FS100 and BMD Hyperdeck - real production reports?

Matthew Bennett

Matthew Bennett

Well-known member
Pretty sure we're about to embark on a drama/action shoot, 10-hour days, shooting continuously, pretty much run and gun, FS100 and BMD hyper deck with SSDs.

Any days like that, with that combo, to share, anyone?


1) Worried about the wimpy internal battery. I know you can just grab Anton Bauer's and go, but it's just another damn thing to babysit and charge.

2) 128 GB SSDs are probably the most stable. But ten minutes until it's used up? God, if we're shooting an hour and a half of footage per day, on a fifteen day shoot - thats 15-20 TB by the time its all said an done. Which isn't that much considering how cheap drives are...but still...

3) No indication that the drive is filling up? Who the hell is genius enough to shoot in a challenging situation, operate and watch the BMD the whole time? Thoughts on keeping track?

4) Any stability issues to report? As in the HDMI coming slightly loose, etc.. and the whole party just stopping without indications or warning.


Any thoughts at all - much appreciated!!
 
I just don't see the point of it all unless you were shooting greenscreen. It's going to be a nightmare running around and dealing with that hyper deck.

I'm 16 days into shooting an independent movie with the SD card and the video looks wonderful. All our video will come into an uncompressed timeline and stay uncompressed until the final master.

I think by time you go through your whole chain to a deliverable you would be very hard pressed to see any difference that the hyper deck will make.

Any yes, watch out for the HDMI out from the camera. I have it drop out quite a bit going to a SmallHD DP6 monitor. Personally, I think you are asking for trouble in this situation.
 
You sir echo all my nightmares!

The AVCHD from the cam is pretty amazing. The only time I've noticed mud in the codec is shooting water splashing at 60p.

The level of difficulty the BMD deck adds to the shoot is immeasurable... hmmm. Things to think about.
 
It ain't THAT bad.

1. HDDs are cheaper than HDCAM SR tapes - so what´s the point?
2. All you need is a Laptop with e-sata or usb3 and two cheap (40 bucks) docking stations, to dump one SSD on a HDD, while you shooting on the other SSD.
3. AVCHD doesn´t become uncompressed if you throw it at a uncompressed timeline
4. Film magazines used to last 10 to 12 minutes - can´t remember hearing anyone ever say, they can´t shoot a film on film because of that.
5. There is a blinking light, when the SSD fills up.
6. Extra brick batterie? Couldn´t care less.

No offense here, but you guys are spoiled.

Go just one day shooting on a proper film set and the BM Hypershuttle looks like gods gift to the world.

Having said that, yeah the implementation of AVCHD in the FS100 is phantastic and I use it for 80% to 90% of all my projects.
But if you do greenscreen, VFX or simply want the best possible quality - The Hyperdeck is your best bet.

Frank
 
Frank, can you post a link to the products you are using to dump your footage from the SSD.
If I am correct you do not use Final Cut but CS-5 so, if you were using Final Cut 7 would
you convert the raw files dumped on your HDD into proress on import into Final Cut for editing?
I am curious as to what the best work flow would be for Final Cut Pro using the Hyperdeck.

Postmaster said:
It ain't THAT bad.

1. HDDs are cheaper than HDCAM SR tapes - so what´s the point?
2. All you need is a Laptop with e-sata or usb3 and two cheap (40 bucks) docking stations, to dump one SSD on a HDD, while you shooting on the other SSD.
3. AVCHD doesn´t become uncompressed if you throw it at a uncompressed timeline
4. Film magazines used to last 10 to 12 minutes - can´t remember hearing anyone ever say, they can´t shoot a film on film because of that.
5. There is a blinking light, when the SSD fills up.
6. Extra brick batterie? Couldn´t care less.

No offense here, but you guys are spoiled.

Go just one day shooting on a proper film set and the BM Hypershuttle looks like gods gift to the world.

Having said that, yeah the implementation of AVCHD in the FS100 is phantastic and I use it for 80% to 90% of all my projects.
But if you do greenscreen, VFX or simply want the best possible quality - The Hyperdeck is your best bet.

Frank
Click to expand...
 
Here you go: http://www.amazon.com/ADP-U34-SuperSpeed-Compatible-Docking-Station/dp/B003V0TEH6

You need two of these, hooked up to a laptop. In one goes the SSD and into the other one goes a sheer HDD without any housing.
You just stick them in like old timey floppies.
You simply copy the files from on drive to the other.

No transcoing to prores is done that way, just file transfer, cause you want to stay uncompressed till final delivery.
Final cut (and any other NLE) handles uncompressed much better than anything else.
If you want prores, you better look into a Nija or similar thing.
You could do transcoding to prores on the fly though, if you have a MAC and the Finalcut installed, but it would take longer, than just transfer from one drive to an other.

