XDCAM EX - Where to from here?

[Keith Dobie]

Russell -- that sounds terrific. One more item you might consider if you aren't aware of it: instructional DVD set for the EX1 and EX1R by Doug Jensen (Vortex Media), who is one of the regulars here on DVInfo. It was included when I got my camera last month. Good way to learn the basics.

[David Heath]

Originally Posted by Craig Seeman

I've often thought the next step in their evolution would be a camera or firmware upgrade which would allow the complete (albeit already pixel row skipped) signal out of HDMI. That would allow an Apple ProRes recording rather than H.264.

Sorry Craig, that won't really help. Even if you recorded uncompressed, let alone ProRes, all that would mean is that the motion aliasing gets faithfully preserved through the main production chain - ready to hit the final coder and mess it up. The only answer is to not let the front end of the camera produce the aliasing in the first place.

Unfortunately, the only easy way of doing that with DSLR type chips severely reduces the still capability of the camera. So not much use in a DSLR...... ;-)

Originally Posted by Craig Seeman

Of course one would argue that the above two things are addressed in the Panasonic AF100 but it remains to be seen what real world results are ......

The two things that the AF100 really addresses are usability etc, and in quality terms by putting an optical low-pass filter on the chip, which is still fundamentally a 12 megapixel still camera chip. It seems that the AF100 chip will still pixel-skip - but the OLPF will mean that the aliasing level will be substantially reduced. That's a big step forward - but don't then expect the AF100 to have good resolution as a still camera!

It seems that the F3 will have a dedicated video sensor, so no need to pixel-skip at all. The implication is it will give better performance still, and I'd expect substantially in terms of sensitivity. That's likely to be reflected in the extremely low noise figures being quoted, and that's what means they can sensibly start to consider 10 bit recording and S-log. There's no point even thinking about that in cameras with higher basic noise levels.

[Russell Heaton]

Originally Posted by Keith Dobie

Russell -- that sounds terrific. One more item you might consider if you aren't aware of it: instructional DVD set for the EX1 and EX1R by Doug Jensen (Vortex Media), who is one of the regulars here on DVInfo. It was included when I got my camera last month. Good way to learn the basics.

Hi Keith,

Already done! Winging its way over from the Yooonited States as I type this. I actually ordered it before I ordered the camera.

Thanks

Russ