Blackmagic HyperDeck Extreme HDR User Manual Touchscreen Display
Touchscreen Features
The intuitive 7 inch display lets you view and select many of the HyperDeck Extreme functions directly from the touchscreen display including accessing the menu and storage media.
The interactive touchscreen display lets you view and select options directly from the screen
The touchscreen display includes an upper and lower toolbar. These toolbars display settings and status information, for example the current source, or the clip currently being recorded or played. Settings can also be adjusted by tapping on their relevant icons, for example to change the source, tap on the ‘source’ icon and then tap on one of the source options.
Indicators show the current status for items such as the source video format and frame rate, timecode, media record time remaining, audio levels and transport controls.
The lower toolbar can be hidden or revealed by swiping the touchscreen up or down.
Upper Toolbar
Navigate directly to the related menu options by tapping ‘source’ or ‘codec’.
Monitor Options
Tap on the monitor icon on the left to access the monitor overlay settings. These settings let you select and modify the appearance of overlay options including zebra, focus peaking, guides, grid, false color, contrast, brightness and saturation. This is especially useful when using the HyperDeck Extreme as a field recorder.
Zebra
Zebra mode will help you to achieve the optimum exposure by displaying diagonal lines over the areas of content that exceed the set zebra level. To enable zebra mode, toggle the switch to on. Use the slider or the arrows to the left and right of the percentage icon to select your zebra level. A level of 100% will mean any area of the image displaying diagonal lines is overexposed.
Use the slider or arrow to select your zebra percentage
📘TIP You can also set the zebra to highlight areas of your image that represent specific video levels on a waveform, for example setting the zebra for 50% means you can visually identify which regions of your image will appear at approximately 50% on a waveform scope.
Focus Assist
Focus assist gives you powerful tools to help focus your image fast. Focus assist displays edge lines on the sharpest areas of the image. To turn on focus assist, toggle the switch to on. Sensitivity settings let you change how strong the lines are using percentage values. In images with lots of detail and high contrast, the lines can be distracting, so in these conditions you can move the slider to between 0% and 50%.
Alternatively, for low contrast shots with less detail, select ‘high’ so the lines are stronger and easier to see. If you find lines are too visually intrusive, you can select ‘peak’ levels instead. For more information on how to set peak levels, see ‘monitor’ settings later in this manual.
Frame Guides
Guides provide a range of aspect ratios from various film, television and online standards. Tap the toggle switch to on and then select your guide by tapping the left and right arrows or by dragging the slider control.
Grid
The grid option lets you select overlays to assist with shot framing.
Thirds | Thirds will overlay two horizontal and two vertical lines over your image, breaking it up into 9 smaller sections to help you compose your shot. The human eye typically looks for action near the points where the lines intersect, so it’s helpful to frame key points of interest in these zones. An actor’s eyeline is commonly framed along the top third of the screen, so you can use the top third to guide your framing. |
Crosshairs | The ‘crosshairs’ setting places a crosshair in the center of the frame. Like thirds, the crosshairs is a very useful compositional tool, making it easy to frame the subject of a shot in the very center of a frame. This is sometimes used when filming scenes that will be assembled using very fast cuts. Keeping viewers’ eyes focused on the center of a frame can make rapid editing easier to follow. |
Center Dot | The ‘center dot’ setting places a dot in the center of the frame. This works in exactly the same way as the ‘crosshair’ setting, albeit with a smaller overlay that you may find less intrusive. You can enable a combination of ‘thirds’ and ‘crosshairs’ or ‘thirds’ and ‘center dot’ by tapping both options in the ‘grids’ menu. ‘Crosshairs’ and ‘center dot’ cannot be selected together. |
False Color
The ‘false color’ setting toggles the appearance of false color exposure assistance on the LCD touchscreen and the SDI monitor out. When false color is on, different colors are superimposed over your image to represent different exposure levels. For example, optimal exposure for skin tones can be achieved by using green for dark shades and pink for light shades. Monitoring the colors during recording can help you maintain consistent exposure for skin tones.
Similarly, when elements in your image change from yellow to red, that means they are now over exposed.
📘TIP Zebra, focus peaking, guides, grid and false color can be toggled on or off via the ‘monitor’ tab in the dashboard menu. You can also toggle the overlays for the 3G-SDI Monitor output. See ‘monitor’ settings later in this manual for more information.
The three remaining monitor settings alter the LCD display settings.
 | Contrast | Adjust the contrast of the HDR display to increase or decrease the range between the brightest and darkest parts. A high contrast image can reveal detail and depth in the image, low contrast can make the image appear soft and flat. |
 | Brightness | Adjust the brightness of the display by dragging the slider to the left to make the image darker, or the right to make it lighter. Changing the display brightness can make it easier to see images when the HyperDeck Extreme is in extremely bright or low light locations. |
 | Saturation | Use the saturation slider to increase or decrease the amount of color in your displayed image. |
📘NOTE All settings will be kept when the unit is powered off. It’s also worth mentioning that the use of monitor options will affect the image displayed on the LCD display, but not your recorded video.
