Blackmagic HyperDeck Extreme HDR User Manual HyperDeck Extreme Control Workflow

The following example features a traditional broadcast tape deck recording to a HyperDeck Extreme recorder, but you don’t need to use a HyperDeck with the HyperDeck Extreme Control. You could connect two or more traditional broadcast decks and dub from tape to tape or connect up to 8 decks to control simultaneous playback at the press of a button.

Connecting your RS-422 Devices

RS-422 connections on the rear of the HyperDeck Extreme Control allow up to 8 RS-422 enabled decks and devices to be attached from the rear of your HyperDeck recorder or broadcast deck to the RS-422 connections on the rear panel of the HyperDeck Extreme Control. Up to 8 separate devices can be connected.

1. Connect a 9 pin serial cable from the RS-422 connection on your tape based deck to the first RS-422 connection on the controller.

2. Now connect a serial cable from the RS-422 connection on your HyperDeck recorder to the second RS-422 connection on the HyperDeck Extreme Control.

3. You can repeat these steps to connect up to 8 devices. By tightening the screws to either side of your 9 pin serial cable, you can prevent any interruption to the connection.

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TIP HyperDeck Extreme and HyperDeck Extreme Control can both be rack mounted using the HyperDeck rack mount kit. See the section ‘accessories’ later in this manual.

Connecting your Video Signal

With HyperDeck Extreme, you can use the large touchscreen display to view playback of your tape device.

To connect your video signals:

1. Connect a BNC cable to the ‘SDI out’ connection on the rear of your tape based deck to the ‘SDI in A’ connection on the HyperDeck Extreme.

2. Insert your cassette tape into the tape based deck.

3. Put your deck into ‘remote’ mode.

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TIP HyperDeck Extreme can accept both digital and analog based sources, meaning you can also archive media from analog based tape decks. Just connect the composite out of the tape deck to the composite in on the rear of the HyperDeck Extreme.

Reference Signal

The HyperDeck Extreme Control features reference in and reference out connections on the rear panel to allow synchronous recordings.

If you are using an external reference source, connect your reference signal from the ‘ref out’ of your reference device or deck to the ‘ref in’ on the controller.

Selecting your Devices

Now that your RS-422 devices and video signals are attached, it’s time to select them on the HyperDeck Extreme Control front panel. Choose you record and playback deck by selecting the numbered soft touch button in the playback or record row.

1. On the front panel of the controller, press the button numbered ‘1’ on the top row. This selects the tape deck you previously connected into the first RS-422 connection as your playback deck. The button surround will illuminate green.

2. Press number ‘2’ button on the second row to select the HyperDeck Extreme as your ‘record’ deck. The button surround will illuminate red to indicate this deck is the recorder.

The green number 1 button indicated the playback deck, the red button 2 indicates the recording deck.

Using the M button you can control multiple decks at once. Simply hold down the M button and press the numbers for the decks. It’s worth noting that once you’ve selected multiple decks, the timecode and status indicators will display the lowest numbered deck selected. For example, if you have selected numbers 2,3 and 4 as playback decks, the status and timecode will display deck number 2. See ‘using the multi deck feature’ later in this manual for more information.

To select multiple playback decks, hold down the M button so it illuminates and then press the deck numbers you wish to select.

Controlling your playback and record decks

Once your playback and record decks are connected and selected, you will be able to switch control between the two by using the soft touch ‘player’ and ‘recorder’ buttons on the front panel above the status indicators. When remote is enabled, you can then use the search dial and transport controls to navigate to the location on your deck.

1. Press the soft touch ‘player’ button and the player button will illuminate. The timecode display and deck status indicator LEDs on the controller will update to show the ref, servo and remote status of the playback deck. If you press ‘recorder’, the displays will update to show the status of the HyperDeck recorder. When the ‘player’ button is selected, the timecode display will update to match the deck selected as player. The deck status lights will also update to reflect the settings of the connected device.

