Hyperdeck Studio HD Plus - unreliable recording (crashing)

Hi,

we recently purchased 10 Hyperdeck HD Plus recorders to update our old Hyperdeck Studio 1stGEN recorders. We did this to be able to switch to 1080p50 recordings on all of our productions.

I'm currently testing two of the 10 Hyperdeck HD plus devices with disastrous results:

On all recordings on both of the Hyperdecks the REC button starts blinking after an unpredictable amount of time. On one recording it happened after 40 minutes - on another recording after 3 hours. I'm trying this with different media brands, types and codecs. Even with approved SD cards. I'm recording a 1080p50 signal in ProRes LT or ProRes 422.

I don't believe that this is caused by a slow card or drive. The Hyperdeck crashes in this case because it stops recording totally and not just skips a few frames - it is not even possible to restart recording after pressing stop as the REC button starts to flash immediately after pressing record again. Even changing the SD card to a fresh one doesn't fix this. As soon as you press REC after this behaviour it starts blinking - even with the fresh card and doesn't record at all. Only a power-cycle fixes this behaviour.

This happens with SD cards of different brands and sizes and with connected USB-C SSDs with different brands and sizes.

If this problem is persistent, we will have to return the Hyperdecks, as they are not usable in a professional enviroment where relaibility is crucial!

Ah and btw. the Hyperdecks are on firmware 8.0.2.


Anyone with a similar experience?

Thanks and cheers

Robert

This happens with SD cards of different brands and sizes and with connected USB-C SSDs with different brands and sizes.

are those cards in the list here ?

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/support/faq/59035

are those cards in the list here ?

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/support/faq/59035

Yes - I'm using Angelbird SD cards and SSDs along with some others that are unlisted like Sandisk, Transcent and Samsung. It happens with all of them listed or unlisted.

But I did some additional tests and I think it is clearly a bug. Because it only happens with all ProRes Codecs. If I Use DNXHR or H264 recording works without problems. Even with the higher bitrate variants it records anything in 1080p50 without a hicup.

If I switch back to ProRes (regardless of which variant) the bug occurs. After an undefined time the recoding stops totally with a blinking record button. You cannot restart the recording (even if you swap the card or SSD) without power cycling the Hyperdeck.

I tried both file-system variants (ExFAT & HFS) it doesn't make a difference. As soon as you start to use ProRes as a codec the recording can stop with a crashed Hyperdeck at any time.

Conclusion is that it is not possible to use ProRes on the Hyperdeck Studio HD Plus at the moment. There is a very high risk, that the recording stops with a bricked Hyperdeck that has to be power cycled before you can use it again.

I tried this with firmware 8.0.2. I will now try to downgrade one of the decks to 8.0.1 and see if this bug is persistent in this firmware realease.

That is somehow a good news as it is generally possible to use the Hyperdecks but only with DNXHR or H264. ProRes is broken. So be aware of that issue and don't use ProRes at the moment.

Cheers

Robert


EDIT:

With firmware 8.0.1 it happens too. No reliable ProRes recording possible. All other codecs work without problems.

you have contacted BMD support here ?
https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/support/contact/email

Another thing that increased the aussumption that there is a bug in ProRes codec recordings:

Tonightg I let the Hyperdeck record 1080p50 in ProRes proxy and in the morning it was frozen totally at 8 hours of recording. The display was frozen apart of the video signal and there was nothing you could press. No reaction to any button. Only a power cycle helped.

@ Raphael
Yes I will contact BMD today but I wanted to make sure that this is not my fault.

Cheers

Robert

I did a test overnight, although I was unable to quickly find a 1080p50 source to record. So I had to settle for 108p30. I recorded in ProRes to two Samsung SSD's for over 18 hours and had no problem. It also automatically swapped from drive 2 to drive 1 when the first 1 TB SSD drive was full.

Indeed I testest 1080p30 today and that worked. There seems to be a difference in 1080p30 and 1080p50. Because if you switch to p50 it shows that problem again.

Cheers

Robert

I repeated the test with a 1080p50 source and the recording didn't went well.

It stopped recording after about 6,5 hours. Apparently because of the drive not being to fast enough as the red recording light was blinking. It's a SATA6 Samsung SSD so that should not really be a problem. I also hope the Hyperdeck has at least 512 MB or more of a buffer.

And even if the drive is not fast enough and it's temporarily not able to write to the disk, it should just drop frames and continue on as soon as the drive is ready (to my opinion). But now it just stopped writing although the front panel indicated that it was still recording. The counter on the display was still counting up and also the video was still being displayed on the video. Only the red recording light was blinking.