Codec
The codec icon displays your currently selected ‘record’ codec or the ‘playback’ codec of the file currently playing. You can select a new codec for recording by tapping the codec icon and selecting from the menu options displayed on screen. For more codec information, see the ‘record’ settings section later in this manual.
Format
When in playback mode, the ‘format’ icon will display the current clips resolution and frame rate. If you are in ‘record’ mode, it will display the resolution and frame rate of the current source selected. If ‘no signal’ appears, it means a valid signal is not detected.
Timecode
A large timecode view at the top displays either SMPTE timecode or a timeline time counter. Simply toggle between the two by tapping anywhere on the timecode icon.
 | SMPTE timecode mode is indicated by a ‘tc’ icon to the right. |
 | The time counter displays the timeline timecode. |
 | The timecode display will appear red while the unit is recording in both timecode and timecounter modes. |
 | If you don’t have a valid timecode source, the timecode for each recording will begin at 00:00:00:00. |
The timecode view display SMPTE timecode or time counter.
Source
The source icon displays the current source input you have selected on the HyperDeck Extreme. Tap on the source icon to open the record menu where you can select from SDI, HDMI, Component and Composite.
Cache
If you are using the optional cache feature, you can see at a quick glance the storage remaining and status of the cache by looking at the cache icon. When a M.2 PCIe NVMe disk in installed and formatted, the cache icon will display will display the remaining space on the drive. When a valid video signal is detected, the remaining space will be displayed in hours:minutes:seconds based on the current format and your selected codec. When no valid signal is detected, the remaining space available will be listed in TB or GBs.
If there is no SSD installed, the icon will display ‘no cache’. For more details on using the optional cache feature, see the ‘Using the Optional Internal Cache’ section later in this manual.
Video Scopes
Tap on the video scopes icon to display the video scope options.
Tap on the scopes icon to reveal the different video scopes you can view
There are 4 different video scopes to choose from:
Waveform | The waveform monitor is a graphical representation of the image, showing luma values in the same position relative to those within the frame. For example, if part of your sky is overexposed you will see it in the same horizontal position on the waveform display as it appears in the frame. |
Parade | The real time RGB parade waveform view is the ideal scope for accurate color correction. The parade view separates the value of each channel so that you can identity which colors represent each brightness. |
Vector | A vectorscope is the only way to measure colors in video accurately. If you’re color correcting video, vectorscope shows when color has been removed or nulled out for accurate white balance. When you need to apply a tint, the vectorscope lets you see exactly how much tint you’re adding and what color it is. |
Histogram | Histogram view lets you see where the pixels are in your video, and how they are distributed from black to white. You can see if your video is clipping and adjust the camera iris and ISO settings to keep all black and white detail in the image. This means you have the full contrast range of video for easy color correction during post production. |
To disable the scopes and return to your full screen video view, select ‘video.’
When selecting any of the video scopes, you can click on the settings icon to display brightness and opacity sliders allowing you to alter the view of the scopes and adjust how they appear over the footage. Altering the opacity can assist in reading the scope information depending on your source video.
Adjust the opacity of the background by using the slider adjustment
Scope Brightness
You can control the brightness of the white scope graphic from 0% to full brightness at 100%. This can help you find areas of fine detail that may not be so clear with a low scope brightness.
Background Opacity
Each video scope has a black background. You can modify the display of this background from invisible at 0% to completely black at 100%. The higher the opacity, the darker the background, which will make your video appear and the graticules clear.
📘NOTE It is worth noting that each of the video scope options feature an orange graphic element displaying your levels. Modifying your scope brightness or background opacity has no impact on the display of these orange graphics.
Picture in Picture
When a video scope is active, a small ‘mini preview’ icon will appear at the top right of the scope.
Tap on the ‘mini preview’ icon to display your video in a small preview window
You can use the picture in picture option to minimize the video to a small preview window that can be moved around the display to your preferred location.
📘TIP If your video scopes aren’t appearing when you switch them on, make sure ‘scopes’ is enabled in the monitor page of the dashboard menu. For more information, see the ‘monitor’ section later in this manual.
Menu
The last icon on the top row is the menu icon where you can access the dashboard menu. This dashboard menu is where you can access to all the recording options including source and codec, audio channels, monitor options audio preferences and more.
Tap on the menu icon to open the dashboard menu.
For more information on the menu options available, see the ‘dashboard menu’ section later in this manual.
