Hi everyone,

I work as a DIT for a documentary show that has used the Sony F800 as the main cam for shooting. My supervisor has floated the idea of moving over to the Sony PXW-Z450 as it can shoot 4K and has updated specs all around. However, the problem is that the Z450 manual seems to state that proxies can only be recorded on a separate SD card, whereas with the old F800, the proxies were recorded internally on the XDCAM disk.

In my mind, this could pose an issue if the camera assistants forget to simultaneously change both SxS and SD cards in the Z450 when starting a new roll. I could easily see proxy cards not matching the HD originals and causing a nightmare in post.

So my question is: can the Z450 record proxies directly on the SxS card used for high res? If not, is there a similar camera which can?

Paging Mr. Doug Jensen...

Well, we've never used proxies for any of the shows I've worked on with the Z450 so I can't speak from first-hand knowledge, but I'm pretty sure that you are correct that proxies can only be recorded to SD cards. In my opinion, this is good. I think having the proxies on their own media (ordinary SD cards) provides a much better workflow than having them stored on the optical disks or SxS cards.

But the bigger question is, does it matter? Say that the AC does forget to swap SD cards when swapping SxS cards, the files names, timecode, etc. will still match between the big files and the proxies, so what difference would it make if they were matched card-to-card or not? If it was up to me, I'd just use one SD card for the whole day no matter how many SxS cards were used. It seems to me that would be the least complicated method for post if all the proxies for the whole day were stored together.

BTW, now that word of the Z750 has leaked out via China I can speak a little about it without violating my NDA. The Z750 takes the Z450 to a higher level with three 4K CMOS 2/3" chips (instead of a single chip), global shutter, some new codecs, improved signal to noise for lowlight, and other imrproved specifications. It won't be shipping until after the first of the year, but it might be worth waiting for if you are not ready to put the F800s out to pasture just yet. I saw it at NAB and I can't wait to get my hands on one next month. I'm thinking this may replace my F55 as my primary camera. An ENG camera like this will fit my day-to-day needs much better than the big sensor cinema cameras could ever dream of.

Thanks for this information, Doug!

Good to know. Many thanks, Doug!

Evan: I don't know the Sony camcorders, at least nowhere near as much as Doug, however I do the Canons and the same thing is correct, that proxies can be recorded to SD card only (and not the primary flash media). So it would make sense that Sony does it the same way.