I kept it running for quite a while assuming it was still recording. After about 19 hours I stopped it as I noticed that the time remaining on the disk (in the upper right corner) was also not counting down anymore and I found it strange that it had not already swapped to the other SSD. I checked the recorded files and there were only two. The first being about 4h26m. The second 14h39m but that had only video for just over 2 hours. When playing the file with VLC beyond that point it still shows that data is being read from the file. It still seems to decode audio blocks but no video blocks. The content bitrate is low at roughly 2.3 MB/s while for a normal ProRes video it's at a few hundred MB/s. Unfortunately I had no audio in the recorded video but I'm willing to re-test as I would not be surprised if audio continues to playback fine.

Conclusion: it shockingly failed at reliability

Thanks Marco for doing the test again with 1080p50. That seems to be a bug. Because if you take a slow card and record in another format that the card can't handle, the behavior is different from what you see in the ProRes case. It just drops some frames but still records.

In this case, there seems to "crash" some sort of software inside the Hyperdeck HD. Because you can't even start recording again after this error. Even is you switch the card or the drive.

Definitely an issue that BMD has to look at as it is currently not possible to use the deck in ProRes mode with higher framerates than p30.

Cheers

Robert

Bump.

Just received an Email from BMD EMEA Support.

That is the only thing that they replied:

I have passed all this information to the development team but I can not comment on if or when an update may come.

Once again thank you for bringing this to our attention.

Sad but true - ProRes currently unusable on Hyperdeck Studio HD Plus.


Cheers

Robert

Hi,

just to let you guys know how the new firmware 8.0.3 reacts:

The ProRes recording seems to be improved. I tried my 512GB cards with ProRes LT and that seems to work now. I don't had any crash so far. Although it only let me record up to 4,5 hours due to the card size.

But when I switch to ProRes Proxy the Hyperdeck locks up completely after about 8 hours of recording time. The display freezes completely (video picture still moving but audio level and everything else frozen) and you can press any button without any reaction. Only a power cycle restores functionality.

That is way better than before but not quite right. So if you plan to do longer recordings than 8 hours in any higher framerate than 30p be sure to NOT USE ProRes.

Cheers

Robert

Hopefully they can work this out as well. I only use ProRess or ProRes HQ for recording so I hope it won't bite me.

are those cards in the list here ?

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/support/faq/59035

Yes - I'm using Angelbird SD cards and SSDs along with some others that are unlisted like Sandisk, Transcent and Samsung. It happens with all of them listed or unlisted.

But I did some additional tests and I think it is clearly a bug. Because it only happens with all ProRes Codecs. If I Use DNXHR or H264 recording works without problems. Even with the higher bitrate variants it records anything in 1080p50 without a hicup.

Cheers

Robert


EDIT:

With firmware 8.0.1 it happens too. No reliable ProRes recording possible. All other codecs work without problems.

Interesting as I noticed the same issue with the HYPERDECK 4K PRO … but only in h264 recording.

But yes they are not production ready, ….. and I’ve bought 14 of the new hyper decks.

Just a quick update:

Yesterday we had a music festival and recorded on two Hyperdeck Studio HD Plus for about 6 hours in H264 SDI quality. Production standard was 1080p50. One of the Hyperdecks freaked out and crashed after about 4 hours recording time.

Same bug as before: The record button starts blinking, the recording stops (remaining recording time does not change anymore) and the unit is totally unresponsive. No button press is recognized. Only unplugging the power helps to restore the unit back to a responding state. We were alarmed and stopped and restarted the other unit in a small stage reorganization gap. That seemed to help to not get a second crashed Hyperdeck.

I just wanted to let you know that it is still a huge risk to rely on the Hyperdeck HD for recording. There still seems to be an issue on long recordings in higher framerates.

We will have to use our Atomos devices now for the recordings because we can't risk to ruin client recordings by the BMD Hyperdecks. Sad but true - we bought 10 of them

So BMD please do your work and give us an update for the Hyperdecks and fix this serious bug!!!


Cheers

Robert

This is not good news for someone in buying mode.

I experienced exactly the opposite with the 1st Gen Hyperdeck Studio Mini. DNX codecs all crashed at some point during recording. After extensive testing I found that the ProRes codec options were the only workable solution that would actually record without issue.

Fast forward to now and I'm shopping for Hyperdeck's again. The HD Plus is appealing for the feature/price point/footprint - but not if it has issues, especially issues that result in loss of recordings.

On a side note, I would like to see BMD enable dual/simultaneous recording on the SD/SSD slots. I don't have a need to do daisy chained recording. I do have a desire to have a backup recording running on the otherwise idle memory slot.

Cheers,
Karl Knowles