Lower Toolbar
Transport Controls
The first five icons on the bottom left of the display are your touchscreen transport controls. The function of these buttons can depend on whether you are in ‘record’ mode or ‘playback’ mode.
The ‘record’, ‘play’ and ‘stop’ buttons work just like they do on the front panel.
 | To start recording, tap the ‘record’ button once and both the touchscreen and front panel record buttons will illuminate red. To stop recording, tap the ‘stop’ button. |
 | To view your recently recorded clip, tap the ‘play’ button. You will now be in ‘playback’ mode. The touchscreen ‘play’ button will illuminate blue and the soft touch play button on the left of the front panel will illuminate green. |
 | Pressing ‘stop’ will stop the HyperDeck Extreme recording. If you press ‘stop’ while in playback mode, playback will stop and a clip timeline will appear above the transport controls. Similar to a timeline in editing, it’s a visual representation of all the clips on your timeline with a playhead indicating your current playback position. |
The time counter to the left of the timeline bar displays the current location of the playhead and the time counter to the right displays the total duration of all clips.
You can navigate along the timeline by tapping the ‘skip’ back and ‘skip’ next icons.
Tap the skip back button once to move the playhead to the first frame of the current clip. If the playhead is already on the start of a clip, it will jump to the first frame of a previous clip. You can also use the skip buttons to enter shuttle mode for greater playback speeds.
Press and hold either of the skip buttons down until the icon changes to a blue with two arrows. Now you can use can change the playback speed from x1/2 up to x50 speed by either holding down the button or tapping it to change the speed in set increments. To reduce the speed, simply press the shuttle button in the other direction.
To exit shuttle mode, simply press either the ‘stop’ or ‘play’ buttons and the buttons will revert to the skip forward and skip backward icons. When in shuttle mode, you can increase shuttle speed by tapping the shuttle forwards or backwards buttons more than once. To decrease the speed, tap on the alternate shuttle button.
For example, when shuttling forwards at an increased speed, tap the shuttle backwards button to decrease the speed. This lets you avoid using the stop button, which will take you out of shuttle mode.
When using the fast forward shuttle mode, press the rewind icon to stop playback but remain in shuttle mode.
To leave playback mode, press ‘stop’ once to stop playback and ‘stop’ again to return to record mode.
📘NOTE It is worth noting that when in record mode, pressing the skip buttons performs no action.
Clip Name and Transport Status
During playback only the top and bottom toolbars will be in view. When playback is paused or you are playing at greater than real time speed, the transport status will appear on the top right hand side of the display. The clip name will be visible on the top left of the display so you can see at a quick glance exactly what is playing and its transport status.
The clip name and transport status can be hidden from the display by setting the clean feed to ‘on’ in the monitor menu or by swiping the display up or down. This will also move the lower menu bar out of view. For more information on clean feed, see the ‘monitor’ section later in this manual.
Swipe the display up or down to remove the lower toolbar and timeline
Touch and Swipe Controls
You can also use touch and swipe gestures to jog through your clip for precision control over playback down to the frame!
Tap on the timeline and the playhead will immediately move to the location of your finger.
To scrub through the footage, drag the playhead to the left and right along the timeline. The playhead will move to the location of your finger.
For precision jog movements, simply swipe your finger on the video above the timeline and below the top toolbar. The speed adjusts to your momentum, meaning the faster you swipe, the faster the playhead will move!
Swipe left or right for precision control
Storage Indicators
The storage indicators display the status of the media slots including record duration available. The first two icons represent 2 CFast card slots on the front panel. The third drive icon displays the active USB flash disk connected via the ‘ext disk’ connector on the rear panel or network storage via Ethernet.
On screen icons let you see the status of your storage at a quick glance
Your active drive is used for playback and recording. Once a drive is filled, recording will spill over to the next drive, ensuring you don’t miss a frame.
For more information on storage indicators, see the ‘storage media’ section later in this manual.
Audio Meters
On screen audio meters display four audio channels of any source. Channels 1 and 2 will always appear first followed by a second pair of channels, which are usually 3 and 4. Using the monitor channels settings in the audio menu, you can select a different pair of channels to monitor. For more information, refer to the audio tab in the dashboard menu section later in this manual.
The audio meters will display your current audio as a VU or PPM audio monitor. Tap on the audio meters to adjust levels
When in record mode you can adjust the levels of XLR audio using the sliders beneath each channel by tapping on the audio meters to reveal the overlay.
When in playback mode, you can use the slider beneath each channel to adjust the XLR audio output levels. Idle or disabled audio channels will be grayed out.
The audio meters will display your current audio via a VU or PPM audio monitor. Disabled audio tracks will be grayed out
You can select your meter type via the audio tab in the dashboard menu.
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