PDW700 and Flash XDR

[Steve Phillipps]

Just been thinking about the Flash XDR or Nano Flash on the PDW700. I've posted a few things about the power draw on the 700 and it occured to me that if you put the XDR unit on it as well that would need power too, so you'd have extra weight of the XDR unit, plus more batteries to carry!
But, I was just wondering if not using discs, ie not having the disc mechanism whirring around, would save quite a bit of power, maybe even more than powering the XDR unit? Presumably the laser disc unit uses a fair bit of the power, and if you don't have a disc inserted it would be totally inactive?
Steve

[Paul Cronin]

But the disk are a great archive right. Then you have to buy extra DL-DVD or hard drives for back up. Unless you have a way of backing up the footage to a Sony disk after you edit out what you will not use.

I shot today and yesterday for about 3 hrs each with EX1 and Flash XDR and am still on the same charge with a Dionic 90 battery that powers the XDR only. I will charge it before tomorrows shoot but that is not bad 6 hrs on and about 60% recording.

[Paul Cronin]

Steve have you tried the XDR on another camera?

I have to look very close 200% or more to see the difference between 50 & 100Mbp/s. But then that is only a few days of shooting and all locked tripod shots. Tomorrow I will be doing shoulder mount shots. The difference between the 35 and 50Mbp/s is huge and can be seen with out blowing up the frame. I bet some of this is the difference between 4:2:0 and 4:2:2 but also the motion is a lot smoother.

Too bad you are not close I would be glad to lend my XDR to you and do a test shoot.

Is there anyone in RI, MA area that has a 700 and would like to try the XDR on their camera? I am very interested to see the results since the 700 is one of the three cameras on my short list for early 2009 purchase.

[Alister Chapman]

Originally Posted by Paul Cronin

I bet some of this is the difference between 4:2:0 and 4:2:2 but also the motion is a lot smoother.

Not sure why motion would be any smoother, that doesn't make any sense to me. love to see an example of that. A frame is a frame, any blur due to motion should be pretty much the same at 35Mb or 50Mb, after all the compression ratio is pretty much the same, the only real difference is the extra data in the colour space. Are you shooting P or I? I suppose there could be a perceived difference in motion when shooting I because of the way the colour is sampled every other line with 4:2:0 against every line with 4:2:2 but I'm surprised your seeing that.

My test comparing 35Mb and 50Mb progressive material (which is what I shoot 90% of the time) showed very little difference which is really what I would expect. With interlace material the chroma subsampling is more apparent.

[Paul Cronin]

Happy to have you look the frames over. Running out the door now but I will put up a couple of frames this afternoon.
There are small waves that i shot in 35Mbp/s and 100Mbp/s where I notice the clearer motion of the wavelets with the 100 over the 35.

[Alister Chapman]

I can understand you seeing a difference with water between 35Mbps and 100Mbps as you will have less macro blocking artifacts, but there shouldn't really be a difference between 35Mbs 4:2:0 and 50Mbps 4:2:2.

I'm waiting for the NanoFlash as the XDR is too big for my liking and plan on shooting at 100Mbps.

[Steve Phillipps]

I'd be interested in the Nano too, and would be most interested in the I modes, as I assume they'll be better for fast-moving detailed subjects, 160 mb/s full raster will then be same ratio as HDCam more or less.
Steve

[Paul Cronin]

I agree I frame and Nano would be a very nice combination. The Flash XDR is big and heavy. Would love to exchange with CD when then Nano is out. I thought I would need 4 cards but I am finding it easy to change so two would work out well.

Here are the stills.
This is a bugger. It is saying the .png are too large when they are 3.2 and 4.1MB each. I have this problem whenever it is anything but a jpg. So jpg is what is not coming sorry.

Sorry it is telling me the second picture is too large at 3MB.

[Paul Cronin]

try in a new post "413 entity too large" at 3MB there must be something wrong with the server. I will try again later.

When I try and go to the gallery the following messages take up over a page. The top one is only once then the bottom goes on for over a page. Does this have something to do with the fact that I can never post pictures over 1 MB?
Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /export/sites/dvinfo.net/docs/gallery/gallery_global.php on line 352

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in [path]/includes/functions_gallery.php on line 1067

[Steve Phillipps]

I have some sort of time-out problem when I try to post pics, can do 1 jpg at a time but if I select say 5 of them it takes ages then just has an error.
Steve

[Steve Phillipps]

Wow Paul, lovely shot! That's what I liked about the EX images I shot, they're basically just like DSLR images.
Regarding archive, I do indeed love the XDCam disc system and if there was a 100 mb/sec I frame version of it I think the broadcasters (and my own peace of mine) would be entirely happy, no questions asked about the PDW700, whereas with any sort of long GOP scheme there are always raised eyebrows.
Still seems bizarre to me that a third party can provide a solution when the camera maker cannot - or will not. Surely Sony must be able to do an SxS insert or bolt-on deck that'll do at least 100 mb/sec I frame. Do I understand corrctly that on disc it's difficult to do because of the limited write speed of the disc?
Steve

[Paul Cronin]

Thanks Steve and that is the 35Mbp/s still the 100 looks better. I will keep trying to post the second still so you and Alister can compare. Last night was a nice night for shooting. Very happy client today when he looked at the footage.

Your point with codec is what keeps me from narrowing down to my final camera decision. Two of my clients say go with the Panasonic for the codec. But the 720 vs 1080 and pixel count brings me back to the 700. I agree the disk seems like a great solution but to add a Nano to a 700 seems like a lot of money to spend on a camera when you don't use the disk or codec.

[Steve Phillipps]

Yeah, I suppose, but at least you don't get a rolling shutter.
Steve

[David Heath]

Originally Posted by Steve Phillipps

..........if there was a 100 mb/sec I frame version of it I think the broadcasters (and my own peace of mine) would be entirely happy, no questions asked about the PDW700, whereas with any sort of long GOP scheme there are always raised eyebrows.

Originally Posted by Paul Cronin

Your point with codec is what keeps me from narrowing down to my final camera decision.

I don't think any broadcasters within the EBU have any raised eyebrows about the PDW700 in so far as codec goes. Some pretty definitive EBU tests gave it a clean bill of health recently, see http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/general-h...dec-tests.html and PDW700s are being accepted quite rapidly as full broadcast spec within Europe.

Both XDCAM422HD and AVC-I are described by the EBU as having "shown quasitransparent quality up to at least 4 to 5 multi-generations..... ", which is a pretty good vote of confidence for me.

Recommendations for the future also strongly recommend cameras with sensor resolutions of 1920x1080.