In case anyone is interested, I've been using one of the new XQD memory cards with my F3 and it works great. Even for overcranking. Sure is a lot more ruggedly constructed than an SDHC card -- and no visible pins or contacts. I just wish my Mac had USB 3.0 so ingest would be even faster.

If you don't want spend the money for real SxS cards, I'd say XQD is definitely the next best thing.

This is the combo I've been using:

Sony SOXQD16GB 16GB XQD Memory Card
Sony SOXQDCA XQD ExpressCard Adapter
Sony SOXQDCR XQD Card Reader

I should mention that it does NOT work with my old EX1 even though it has the latest firmware.

Your wish is granted. Just announced at WWDC, the new Macbook Pros just got USB 3.0.

Really? It doesn't work on the EX1? What about the EX1R? If not, that would mean we'll have to wait for a firmware update.

I don't have an EX1R any more so I can't test the cards on that camera.

Your wish is granted. Just announced at WWDC, the new Macbook Pros just got USB 3.0.

Unfortunately, that was not my wish. I edit 99% of the time on my MacPro and even the newer version Apple just announced today still does not have USB 3.0. Nevertheless, I'll be ordering one this month anyway because I have been putting off an upgrade waiting for the new version as I get ready to migrate to Avid. Now that the new MacPro is here, it's time to pull the trigger. I'm just happy they did not kill the MacPro altogether. Now I've just got to find the time to make the transition and learn a new NLE.

Still, those getting the newer Macbook Pros will be able to offload faster on location thanks to the USB 3.0 upgrade.

The current macbook pro has Thunderbolt which will interface with Avid via AJA's IO express or something similar giving you a way to use a regular monitor, as well. We got the one with a flash drive and it's a rocket.
Fastest booting macbook we've owned. No need for a separate XDCAM card reader, either.

Still, those getting the newer Macbook Pros will be able to offload faster on location thanks to the USB 3.0 upgrade.

Do you think a USB 3.0 and an external reader will be faster than the internal Express Card slot in either of my 17" MacBook Pros? I doubt it.
I guess if I was going to start shooting regularly on XQD cards it would make a difference, but that was just an experiment last week to find out how they would work. I'm still firmly committed to genuine SxS cards.

Correction: Offload to External HDDs should be faster with a Thunderbolt Expresscard reader copying to a USB 3 hard drive or RAID on these newer Macbooks. Of course, a real Expresscard port copying to internal drives is guaranteed to be fast no matter what.

In a perfect world, we'd have a 2nd SATA port on the laptop which you convert into eSATA to connect your external hard drive to and copy footage direct from Expresscard to eSATA, but no Mac laptop has eSATA, and add-on cards occupy your Expresscard port.

USB 3 is twice as fast as an Express Card slot. USB 3 can reach 5Gb/s, Express Card is 2.5Gb/s. That's why Sony are using USB 3 for the new SR Master card reader for the F65.

Good to know. Now I am dissappointed the new MacPros don't have USB 3.0.

I remember when we were all thrilled with 6x ingest speeds. Now that isn't good enough. We're so spoiled. Hey, anyone remember the joys of logging and batch capturing Betacam?
Those were the good old days!! :-)

Express Card is pretty fast and you never reach the theoretical max speeds anyway. Of course you will be able to use the Belkin Thunderbolt Dock with any thunderbolt equipped computer and that has USB 3, extra firewire, ethernet and esata ports as well as thunderbolt pass through.

I worked as an online editor and colourist for a couple of years at a big facilities company and I remember very well spending whole days batch digitising from CMX EDL's either to Digibeta tape or into the first generation DigiSuite system. It's hard to believe that it was only 8 years ago that P2 (SD) was launched and EX SxS only 5 years ago. I haven't used a tape other than HDCAM SR for 6 years.

The last time I used any kind of tape or shot anything in standard-definition was March of 2006 when I got my first F350. After that, my Ikegami Betacams and Z1U were never used again. Anyone want to buy a Z1U that has been sitting in Portabrace bag for 6 years?

Doug,
It seems the new Mac book pro has USB 3. Worry no longer. I have ordered one.