Frank
 
Postmaster said:
It ain't THAT bad.

No offense here, but you guys are spoiled.

The Hyperdeck is your best bet.

Frank
Click to expand...

Oh yeah - on a budgeted shoot with a crew fussing over the bastard - yes it is a dream.

But unfortunately we're shooting in pitch blackness on piles of garbage and ruin in the rain. With thieves and homeless men everywhere. The DIT will probably be stabbed within the first hour. :)

I'm imagining it'll be difficult to get an SD card in and out of the poor shellshocked cam let alone a testy SSD drive with a fumble HDMI connection.

But I still have to test the thing and see what gains are to be had.

God if it was only an S-LOG type situation at 10-bit... I'd crawl naked through a prison riot for that... :)
 
You can get a locking HDMI connector.

http://www.blueechosolutions.com/

Or you can get a converter, HDMI to HD-SDI.

http://atomos.com/connect/media/connect_brochA4-IBC-web.pdf

There are inexpensive ways to solve your issues, but for the price and what you
get for the money you cant find a better deal for 422 10bit uncompressed. To be
honest I don't think there will be anything better for a while.


Matthew Bennett said:
Oh yeah - on a budgeted shoot with a crew fussing over the bastard - yes it is a dream.

But unfortunately we're shooting in pitch blackness on piles of garbage and ruin in the rain. With thieves and homeless men everywhere. The DIT will probably be stabbed within the first hour. :)

I'm imagining it'll be difficult to get an SD card in and out of the poor shellshocked cam let alone a testy SSD drive with a fumble HDMI connection.

But I still have to test the thing and see what gains are to be had.

God if it was only an S-LOG type situation at 10-bit... I'd crawl naked through a prison riot for that... :)
Click to expand...
 
I know it's more expensive, but the Convergent Design Nano seems like a good fit for your situation.
 
Thanks for all these tips and opinions!

So we bought the hyperdeck, and then got the Kingston SSDNow V (Not the recommeded V+)128GB.

Man those drives fill up fast!

The quality is of course there, with the grain representation at high gain being the most obvious boon. Nice!

But with the cheaper SSDs, there are dropped frames galore - an especially during handheld work. Will have to re-test with the recommended drives.
 
Well, the Hyperdeck is recording uncompressed and eating SSDs like a cookie monster.

With the Ninja you could have used cheap hard disks too, as long as there's not too much vibration (like helicopters). Might have been the better idea. We are quite happy with it, a few hard disks and just one small SSD for the jobs where it's needed.

I don't doubt the capabilities of the Hyperdeck, but it's a bit of overkill for the FS100…
 
Oh it's absolutely OVER-KILL! Completely wasteful recording 10-bit.

A better choice would have been the ninja (powered by Canon DSLR batteries god bless..), with the cheaper drives doing Prores (not wasteful at all!)

The money we're spending on SSD's could have been saved and put into a slightly more expensive recorder ($1,129.00) vs ($405.00) for the hyperdeck, that saves an enormous amount of headaches and money. But live and learn....

Also the BMD is going to be producing 2TB of data per day on a 15 day shoot, vs. 0.3 TB per day with the ProRes from the Ninja. Even at 10bit ProRes, the Ninja data is 1/10th the size of the BMD data.

Sata drives are cheap, but at 2x 2TB per day, that's an extra 200 per day of drives, and extra dumping time for the poor data wrangler who will literally be sprinting around on set all day keeping fresh SSD's available every ten minute roll, and then pulling all-day shifts backing everything up to Sata dock drives. With the ninja you could dump/duplicate in an hour to a dock drive, with the BMD it's a seven hour copy for ONE backup.
 
The Ninja is powered by Sony batteries and runs forever with them, the two of them are mutually hot-pluggable.

(No, this is no viral marketing, I'm just a satisfied customer.)
 
After I wrote that last post I had a mental breakdown and decided that the hyperdeck is just - insane!

Going with the Atomos now.

Am expecting to be well serviced and satisfied! Thank you Atomos and thank you ProRes!!!
 
Can someone show me an example where uncompressed shows a clear benefit? Even in keying, avchd is about 100x easier to key than hdv using keylight. How much easier is uncompressed to avchd?I heard the avchd codec is twice as efficient as the mpeg-2 in the ex cams like the ex1. So the 24mbs is equal to 48mbs in an ex1/3. Considering the ex cams shoot at 35mbs, is the avchd in the fs100 better quality than the video coming out of the ex1/3 or have I been fed lies?
 
I can show you the advantage of ProRes over AVCHD any time with all high-motion/high-detail footage. But I'd be hard pressed to show you the further advantage of uncompressed.
 
I shot a quick greenscreen test with the BMD - wow, lovely key. Perfect. But hell it better be at 8GB for 36 seconds of footage...
 
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