

I know this was last posted on a while ago, but I find it interesting that so many people want to record in very low quality formats.. by that I mean, if I had the option to record RAW, I would go that route. The cost for extra drives and such to me is worth the far better archival/editing quality you get to work with. I am not rich by no means, but I'd rather buy a few 256GB or 512GB SSDs and record RAW if I could (well RAW compressed.. so visually lossless) than lossy compression. I am however not the norm I don't think.. I want the absolute best I can get, for the money I can afford or try to afford. I can't afford the 3K+ recorders myself, so the next best thing is the Shuttle 2 at $345 giving me 220mbps DNxHD, or uncompressed. I know not everyone feels the same way, or maybe schedules don't allow for the extra time to work with a lot more data and such. I just tend to think HDs are cheap these days.. I barely make any money and I've racked up about 12TBs of HD space mostly not used yet (buying HDs on sale when I can). Of course, I don't work in the business professionally either as much as I'd like to, so I can't speak from experience. Just would think the ability to record at 220mbps in DNxHD would be loathed over as opposed to 35mbps. Maybe it's just me. :)

In the production world you have to balance the quality NEED with the project and temper it against POSSIBLE quality.

You may be in a position where you are able to work on one or two projects at a time and maybe are using only one or two cameras. I have a feature length film, multiple long form commercial projects, a ton of short form projects, and some Indie stuff all loaded on my system at the same time. They are all in various stages of post production. Most are shot either in XDCam or DNxHD145. I have a few greenscreen clips recorded at 10bit DNxHD220. I configure the camera and recorder to be appropriate for the source material and eventual destination.

Does an interview that is going to end up on a corporate website require uncompressed acquisition? I would say that devoting the storage resources for uncompressed for such a project is more than unjustified it is borderline reckless. It would show a lack of critical thinking in my opinion.

The point is that the choice of acquisition format is complex and more is not always better. Being a true professional means that you are able to evaluate and balance the needs of the project to reach the quality goals and deliver on budget (time and money).

[Kevin Duffey]

Excellent points Chris. This is presently a hobby of mine and I wish I could fine a way in to the professional world doing it, if it paid well enough. I'd love to get more into editing of videos, not even sure how to begin! Still, I am a tech nut, software engineer by day and for whatever reason anything and everything tech specs wise I am like a sponge. Ask me something about history and I am dumb as a doorknob. So, for me, for whatever reason, be it my code, audio, video, etc. I like the utmost pristine quality I can get and work from there.

You're absolutely right, in your case with that many projects at once, that is a lot of storage at lower resolutions. But, and perhaps this is not any of my business (or anyone reading), I would assume with that many projects you have a pretty nice paycheck coming in. For me, if I was making a comfortable paycheck, I'd opt to have external dock options (like my RocketStor 6bgps esata docks) with lots of external HDs and/or SSD drives and work with the best editing intermediate format I could while still preserving the best quality. That is just me.

Let me ask you this though, which is probably why I think DNxHD 220 seems right (or maybe even CinemaDNG RAW?).. is it FASTER to edit with these formats than say, AVCHD/H264.. or on par with DNxHD36 for example? My thinking is based loosely on what I've read on this forum and others regarding editing speed as well as archival quality. Transcoding my AVCHD/H264 to DNxHD (once solid Adobe support is added for Windows) seems to not only give me the ability to edit clips and save them lossless for future edits/renderings, but also would be faster overall to edit with in the timeline as there is less compression and thus less cpu time needed. I ask this in regard to DNxHD 36 as well.. as it's a lot more compression?

Thanks for the reply.

[Chris Medico]

Finding the right workflow is one of the keys to efficiency in the post production process. As the encoding silicon in the cameras has gotten better you can get really nice looking video from a h.264 video at 28mbps. The editing performance will suffer greatly compared using a more edit friendly codec such as DNxHD or Cineform.

So if you are going to use an intermediate format then which one do you choose and what bitrate do you use? It comes down to how you are going to do your edits. If you are going to do a proxy workflow then choose and intermediate format with a modest bitrate. It will use a lot less storage space and more importantly bandwidth on the storage bus. 220mbps offers great quality but try reading 5 streams off your storage system simultaneously and you'll quickly find a bottleneck unless you have a high speed RAID setup. That botteneck will show up with only 1 or 2 streams of uncompressed. You'll have great quality video on the computer but a poor quality experience in the edit chair.

When it comes to the RAW formats you have to look at how much horsepower it takes to render them out to something the computer can display. Most RAW workflows are proxy.

With a proxy workflow DNxHD36 is great. It is super quick to transcode to and easy on your storage subsystem in size and bandwidth. When you are done with your edit you relink the sequences to the source material and do the final render. This gives you the added benefit of saving space when you backup and archive the project (assuming you will also backup your intermediates). Don't underestimate the cost to archive completed projects. If you search around on the forum here you'll see a large number of discussions over the last few years talking about how best to store media as we have moved into the solid state world and away from tape.

With bitrates for edit friendly formats in the 100-150mbps it is practical to bring that media in as is and get to work. Most fast drives that are less than 50% full can serve up 4-5 streams in this data range without choking. This is where I say if that quality is sufficient for your project then it can save you time in skipping the creating the proxy files.

For XDCam stuff I never transcode that. I do a fast import (MXF rewrap) and use it as is with very good performance. MPEG2 is a mature codec and is easily edited with virtually any modern computer hardware.

I've not touched on all the possible video formats you can encounter these days. If I were to distill my thoughts down it would be this. Use MPEG2 as is (transcoding not necessary). Transcode edit unfriendly codecs such as h.264 to an intermediate format (DNxHD36) and use a proxy workflow. If you acquire edit friendly codecs at high bitrates (+200mbps) consider using a low bitrate proxy here was well (important if you are not using RAID in your storage system).

Lets not even get started with what is going to happen over the next few years as 4k video becomes more abundant in the wild.

[Kevin Duffey]

Very good thoughts Chris. You mention proxy workflow.. I've read about this but have yet to figure out how to use this. I'll look it up for more info, but roughly, when you say transcode to DNxHD36, I assume the original source is something better, like DNxHD220 or ProRes 4:4:4 (4:2:2:?). What I am unclear is how you edit the file then link in the source so that what I assume it does is use the source to render from but uses the editing references on the much lower res?

If that is the case, let's say I have DSLR footage (in my case its h264 but avchd is common too I believe). Would it behoove me to use DNxHD 36 (which is somewhat superior overall to h264 I believe), then link in the h264 source at the end?

Also, along the lines of this, let's say I shot 1 hour straight video. I then make 30 or so cuts, and I want another person to take those 30 clips and assemble them in some order to make the final product. Would they need my adobe project, thus be bound to adobe, AND the original source footage as well, in order to use the clips and re-link the original in? Or is the proxy editing you speak of compatible across NLEs?

Thanks.