MagSafe 2 power port
Two Thunderbolt ports (up to 10 Gbps)
Two USB 3 ports (up to 5 Gbps)
HDMI port
Headphone port
SDXC card slot
Apple Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet Adapter (sold separately)
Apple Thunderbolt to FireWire Adapter (sold separately, available July)

Hey Dennis, good to hear from you. Long time no speak.

The problem is I'm not looking for a new MacBook Pro. I already have two 17" and one is only a couple of years old. 17" has been discontinued and the Express Card slots are gone too, so I'll be making what I have last as long as I can. I can't imagine using a 15" notebook!! What is this, 1990?? I'm tempted to buy another 17" now while I can still get one and put it on the shelf, unopened, to have in the future.

I'm planning to replace my 4 year old MacPro soon that I use for editing, and even the newest models do not have USB 3.0.

Doug,

After a bit of an uproar about the minor Mac Pro refresh yesterday (including from one of it's original designers who now works at Google) there have been a number of reports that have emmerged over the last 18 hrs that a new Mac Pro (i.e. a "next generation" one - I hope) is "likely to be coming in 2013". These of course are rumours so I won't be linking to any of them - and it sounds like that might still be too far into the future for you anyway.

I never base any business upgrading decisions on what Apple might do (the Final Cut debacle taught me that the hard way! - but thanks to that I'm now a VERY happy Adobe user and FCS2 is now mostly history!) but let's hope there really will be a next generation Mac Pro within 12 months or so (which may be too long for you by the sounds of it).

In the meantime, I'm just embarking on some "heavy upgrading" of my 2009 Core Mac Pro (8 Core Nehalem) this summer to maximise it's capabilities for Adobe Production Premium (32GB RAM and a new NIVIDIA Graphics Card) and that will hopefully see me right for another few years. I'll also continue to nurse my pristine 2008 MBP (15 inch) with its oh so valuable Expresscard slot for SxS unloading. This is because an EX3 is still my main cam - it may not be as "fashionable" now as some of the newer cams but it's absolutely the right tool for 90% of what I do. A Canon 7D and lots of good glass and TM900 covers the rest. I love the images from the EX3 (and more importantly, so do my clients).

Keep up the good work Doug!

My 4 core i7 iMac led me to sell my 2008 8 core MacPro as it outperformed the MacPro considerably for the types of productions I do. My 4 core i7 MacBook Pro also out performed the older MacPro.

The new i7 processors are very powerful and with openCL support in CS6 it doesn't matter whether you have Nvidia or ATi graphics as the hardware mercury engine works with both.

Expansion is harder, but that's getting easier as more thunderbolt stuff comes out. The great thing is that if I buy a IO device or adapter for the iMac, I can also use it with the laptop.

My wife has an iMac and it is not an option for the work I do and the monitor configuration I need.

The more I hear about the new MacBook Pro the less I like it. No 17", no firewire, no optical drive, no ethernet, no eSATA, no SxS port. First Apple slaps the face of professional video producers with FCPX, and now they don't have an acceptable laptop either. I'm tempted to sell my stock in protest. :-)

Doug, just an update, were you on EX1 Firmware 1.30 when you made the incompatibility with the EX1 statement?

Sony quietly released the 1.30 Firmware for the EX1 and EX1R, and it is said to add XQD support (along with Histogram improvements)

My 4 core i7 iMac led me to sell my 2008 8 core MacPro as it outperformed the MacPro considerably for the types of productions I do. My 4 core i7 MacBook Pro also out performed the older MacPro.

The new i7 processors are very powerful and with openCL support in CS6 it doesn't matter whether you have Nvidia or ATi graphics as the hardware mercury engine works with both.

Expansion is harder, but that's getting easier as more thunderbolt stuff comes out. The great thing is that if I buy a IO device or adapter for the iMac, I can also use it with the laptop.

EDIT: apparently, you can enable the non-certified AMD cards with Premiere CS6, but it appears to have issues on some iMacs and work flawlessly on others.

Ask my business partner why he regrets getting his i7 iMac and he will complain that my 3yr old PC (quad-core) took only 3 minutes to render a 5 minute timeline when his iMac took 25 minutes (this happened a few hours ago).

