I’m interested in potentially buying the PXW-FS7 in the future although for an entirely different application. So I was thinking of being clever with my money and loading up on the new Sony G-Series XQD cards so that I could use them in both the PXW-X180 and in the PXW-FS7. What I was told is that the G-Series XQD card is not compatible with the PXW-X180. So indirectly we’ve been told you need to maintain two different XQD Series memory card chains to support the two different cameras.

So in a minute of illumination I said to myself no biggy we all know how big a proponent Sony is about their SxS Pro+ memory card offering. So I’ll just buy SxS Pro+ cards and then will have one common media to effectively distribute to both cameras as needed. NO not happening. Now all of a sudden Sony says no SxS Pro+ capability will be available in the PXW-FS7 (I know insufficient write speeds). Do you get the feeling that someone is starting to propagate a multi-proprietary memory card system?

So personally I feel that the best engineering answer to handle this specific technology issue and keep new technology wallet friendly for the ultimate user is to make two separate XQD adapters for the PXW-X180 camera. One that enable you to use the G Series XQD card and the other (which they currently offer) to let you use the S Series XQD cards.
I already understand the reasoning behind the creation of the G Series card which is the capability to handle up write speeds up to 600 Mbps potentially needed by the PXW-FS7. The funny thing is that in this propagation of different recording technology they’re still allowing you to use the AXS-R5 recorder for a whole host of cameras when it comes to RAW capture so they’re sort of getting the idea. That being said I’m stuck with a SR-R4 recorder that only works on one of my cameras  Although it an awesome camera no complaints there.

Oh well your know progress & technology is just an infinitely fat wallet away hehehe.

NOTE to Alister: thanks for the lead about the upcoming Firmware Upgrade for streaming and proxy capabilities on the PXW-X180.

The XQD card adapter is just an electrical pass through. I don't see why the new ones will be incompatible unless they can't make a firmware update to fix it, since they're using the PCI-E 3.0 protocol instead of 2.0

This does mean they have to continue selling the S-series cards or else people can only use XQD on the FS7. If they discontinue the S-series, all XDCAM camcorders may need a hardware upgrade to support it along with a firmware update.

I had a similar concern when I was looking at the PXW-X180, I think Sony should better support SDXC. I don't like that it uses SxS cards and needs an adapter for XQD and SDXC cards. With the newer SDXC UHS II cards doing +250MB/s, and selling for about $225 for 64GB, Sony should have made the PXW-X180 able to use these instead of overpriced SxS and XQD cards.

Supporting the 64GB SDXC card without adapter makes good sense to me. Although I keep hearing comments to the effect that the SDXC cards use exFat format and that this may not be compatible with your PC. So at least we have another layer of confusion. I pop SDxx cards in my PC SD input slot all the time but never really worry about what the SD card's format is.
Note: I just got off the phone with Sony Professional Support Services and they said that using the S-Series XQD is a more robust solution than off the shelf SDxx cards by manufacture X. The reason is they build an automatic 15 second buffer in the XQD cards so if you get a hick up along the way it can still deliver the clip without loss. That probably is not the case in you SDxx type cards.

I also found out that you can use the S-Series XQD in both the FS7 & the X180 so that is the direction I'll go for the time being.

Now how about using the battery pack BP-U90 in the X180 I wonder if it can be charged using the BC-U1 or BC-U2. I don't see that it's compatible but guess that it is.

Note: I just got off the phone with Sony Professional Support Services and they said that using the S-Series XQD is a more robust solution than off the shelf SDxx cards by manufacture X. The reason is they build an automatic 15 second buffer in the XQD cards so if you get a hick up along the way it can still deliver the clip without loss. That probably is not the case in you SDxx type cards.


But the PXW-180 (with adapter), HXR-NX3 (directly), and many other recent cameras, can record simultaneously on two SDXC cards, making a 15 second buffer in an expensive card not really that important.

There is no "buffer" with SxS or XQD cards.

What there is, is an additional file recorded along side the main video file that allows the camera to rebuild any corrupt files or files that have not be closed properly, say due to a power loss or the card bing pulled from the camera while recording. This restoration file means that the most you should ever loose is a maximum of 4 seconds. It is an extremely robust system that is relied upon by broadcasters around the world. SxS failures are extremely rare. You need very fast media to record this secondary stream alongside the video stream.

Yes, you could record on to two SDXC cards at the same time, but that won't help you in a power failure situation, you will just have two corrupt cards. The issue with cards based on the SD standard is that corruption tend to result in the loss of everything on the card. The very fact that people believe that dual card recording with SDXC shows how reliable SD cards are considered to be. I've been shooting in extremely harsh environments with SxS for 6 years and never had a failure.

The use of SxS card slots allows you choices. The option to use ultra reliable SxS, lower cost, but high speed XQD or cheap consumer media like SDXC. Broadcaster and professionals need reliability above all else and many will already have a considerable investment in SxS.

Alister brings up a very good point about using the most reliable media possible for your camera during the capture process. Since many of the Interviews or video sequences aren’t reproducible. So I changed my X180 order to include two (2) SxS Pro+ cards and one (1) SxS USB (3.0 hopefully) card reader for the Windows PC.
When it comes to the issue of reliability on the XQD cards since XQD is THE primary capture media for the PXW-FS7, Sony will certainly make sure that’s a very robust capture solution too. So if I decide to purchase the FS7 at a later time it would include two (2) 128GB XQD G-Series cards and of course the appropriate card reader.