Hoodman S X S adapter

[Steve Minnick]

has anybody used the Hoodman adapter with SDHC cards other than the ones Hoodman makes? I know this topic has been discussed on some 90 plus page threads but I didn't see much talk about the Hoodman. Most of the info is a year old now. Wondering if anybody had some updates.

shoot HQ? yes? no? frame rates? some threads say "60p ok" others say "no way"

just wanted to see if we can get some short answers with the latest info posted.

Thanks
Steve

[Craig Seeman]

Hoodman adaptor is supplied by MxM which is made by the same manufacturer of MxR.
Basically they're all one in the same AFAIK.

Generally SDHC cards are "risky business" when it comes to overcranking. It seems to vary on a card by card basis even from the same manufacturer.

All HQ settings use the same data rate. Overcranking uses higher data rate. 720p60 should work any any good card. 720p24/60 will likely fail on any SDHC card used with Sony EX due to the high data rate needed and the limitation of Sony's implementation.

[Steve Minnick]

Originally Posted by Craig Seeman

Hoodman adaptor is supplied by MxM which is made by the same manufacturer of MxR.
Basically they're all one in the same AFAIK.

Generally SDHC cards are "risky business" when it comes to overcranking. It seems to vary on a card by card basis even from the same manufacturer.

All HQ settings use the same data rate. Overcranking uses higher data rate. 720p60 should work any any good card. 720p24/60 will likely fail on any SDHC card used with Sony EX due to the high data rate needed and the limitation of Sony's implementation.

Good info...wasn't sure who made them for Hoodman. What's intersting is that Hoodman is charging way more for their SDHC cards than say the Transcend cards. It would be good to get a list of SDHC cards that people have tested and have tested with success.


16gig class 6 SDHC Hoodman $100 at B and H

Delkin Devices
16GB PRO Secure Digital (SDHC) Card $40 at B and H

$60 is a BIG diff.

[Craig Seeman]

Of course there's a range of "abilities" with SDHC but Hoodman's cards aren't outside or above that range. I do think Hoodman charges more for SDHC because they're holding their supplier to tighter specs and doing more rigorous QC.

We have a wide filed of testers here at DVINFO though. I have my own testing procedure which has worked for me so far (not that I have a lot of SDHC cards). I also want 32GB rather than 16GB cards.

We do need to recompile a list of what works though since I'm seeing reports all over the place of non Sandisk or Transcend cards people are having good luck with.

For me, I can buy 32GB cards for what Hoodman charges for 16GB. I can torture test the cards.

BTW I can't help but feel all this hand wringing is due to Sony's controller. I don't think we're seeing issues with the JVC HM series which uses EX XDCAM and SDHC built in.

[Steve Minnick]

great point about JVC's use of SDHC....same exact codec.....does the smaller chip size factor into this equation?

[Craig Seeman]

The codec doesn't care about that. It's all about the codec and the card i/o controller, buffer, etc.

Unless I see/hear otherwise, JVC "proves" that all (nearly all) Class 6 SDHC cards can handle XDCAM EX.

SDHC cards have controllers which interact with the camera's controllers (in very lay terms) and this is where the issue is with Sony. Apparently Sony is sensitive to the card controllers. This is probably why my 32GB Sandisk Ultra II Class 2 cards work reliably . . . yet "faster" Class 4 may not, yet many Class 6 do not.

There are SDHC cards which aren't recognized at all so it seems.
There are SDHC cards in which one will get Media Errors at some point and, to my eye, it looks like it's the handling of buffer fill/dump speed. This may also be why Sony never implemented a pre-record cache . . . whereas JVC has about 3 seconds available. Mind you Sony doesn't even have that pre-record cache with the supper fast SxS cards (compared to SDHC). This leads me to believe Sony ran into controller issues that were apparently problematic.

I'm not sure how "symbiotic" the Sony JVC "partnership" is but one would hope Sony would implement the JVC controller solution and even it were a few hundred dollars for a Sony authorized mod, many of us would pay for it. We may well see SDHC support in the EX cameras . . . which doesn't help us at the moment though.

[Steve Minnick]

maybe people can post their latest results for "cards that work" and "cards that don't work"

the info from the last "century long thread" is a year old.
anybody have updates to share?

[Jim Long]

For what it's worth I'm using the Hoodman and their 16gig cards in my EX-1 at the moment, shooting on location in Israel. All my footage is at 1080i/60 and nary a problem. I was curious about using other Class 6 cards, so I purchased a SDHC at a camera shop in Jerusalem. The brand was Praktica (not sure of its origin) and tried it in the Hoodman adaptor. It failed. For now, I sticking with Hoodman's cards.

[Ben McElroy]

Our company just bought the memory adapter from hoodman as well. We're using the SDHC 16GB, class 6 chip. We found that 1920x1080 30p, 24p work fine for extended periods of shooting up to 1 hour on the 16GB.

Haven't tried the under and over-crank modes.. yet.

[Paul Frederick]

I have had NO LUCK using brand new Transcends with my Hoodman adapter. Beware!
This thread is a few weeks old, but the new Transcends cards are taking close to 11 seconds to write after hitting stop, plus I get frequent error messages.

Read here:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/sony-xdca...dhc-cards.html

[Brett Sherman]

I'll second that. I bought 8 Transcend cards a couple months ago that are all collecting dust on the shelf. I replaced them with Hoodman cards.

Transcend, it seems, is a bit of a gamble right now.

[Steve Minnick]

for those that have the Hoodman adapter and Hoodman card media. What formats work? and what doesn't?

[Gints Klimanis]

Originally Posted by Paul Frederick

I have had NO LUCK using brand new Transcends with my Hoodman adapter. Beware!
This thread is a few weeks old, but the new Transcends cards are taking close to 11 seconds to write after hitting stop, plus I get frequent error messages.
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On the Transcend card label, is there a red or green horisontal stripe on the label? From what I've read, the red stripe is the multi-layer cell (MLC) technology that is slower, fewer write cycles but cheaper. 11 seconds is a long time, and apparently, the faster the write performance, the lower the chance for errors.

[Gints Klimanis]

Originally Posted by Steve Minnick

16gig class 6 SDHC Hoodman $100 at B and H

Delkin Devices
16GB PRO Secure Digital (SDHC) Card $40 at B and H

$60 is a BIG diff.

For video recording, I'd put my money in the fastest (not necessarily highest capacity) cards money can buy. The hope is to buy a Single Layer Cell (SLC) product, but it's difficult to tell these days. If the card is cheap or the capacity is huge, it's probably the lower quality (slower, less relisable) Multi-Layer Cell (MLC) flash products.

[Ed Kukla]

As I've posted elsewhere...

The OLD red stripe transcend cards work just fine. I have 8 that all test out OK up to about 40fps.
The new red stripe transcends failed miserably. I ordered 4 of them and all gave media errors quickly. Sent them all back.
There is a NEWER red stripe transcend coming imminently that is supposed to be OK.
There are green stripe transcends that are also supposed to be OK. Beware you might order green stripe and get red stripe. You might order red stripe thinking you are getting GOOD red stripe but MIGHT get bad red stripe. Nice going transcend!

I just bought 4 of the new Sandisk Extreme 30mbps cards. All work fine. I get a green light 4 seconds after stopping recording.

If someone wants to start a new SDHC card report thread, I'll post what I have experienced there...