2. The deck status indicators to the left of the search dial display the conditions of the active player or recorder.

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TIP Some HyperDeck disk recorders have a dedicated remote button labeled REM on the front panel to turn on remote mode. If you are using a HyperDeck Studio HD Mini or HyperDeck Shuttle HD, remote mode can be enabled via the setup menu.

Testing Control

Once your playback and record decks have the remote button enabled, you can then use the search dial and transport controls to test control and navigate to the location on your deck.

1. To control the playback deck, press the ‘player’ button. The timecode display on the controller will now update to reflect the timecode on your deck.

2. Turn the search dial to the right or left, or press the forward or rewind buttons. The timecode will update to reflect the forward or reverse motion.

3. To control the record deck, press ‘recorder’. The timecode and status indicators will now match those of your HyperDeck recorder. Turn the search dial to confirm control or press one of the transport buttons.

Now that you have established control over your HyperDeck recorder and Digi Beta deck, you can use the search dial or transport buttons to locate your ‘in’ and ‘out’ points.

Finding your Timecode Point using the Search Dial

The HyperDeck Extreme Control search dial has three modes; shuttle, jog and position. The selected button will illuminate when you choose your mode. The search direction indicators will illuminate to show you which direction your are moving and at what speed. Once you are spooled to your desired location, you can set your in and out points.

Shuttle

When you are in shuttle mode you can turn the dial to the left or right up to a maximum of 120 degrees to rewind or fast forward your tape or file based media. The further you turn the dial, the faster the media will spool until the clutch engages to let you know you are at full speed. To stop spooling, return the dial to the center position. You will feel a tap on the knob when you reach the center.

Jog

Jog mode offers precise control over tape and drive based decks with a slower speed compared to ‘shuttle’ mode. Press the jog button to select jog mode and the button will illuminate. The search dial will now respond to how fast you rotate the dial. The dial will spin freely without any clutch engaging.

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TIP You may find you use two or three search dial modes to find your timecode point. Use ‘shuttle’ mode as a quick way to navigate to the area of interest, then change to jog mode for more precision.

Position

Position mode lets your navigate to your area of interest based on the duration of the tape or timeline you are viewing. On a traditional tape based broadcast deck, ‘position’ indicates whether you are near the start or end of a recorded tape. For a HyperDeck, ‘position’ indicates your location relevant to the timeline position.

The light indicators when in ‘position’ mode will indicate the position relative to the start middle and end.

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NOTE When using ‘position’ with a tape based deck, the position indicator will improve with time as the deck is queried by the controller.

To locate your timecode point, make sure your ‘player’ has a reference signal and is in ‘remote’ mode. Then on the controller:

1. Press the ‘player’ button if it is not already illuminated

2. Press the ‘shuttle’ button. Once pressed, the button will illuminate.

3. Rewind your tape by turning the search dial knob to the left until you feel the clutch engage. You are now rewinding at full speed and the tape will be spooling back to the start.

4. Once you are nearing the timecode point, turn the dial back to the center. Once the knob is near the center stop position you will feel a tap on the dial to let you know.

5. Press the ‘jog’ mode button. The jog button will now be illuminated. The dial will now spin freely and you can turn it to find your desired timecode. The faster you turn the dial, the faster the media will jog.

Now that you have found your timecode in point, you can use the four soft touch timecode buttons to define your in and out timecode points. These timecode entry buttons operate the same way as they do on traditional broadcast decks.

To set your timecode points:

1. Press ‘entry’ and ‘in’ to select your in point and release the buttons. The ‘in’ button will be illuminated to confirm an ‘in’ point is selected.

   

   Press the entry and in buttons to set your in point

2. Now you can use the transport controls or search dial to locate your ‘out’ point. Once you have found your out point, set it by pressing the ‘entry’ and ‘out’ buttons together. Both the ‘in’ and ‘out’ buttons will now be illuminated.

The trim function lets you adjust your in and out points frame by frame. If you want to move either of your timecode points by individual frames, you can do this by using the ‘trim’ buttons.

