The Problem: How to Control Multiple HyperDecks
If you’ve ever had to control multiple HyperDecks at once, you’ve probably already lived the exact problem HyperDeckSync was built to solve. It didn’t start as a product. It started on a live public event with multiple cameras, every one of them recording to its own Blackmagic HyperDeck — and no real way to start them all together.
The moment that started it
Every camera had its own HyperDeck. Every HyperDeck had its own record button. On a live event, there’s no second take — if one deck starts two seconds late, or doesn’t start at all, that camera angle is just gone, and there’s no polite way to ask a live audience to do that bit again.
Running between decks trying to hit record on all of them at once, while also actually doing the rest of the job, isn’t a workflow. It’s a liability waiting to happen. Blackmagic’s HyperDecks are genuinely excellent recorders — what none of them do on their own is talk to each other. Each one runs its own connection, with no concept that there might be several siblings in the same rack that should all be starting at the same moment.
So that became the actual question: how do you control multiple HyperDecks at once, reliably, from one place, without needing a spare pair of hands for every deck in the rig?
Why controlling multiple HyperDecks is harder than it looks
Blackmagic’s HyperDeck Ethernet Protocol is solid — each deck will happily take commands over the network once you’re connected to it. The gap is that it’s a one-deck-at-a-time conversation. There’s no built-in concept of “all of them, together, now.” Any real multi-deck control has to be built on top of that: open a connection to every deck individually, track each one’s state separately, and fire the record command to all of them in the same breath rather than one after another.
That’s a solvable problem. It just isn’t solved by the hardware itself. For a long time the only real options were an expensive broadcast switcher or control system built for a completely different job, or exactly what we were doing on that shoot: a person per deck, a countdown over the radio, and hoping everyone’s timing lined up.
From a workaround to a proper tool
The first version of HyperDeckSync was genuinely just that: one button that reached out to every deck on the network and told them all to start recording in the same moment. That alone turned a job that needed several people into a job one person could run.
But once that worked, the rest of the gaps in actually running an event quickly became obvious too. Knowing a deck started is one thing — knowing it’s still running, that no drive has quietly filled up or disconnected mid-shoot, and that every clip is named something you can actually find again afterwards, is the rest of the real job. So the project grew, feature by feature, each one coming out of an actual need rather than a feature list written in advance:
- Simultaneous record and stop across every selected deck at once, not just “most of them, roughly together”
- Live status for every deck — timecode, disk space, connection health — all on one screen
- Clip naming templates, so nobody’s typing the same filename structure into five decks by hand
- Scheduling, so a whole day’s worth of start times can be queued up and left to run
- Email alerts the moment a drive disconnects, space runs low, or a recording fails to start
- A built-in clip browser, to pull footage straight off any deck without walking over and touching it
None of it was designed on a whiteboard first. Every piece came from an actual gap that showed up on an actual shoot.
What HyperDeckSync does today
HyperDeckSync is now Mac software that finds every Blackmagic HyperDeck on your network and puts them all on one screen. RECORD SELECTED fires concurrently across every ticked deck — as close to frame-tight as a network command can get — and STOP works the same way. Disk space and drive health are visible before they’re a problem instead of after. Clips get named properly without anyone typing anything twice. And if you need to walk away from the rig entirely, scheduled recordings and email alerts mean you’ll know the moment anything actually needs you.
Built from real events, not a spec sheet
Every feature in HyperDeckSync exists because a real shoot needed it — tested against actual Blackmagic hardware, not a mockup. That’s still true of everything added since.
Common questions
Can you control multiple HyperDecks from one computer?
Yes. HyperDeckSync runs on a Mac and connects to every Blackmagic HyperDeck on the same network, letting you start and stop them all together from one screen instead of walking to each deck individually.
Does Blackmagic have built-in software to control multiple HyperDecks at once?
Not for simultaneous multi-deck control. The HyperDeck Ethernet Protocol lets you control one deck at a time over the network, but there’s no built-in way to address a group of decks together — that coordination has to be built on top of it, which is what HyperDeckSync does.
How do I start multiple HyperDecks recording at the same time?
You need software that holds an open connection to every deck at once and sends the record command to all of them together, rather than one after another. HyperDeckSync’s RECORD SELECTED button does exactly this across every HyperDeck you’ve ticked.