PMW-EX30 SxS Deck - USB or i.LINK

[Greg Boston]

Originally Posted by Brian Cassar

Hi Greg,

I need to output my finished edited product in both HD and SD format. Do you think it's possible with this deck to record the edited HD footage (1080 50i) from the pc back to the SxS cards within the deck so that this footage is then downconverted to SD (hopefully with very good quality as opposed to the current awful downconversion being done via software)?

As long as your NLE supports XDCAM EX export, you can write your sequence back to the card. The deck would then perform hardware downconvert of the material to one of the available SD outputs.

-gb-

[Steve Gibbons]

Originally Posted by Greg Boston

Yes it does Steve. I worked the EX Workflow Pavilion in Sony's booth at NAB this year. Spent 4 days with that little deck and all the other forthcoming EX goodies ( I love the 60 gb hard drive they're bringing out for the EX).

Greg - another question about this: since two drives are mounted on the client PC by the EX30 deck, can you write data to one mounted card while playing back video from a card in the other slot?

Thanks for the info.

SG

[Keith Rollinson]

Originally Posted by Greg Boston

As long as your NLE supports XDCAM EX export, you can write your sequence back to the card. The deck would then perform hardware downconvert of the material to one of the available SD outputs.

-gb-

With an HD-SDI input on the deck, it would seem that your NLE does not necessarily need to support an XDCAM EX codec, but one could simply record out of the NLE via HD-SDI. I'd assume that the deck would wrap the video/audio/data stream into its mp4 wrapper.

No one would consider the 35MB data rate to really be sufficient for mastering, although if you worked strictly within the codec (and its deficient handling of graphics, or perhaps in a project free of gfx) your mastered material should be fine.

Brian - to be clear, the deck records in HD-SDI, but would have the ability to downconvert to SD-SDI if you were to record to a SD-SDI enabled device.

[Greg Boston]

Originally Posted by Keith Rollinson

With an HD-SDI input on the deck, it would seem that your NLE does not necessarily need to support an XDCAM EX codec, but one could simply record out of the NLE via HD-SDI. I'd assume that the deck would wrap the video/audio/data stream into its mp4 wrapper.

Yes, that's true... if you happen to have an HDSDI card installed in your system. Not only that, but going HDSDI from the NLE, back to a card would place it right back in the EX codec. A very unnecessary round trip that negates all the benefits of file based workflow and introduces extra conversion.

If you are editing in an uncompressed timeline, and wanted to go to the deck via HDSDI, then yes, that would be the way to get material on the cards (but in the EX codec.)

-gb-

[Steve Gibbons]

Originally Posted by Steve Gibbons

Since two drives are mounted on the client PC by the EX30 deck, can you write data to one mounted card while playing back video from a card in the other slot?

Any more info on this above question?