Hyperdeck Studio Mini Approved Media list - ATTN BLACKMAGIC

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David_Anderson

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Hyperdeck Studio Mini Approved Media list - ATTN BLACKMAGIC

PostWed Mar 17, 2021 2:18 pm

Hi Folks,

I recognize that BM lists cards for the units but I feel like we should look at the other possibilities.

It looks like the list has been updated and SANDISK has been removed. I have not tested in 4k but I can tell you that I have been using the SANDISK Extreme Pro all the way to 1TB for over a year now to record 1080P Prores 422 with ZERO issues. I also use LEXAR Professional 256GB cards in the same scenario.

I think it would be helpful to list cards that are "rated" for 1080P as well as 4K. It was frustrating to me that when you did have Sandisk Extreme cards on the approved media list you only listed them up to 64GB. The other possibility is that the forum mods allow the list to include "unofficial" cards listed that members have used successfully (as I have) and give people more options to choose from based on their needs.

I think BM can protect themselves with verbiage to the effect of "here are cards that have not been tested by Blackmagic but have been successfully used by people in production" or something along those lines.

I recorded over 6 hours of content to a 1TB Sandisk Extreme Pro card a few weeks ago with zero issues. The footage has been gone through minute by minute and there are no errors or issues.

Thought it might be helpful to others.

Best,

David
David Anderson
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Martin Reed

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Re: Hyperdeck Studio Mini Approved Media list - ATTN BLACKMA

PostTue May 24, 2022 9:16 am

Bit late to the party here (and slightly off topic) but on the subject of approved (and functioning) SD cards for 4k recording on my Hyperdeck Studio Mini, I have stuck faithfully to the approved list and have acquired quite a battery of Lexar 2000 Professional 64gb cards. I now see that Lexar no longer appears on the approved media list which is slightly disappointing. I was wondering if anyone has had success using larger Lexar 2000 cards eg 128gb or 256gb for 4k work. Alternatively, any recommendations for other brands of 128/256gb cards which can be relied upon?
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Dave Del Vecchio

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Re: Hyperdeck Studio Mini Approved Media list - ATTN BLACKMA

PostWed May 25, 2022 9:11 am

I've had pretty good luck with the 256GB ProGrade Digital V90 SD cards. Those cards also happen to be on the recommended media list for most of the HyperDeck recorders.

There are also 512GB capacity V90 cards that have just started to become available. ProGrade and Wise both sell 512GB V90 cards, which are higher capacity versions of cards already on the recommended media list, and I'd expect these would probably work fine as well.

Also like David above, I've had success with the SanDisk Extreme Pro UHS-I cards for ProRes 422 recording up to 1080p. Even though those cards are officially only U3 or V30 rated (30 MB/s guaranteed write speed) they seem to have pretty consistent write speeds that are quite a bit faster in practice (typically in the 60 MB/s+ range), which is sufficient for 1080p ProRes. And they are considerably less expensive than V90 rated UHS-II cards.

I have mostly been using the older SanDisk Extreme Pro cards with 95 MB/s printed on the front (in 512GB capacity) because with the original HyperDeck Studio Mini a few years back, some people reported issues with the SanDisk Extreme Pro variant with 170 MB/s printed on front of the card:
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=92358
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=99319

I've noticed that the recommended media list for the HyperDeck Shuttle HD does include a couple of SanDisk Extreme Pro UHS-I 170 MB/s cards on it for ProRes HD recording, suggesting that there may no longer be card compatibility issues with the newer HyperDeck models, like the HyperDeck Studio HD Mini: https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/support/faq/59038

Note that in my experience, it is a bit unusual for higher capacity flash media (of a particular product line) to be slower than lower capacity media (from that same product line). While there are some examples of this, most manufacturers seem to try to deliver fairly consistent performance across different media sizes of the same model line (and often higher capacity cards are the same speed or faster). A bit more discussion of card size and speeds in this earlier thread: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=56547

My guess is that the reason a limited number of card sizes appear on the recommended media lists for a particular model is that it is a pretty big project to test each card that appears on the list. Because to really do that kind of testing well, you'd need to try to source several copies of the same card from different production runs, then test them repeatedly in several different recorders over an extended period of time.

And then if one of the cards of a particular size and model (in the testing set) happens to fail over the test run, but all the others of the same type work fine, does that mean that card model is bad, or was that just a random card failure (as no flash media is 100% reliable). Should that same batch of cards then be re-tested, or should a new batch of cards be tested? Or should that card size/model just be dropped from the list (even though that might have been an isolated incident)? It's hard to know how to best handle this.

I suspect that these kind of testing challenges are why you see some card sizes/models listed on the recommended media list for a particular HyperDeck model, but then don't make it on to the recommended media list (for the same recording format) of a different HyperDeck. So I wouldn't necessarily conclude too much if a card model/size combination isn't on a particular media list. There are a lot of possible reasons for this (it just might not have been tested on that device), so it doesn't necessarily mean that that card won't work.
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Martin Reed

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Re: Hyperdeck Studio Mini Approved Media list - ATTN BLACKMA

PostThu May 26, 2022 3:07 pm

Thanks for that very thorough reply. Sadly Prograde and Wise cards are not readily available in the UK but I'll make some further enquiries with regard to the Sandisk cards you mention. I might just stick with the Lexar 64gb cards which I have traditionally used - at least with serial recording (and plenty of cards) I shouldn't have any issues.
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Re: Hyperdeck Studio Mini Approved Media list - ATTN BLACKMA

PostFri May 27, 2022 5:19 am

Martin Reed wrote:Thanks for that very thorough reply. Sadly Prograde and Wise cards are not readily available in the UK but I'll make some further enquiries with regard to the Sandisk cards you mention. I might just stick with the Lexar 64gb cards which I have traditionally used - at least with serial recording (and plenty of cards) I shouldn't have any issues.
CVP sells Wise cards and Amazon UK sells the full line of ProGrade media.

But there's certainly nothing wrong with sticking with whatever cards have worked well for you in the past.

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