To those who stick with a Mac and NO acceleration in Premiere Pro, I can't do the same and wait for things to render whether its a preview (like it was for my biz partner since he couldn't play in real-time like me) or export a file to upload or burn/copy to a DVD/HDD. When there is a tight deadline, my 12-core Z800 has paid for itself over and over (ie, exporting to MPEG2-DVD took 6hrs versus 16hrs on my i7 PC). There are too many times where a client wants 1 more small change and 1 more and 1 more until there is literally no time left and the video must be rendered for delivery. I love the extra speed I get from Premiere Pro and CUDA on a PC for little money. And when I need the speed, my options are wide open, plus I can build/buy a 16-core PC that can be packed with multiple x16 and x8 cards (Raid, Gfx, BMD/Aja I/O, USB 3, FC, etc) whereas the Mac Pro is greatly limited by Apple (on purpose to force more purchases) to only 2 PCIe x16 slots and 2 x4 slots.

One important thing people forget is that the GPU acceleration is only for image manipulation, for example rendering an effect. The decoding and re encoding of the file is still done by the CPU.

Sorry Steve, but I do have hardware mercury acceleration on my iMac. CS6 does support open CL acceleration with the AMD Radeon HD 6750M and AMD Radeon HD6770M graphics cards. My year old iMac has a 1GB 6770M and I get lovely hardware GPU acceleration.

One important thing people forget is that the GPU acceleration is only for image manipulation, for example rendering an effect. The decoding and re encoding of the file is still done by the CPU.

Sorry Steve, but I do have hardware mercury acceleration on my iMac. CS6 does support open CL acceleration with the AMD Radeon HD 6750M and AMD Radeon HD6770M graphics cards. My year old iMac has a 1GB 6770M and I get lovely hardware GPU acceleration.

Here is directly from Adobe's website:

"Supported AMD graphics cards for GPU acceleration

AMD Radeon HD 6750M (only on certain MacBook Pro computers running OS X Lion (10.7.x) with a minimum of 1GB VRAM)
AMD Radeon HD 6770M (only on certain MacBook Pro computers running OS X Lion (10.7.x) with a minimum of 1GB VRAM)"

Anyways, any reports of EX1 and EX1R users on Firmware 1.30 having success with the XQD card adapter?

Here is directly from Adobe's website:

"Supported AMD graphics cards for GPU acceleration

AMD Radeon HD 6750M (only on certain MacBook Pro computers running OS X Lion (10.7.x) with a minimum of 1GB VRAM)
AMD Radeon HD 6770M (only on certain MacBook Pro computers running OS X Lion (10.7.x) with a minimum of 1GB VRAM)"

Yep thanks for confirming what I already said Steve, many of the graphics cards in the current iMacs are supported. My iMac has the 1GB 6770M and I get full hardware mercury acceleration.

Under Mountain Lion I also get full open CL acceleration on my MBP which only has a 512GB card, so the list appears to be out of date anyway.

I pretty much do all my editing on the new MacBook Pro Retina. Doug I must admitt screen size is an issue, however with a iPad and the app called Air Display, not found (http://avatron.com/apps/air-display.com) I have a 2nd monitor for the footage bins. Works great and it's a touch screen. For the person on the go, deadlines and travels, I do not have the luxury of a edit suite. It has been redefined with technology along with all the camera choices.

When a 2nd monitor is nessary, generally the hotel can supply one and now I have 3 displays that can be configured to edit with. On another note the iMac are very fast for rendering. USB 3.0 drives are cheap and fast . I use them to edit with. No more FireWire. Thunderbolt is ok but generally a power supply is needed to run the drives, which is a pain when your on the road or on a airplane.

PXW-Z100 uses this series cards...

Sony 32GB XQD Memory Card S Series
Mfr # QDS32/T

Sony 64GB XQD Memory Card S Series
Mfr # QDS64/T

I have confirmed with someone (James from this thread: http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/sony-xdcam-ex-cinealta/515117-first-hand-encounters-xqd-uses-ex1-ex3-ex1r.html ) that even the old EX3 with the latest firmware supports XQD cards. Tests have proven that it can support the maximum overcrank rate throughout the entire card. Bodes good for my EX1R and potentially for EX1 owners too.

I just recieved an email from BH Photo that the XQD 64Gig cards are discontinued...did I miss something? Why would they be discontinued? Only SxS cards are being used in the field?

Edit:
A new series "N" is coming out....