MambaFiber.com wrote:Do we think it is possible to have BMD add the h.264 or h.265 codec to the HDmini?
Now that we ditched the ProRecorder in favor of the HDmini I miss the smaller file sizes for archives, and ProRes Proxy looks so bad to me...
I would love to see something like this as well. H.265 might be difficult, since it is much more processor intensive to encode, but H.264 seems like it might be possible at least for some resolutions.
The Video Devices PIX-E recorders started out as 4K30 ProRes recorders, but they were later able to add a 1080p H.264 recording option via a firmware update. It can actually record a 4K ProRes file and low bitrate H.264 simultaneously (to different media). The problem is that the H.264 bitrate is very low (~ 5 Mbps) with no adjustable quality options.
It's could be that one issue with adding an H.264 recording option to the HyperDeck models has to do with playback. Since they would need to add support for both encoding and decoding H.264 to enable playback. And since H.264 usually uses interframe rather than intraframe compression (as used by ProRes), a lot of the features like jog/shuttle, RS-422 control, etc. would be more difficult to make work properly with this type of compression.
It's possible they could just disable playback of H.264 files on the deck, but I'm not sure if people would be happy with that approach. People using the HyperDeck Mini as a video playout source would then be asking why they can't just load H.264 files onto the unit.
Notably the Duplicator 4K has no playback support, although it has a different intended usage than the HyperDeck models.
Anyway, given that a lot of Blackmagic's live production customers are probably targeting web-based delivery of some kind, it's kind of surprising they don't have more products with support for H.264 or other delivery codecs. ProRes is really intended as an intermediate codec for editing.