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Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/1481697
The Business End All the HyperDeck Shuttle’s I/O is packed into the real estate in the rear of the device. The first thing you’ll likely notice as you’re setting it up is the threaded DC power input. Blackmagic Design has obviously noted that power-cords pulling out is a potential hazard with devices free to float around a tabletop, so this is a feature on many of their latest products. On the opposite side are the HDMI in and out jacks, the SD card slot, Ethernet and USB-C connector for an external drive for recording. The Ethernet port does more than allow an ATEM switcher control playback and recording. It can also be used to transfer files into and out of the Shuttle via FTP. You can safely transfer large video files while you’re recording. The Shuttle will intelligently adjust the transfer speed so it doesn’t get in the way of recording. For both the SD cards and external record drives, Blackmagic has a list of those that it has qualified as having adequate performance for the task recording 1080p video up to 60 fps. Buy Wait! There’s More! Somewhere in the design process, somebody at Blackmagic took a look at the HyperDeck Shuttle and thought, “that would make a really cool teleprompter controller.” So their firmware guys rose to the task. At the bottom of list of codecs, you’ll find Teleprompter. Once selected, the Shuttle will recognize any RTF file on the storage media and load it in. This will also activate a number of settings that give you control over how the text is displayed onscreen. To edit the prompter file, you can use the Shuttle’s FTP function to push revised scripts up from a computer on the Shuttle’s network. The teleprompter playback speed can be controlled by the knob by pressing both the jog and scroll keys. When they’re both lit, the knob will adjust playback speed dynamically so you can follow the pace of the reader. This gave us an idea. Would the same key combination work for video playback, giving us a true “shuttle” function? So we gave it a try. Yes indeed! You can now shuttle through a clip, varying the speed faster and slower. In fact, if you dial down the scroll speed to the single digits, you can get fairly respectable (a bit stutter at times) slow motion playback of video clips. And we’ve just got the attention of our readers who work on schoolboy sports. It may not be Monday Night Football quality, but you now have slow motion instant replay. This, as far as we can see, is not (yet) a documented feature of the HyperDeck Shuttle. At $495 the same price range as the SDI-based HyperDeck Studio Mini, the Blackmagic Shuttle offers broadcast-quality playback in an HDMI workflow, Its’s an essential companion for a tabletop-friendly ATEM Min production system. It’s superbly designed for the role it will play. The teleprompter function may be useful to some, but probably won’t have much influence over a purchase decision, but we think the undocumented slo-mo feature will likely sell a lot of these to sports producers when it’s discovered by the masses. That alone makes us believe that Blackmagic Design has once again hit one out of the park. For more information, visit: Blackmagicdesign.com