Lots of interesting discussions about offloading to laptops, etc. Even Sony's brochure illustrates the 'synchronous' recording from the EX1's HD-SDI out to an HDCAM deck. Well, that might be just too much of a boat anchor to drag out to a location -- but the PDW-F70 is really quite portable, and of course also has HD-SDI in.

Two questions -- would the EX1 signal be converted (recorded) as 1920x1080 to the F70, or would it be in the 1440x1080 current XDCAM HD format? I'm only interested in 35Mb output (we also have an F350, and that's why we have a deck too.) Also not interested in intermediate step(s) -- just would like to have the avbility to record directly to an F70.

Second question -- is/would there be a way to control stop/start of recording of an F70 from the camera, or from one remote? I'd imagine possibly recording to SxS for safety, but having the hero, archivable media on the XDCAM media. Appreciate hearing if anyone has had an opportunity to play in this way.

Keith

The F-70 would be able to take in a full raster 1920x1080 via HDSDI, but would convert it to 1440x1080 35 mb for recording to disc.

If you were to take the HDSDI out of the EX into an HDCAM deck, you'd be retaining the 4:2:2 colorspace and would bypass the XDCAM HD mpeg compression. That's why they show such a set up.

-gb-

Standard HDCAM is 3:1:1 colorspace with a 1440x1080 raster recorded. No 4:2:2 is actually retained from the HD-SDI unless you're talking about recording to HDCAM SR, which is hugely expensive. (HDCAM isn't exactly cheap either)

Greg & Barlow -- thanks for the responses. Guess it makes sense that the F70 would convert to 1440x1080 on ingest. Barlow -- why would the signal into an HDCAM deck not retain its 4:2:2 colorspace? 'Regular' HDCAM is 4:2:2, even if 1440x1080 - the SR also has the 4:4:4 capability.

Any common way to control the F70 from the EX1 (a guy can dream...)?

Keith

Standard HDCAM is actually a 3:1:1 recorded format, which is slightly more than 4:2:0, but still not quite as much color sampling as 4:2:2.

The signal into the HDCAM deck doesn't retain the extra colorspace because that's the inherent design tradeoff of the HDCAM codec. It throws out a little more spatial and chroma info in order to record 133 mbs to tape.

I don't know of any way to control the F70 from the EX1.

Hi Barlow,

My bad! i just assumed it was 4:2:2...we master to D5HD, and not HDCAM.

Thanks for the clarification. Now has anyone actually used an F70 w/ the EX1 for field recording?