To trim your timecode frame by frame:

Press the ‘in’ button and then either trim ‘-’ or trim’+’ to move the in point backwards or forwards one frame at a time.

Move your in point forward by a frame by pressing the ‘in’ button and the trim ‘+’ button

Once your ‘in’ point is set, you can repeat the above steps to locate the ‘out’ point using the search dial.

Using the Transport Controls

You can also use the transport controls on the HyperDeck Extreme Control to navigate to your in and out points. The two rows of transport controls feature buttons commonly found on traditional broadcast decks and will be familiar to you. These buttons include ‘preroll’, ‘record’, ‘edit’, ‘eject’, ‘rewind’, ‘play’, ‘fast fwd’ and ‘stop’.

‘Skip’ reverse and ‘skip’ forwards buttons operate like previous and next buttons on file based decks such as the HyperDeck Studio HD Mini, so you can quickly navigate from clip to clip.

Using REW, PLAY, F FWD and STOP buttons on the front panel let you quickly control your video on file and tape based decks.

To locate your timecode point, make sure your ‘player’ has reference and is in remote, then on the controller:

1. Press the ‘recorder’ button to control the deck you have previously selected as your record deck.

2. Press the REW to F FWD buttons to rewind or fast forward.

3. Once you have reached your timecode, press STOP to stop playback and define select your in point by pressing the ‘entry’ and ‘in’ buttons together.

The HyperDeck Extreme Control also features other transport controls for file based decks.

Skip forward and skip back

If you are using a file based deck for record or playback, such as HyperDeck Extreme, you can use the ‘skip’ forward and reverse buttons. Press ‘skip’ reverse once to skip back to the first frame of the current clip. Press ‘skip’ forward and you will skip forward to the first frame of the next clip.

The ‘skip’ buttons are either side of the ‘rec’ button. Pressing ‘skip’ reverse when already located on the first frame of a clip will navigate you to the first frame of the previous clip.

Record

To start recording, press the ‘rec’ and ‘play’ buttons at the same time. During recordings you can switch which storage media your HyperDeck Extreme is recording to by holding down the record button for three seconds.

Input

Press the INPUT button to switch between playback or source mode on the recording deck. When input is selected, the HyperDeck Extreme will display the connected source.

Preroll

When you press ‘preroll’, tape decks will rewind to the preroll point before the set in point. The preroll duration can be set on broadcast decks and is often set to up to 5 seconds. For example, if the preroll on a broadcast deck is set to 5 seconds and the preroll button is pressed on the deck or HyperDeck Extreme Control, the deck will search and park the tape 5 seconds prior to that point. This is important for tape based decks where the deck needs time to lock the signal before it is usable.

Edit

Once you have set your in and/or out points on your playback and record units, pressing ‘edit’ will perform an auto edit, cueing your tapes to the preroll point and then starting the record. The ‘edit’ button will flash when recording has started.

Eject

The ‘eject’ button has two different functions depending on whether you are connected to a traditional tape based broadcast deck or a file based deck such as HyperDeck Extreme.

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TIP If you are using a HyperDeck recorder with HyperDeck Extreme Control, the illuminated ‘eject’ button will let you know there is no media inserted in the drive slots of the HyperDeck recorder.

Using the Multi Deck Feature

Using the HyperDeck Extreme Control’s multi deck feature, you can select more that one deck for simultaneous playback or recording. Select each deck individually to set your in or out points. These don’t have to be the same, any timecode point will work. Alternatively, you can just scrub to the point you want playback to start. Once all the timecode points have been set individually on each deck, you can select them together. Press the ‘M’ key to the right of the soft touch numbers for either the playback or record row and while holding it down, select the other connected decks you which to operate concurrently. Each selected button will illuminate. If the button flashes, it means there is either no deck connected or recognized attached to that port. It’s worth noting that this won’t be as precise as using the auto edit feature available via the edit button.

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NOTE When using the multi feature the timecode display will show the lowest number deck selected. For example, if you have selected decks 2, 3 and 4 as playback decks, the timecode display will show deck connected to deck number 2.