[Tom Bassford]

Hi

The Hyperdeck Shuttle is great for some users, but as ever with BMD stuff people see the low price tag and rush out to buy without thinking about the true costs.

The hyperdecks are designed for broadcast users and people looking to do heavy post (who need high bitrate source files to work from) OK so they are cheap, but they are very different products to the first generation of tapeless systems such as the Firestore.

FWIW I have a load of different tapeless systems for different purposes:-
Sony HDR60 which gets used with a V1 to avoid the annoyance of tapes.
Hyperdeck Shuttle – used with NX5 + EX1s where better quality is wanted
Atomos Ninja – used with NX5 / V1 + Vision Mixer – halfway house which provides both better quality and longer record times.
Hyperdeck Studio – used with vision mixers for convenience of form factor.

I’d very much like to see lower bit rate DNxHD or ProRes on the hyperdecks – this would really help when we do longer events where managing hours of high bitrate footage is expensive and tedious. I’d also really like to see better file handling and the RS422 bugs fixed so we can use the Hyperdeck Studio as a playback device for live events.

I’m hoping to get my hands on a Hyperdeck Pro to review when it is available. The prospect of being able to do a 4 camera ISO record on a single device is very appealing. Thinking about this it seems more than likely that the Hyperdeck Pro will have to be able to use a lower bit rate compression to be able to stream 4x HD onto an SSD. Maybe BMD will roll this out onto the existing Hyperdecks? Lets hope so, but as ever don’t depend on BMD doing anything, look at the functionality of their products as-is and if you need a future update wait for its release until you purchase the device.

Cheers
Tom
https://ATEMuser.com