PDW-700 XDCAM HD Camcorder announced; 2/3rd-inch, 4:2:2

[Greg Boston]

Originally Posted by Alister Chapman

I don't think us F330/F350 owners need to worry about our cams becoming obsolete overnight as in terms of final picture quality in most real world situations it will difficult to tell the difference.

True in terms of real picture quality. But there are those who think that the 1/2 camera is just too inferior to do real broadcast news work. Once the 2/3 camera hits the streets, I suspect there's going to be those who will only accept XDCAM HD originating on the 2/3 models. Time will tell of course and maybe pricing will be the deciding factor.

-gb-

[David Heath]

Originally Posted by Greg Boston

But there are those who think that the 1/2 camera is just too inferior to do real broadcast news work. Once the 2/3 camera hits the streets, I suspect there's going to be those who will only accept XDCAM HD originating on the 2/3 models.

I doubt it - and in the vast majority of cases if you hand over an XDCAM disc I suspect most people won't have a clue what size chip it was shot on. I think the advent of the 700 will in fact be positive for most existing 1/2" owners by increasing the take up of the format as a whole.

It's the advent of SxS 2/3" that I suspect will really put cats amongst pigeons, and if Sony don't do it fairly soon, also suspect that is when they will really start to lose sales to P2.

[Greg Boston]

Originally Posted by David Heath

I doubt it - and in the vast majority of cases if you hand over an XDCAM disc I suspect most people won't have a clue what size chip it was shot on.

The metadata is what would give it away. If you hand over the disc, the XML files contain literally everything... camera model #, serial #, rom versions #, codec used, etc.

I'm hoping that your prognosis is better than mine. ;-)

-gb-

[Alister Chapman]

For several years I used to use a Sony UVW100 Beta SP camcorder. This was 1/2 inch and officially speaking not broadcast quality. However I used it for news and no one ever complained about it and most didn't even realize. In quite a few cases I got very positive comments on the picture quality.

It will be harder to get away with it with a F330/F350, but then there will almost certainly be a much wider acceptance of XDCAM HD so at the end of the day I don't think there will be all that much change for 1/2 users.

[David Heath]

Originally Posted by Greg Boston

The metadata is what would give it away.

In theory, yes. In practice, I'd say that for the majority of shoots the material will be handed to a non technical poducer/reporter whatever who will be only interested in the content, and be far more bothered about composition/lighting than what metadata says. As long as they can walk into an edit suite with a compatible disc, they'll be happy.

For top end work camera parameters may be specified - but this may currently require HDCAM or whatever anyway.

[Alister Chapman]

I was curious about the compression ratios used for 35Mb and 50Mb so I did some maths.

4:2:0 XDCAM sampling yields 1440x1080 luma samples and 720x540 Chroma samples giving a total of 1944000 samples per frame.

4:2:2 XDCAM sampling yields 1920x1080 luma samples and 720x1080 Chroma Samples giving a total of 2851200 samples per frame.

So 4:2:2 1920x1080 sampling has 46% more data to encode. 1.46 x 35Mb gives 51.1Mb/sec.

So either the true data rate of the 50Mb system is 51.1Mb/sec with the same compression ratio or the 4:2:2 camera will be a tiny bit more compressed than the 35Mb system. I suspect the compression ratio is the same for both systems so in terms of artifacts and concatenation there should be no difference between the two systems.

[Tim Allison]

This new 700 camera should be able to make a prettier picture than the 350. 2/3-inch pickup chips, higher bandwidth, and higher resolution. But the 350 beats the heck out of the 700 on features. Not only is there no mention of 24p capabilities, there was also no mention of under/over cranking. What about the other time lapse, and frame-gathering features of the 350? I didn't see where the 700 offered that kind of stuff.

My Sony guy told me to expect a price somewhere around the mid 30's on this camera. It will be interesting to see if it is available for shipping for NAB.

[Greg Boston]

Originally Posted by Tim Allison

Not only is there no mention of 24p capabilities, there was also no mention of under/over cranking. What about the other time lapse, and frame-gathering features of the 350? I didn't see where the 700 offered that kind of stuff.

Tim, see my post earlier in this thread.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showpost....6&postcount=16

-gb-

[Ivan Snoeckx]

On a German website I read that the PDW-700 will draw 40 Watts without viewfinder. Can anyone confirm this?

[Greg Boston]

Originally Posted by Ivan Snoeckx

On a German website I read that the PDW-700 will draw 40 Watts without viewfinder. Can anyone confirm this?

I can't confirm that. But if the unit is using dual laser for the increased data storage rate, then that would certainly explain the extra wattage.

-gb-

[Thomas Smet]

Originally Posted by Alister Chapman

I was curious about the compression ratios used for 35Mb and 50Mb so I did some maths.

4:2:0 XDCAM sampling yields 1440x1080 luma samples and 720x540 Chroma samples giving a total of 1944000 samples per frame.

4:2:2 XDCAM sampling yields 1920x1080 luma samples and 720x1080 Chroma Samples giving a total of 2851200 samples per frame.

So 4:2:2 1920x1080 sampling has 46% more data to encode. 1.46 x 35Mb gives 51.1Mb/sec.

So either the true data rate of the 50Mb system is 51.1Mb/sec with the same compression ratio or the 4:2:2 camera will be a tiny bit more compressed than the 35Mb system. I suspect the compression ratio is the same for both systems so in terms of artifacts and concatenation there should be no difference between the two systems.

Actually from my calculation just bumping up from 1440x1080 4:2:0 to 1440x1080 4:2:2 would require 50 mbits. this new format pushes it even further by also bumping up to 1920x1080.

The difference between the color alone is about 1.33 times the needed bandwidth. The extra resolution also bumps it up another 1.33x. so really the 50 mbit form of XDCAM is actually going to be compressed harder because there is so much more data there. There is about 1.78x more data while the codec is only given 1.42 more bits to work with. So if you could think of mpeg2 compression in terms of calculations (which is kind of hard) I would say 50mbit compression artifact wise would be like normal XDCAMHD at 28mbits/s. Thats still pretty darn good though if a very good encoder is used. To be honest I usually encode some pretty complex graphics at 50 mbits 4:2:2 and I never really noticed any artifacts. These graphics are rendered particle effects such as fire, explosions and dust effects.