Sony announces the XDCAM EX
 

I thought the web magazine following link might be of interest.

http://www.studiodaily.com/main/video/8017.html

In particular, the accompanying video from NAB
with a Sony rep being interviewed about the camera.

That guy is much more than a rep....he is Hugo Gaggioni, their Chief Technology Officer. Hugo is a compression guru that really knows his stuff.

-gb-

What we know so far...
3 x 1/2" Sensors (New advanced high resolution sensors CCD? CMOS?)
XDCAM format, 35 Mb/s (MPEG-2 MP@HL, Long GOP, 1440 x 1080 or 1280 x 720)
14x Fujinon lens - fixed. Manual zoom, focus, and aperture / iris.
SxS (ExpressCard using PCIe) flash memory storage - 2 card slots.
16 GB cards available now under $400 each, 32 GB cards available in a few months
Price - under $8K
Official announcement / details expected July
Availability / launch (IBC?)

I'm a noob - and know it. So my ignorance shows. What a surprise.
But at least you looked - so the post wasn't a total waste, I hope.

If it was under $4K I would be more impressed. How long till this gets here again?

Check out the video that Bill Koehler linked to...
http://www.studiodaily.com/main/video/8017.html

In this video, Hugo Gaggioni said "we are going to do the official launch of this camcorder in July, and at that moment we will release much more information."

Here's what's cool...The V1u shipped a bit in December and more in January at around $5000. By late April, with a $300 mail-in-rebate, it was going for $3500 or so. I asked my local dealer, and she said it's because the camera was very popular.

If the EX starts at $8000, and sells well, I could see it dropping in price within a few months. We saw it with the HVX200. I swear the camera cost $8000 and now goes for, what, $6000?

heath

50 Mb/s and 422 unlikely for the EX since it appears they have reserved that for the much more expensive 2/3" XDCAM HD model. Sony has to protect their higher end models.

July! Darn it I can wait that long... I need more info NOW. :-D

Although the details will be finalized and 'official information' will be released in the July timeframe, the shipping date is still slated for mid to late fall.

-gb-

Bill, I wouldn't have known Hugo either before late November '06. I had the pleasure of receiving a 3 hour presentation from him on compression technology and why Sony chose MPEG2 long GOP for XDCAM HD.

-gb-

I hope we will see it live on the IBC.. we can touch &tryout the camera in a showdisplay on a tripod or something with some nice girls to focus on -;)
Sofar with mentioned price, i'm in love and maybe this camera will be for me the final step from SD to HD.

Erik

I will freely admit that a camera like this is strictly drool material.
As a practical matter the price point is simply way out of my league.

But also as a practical matter I am intensly interested in the
transition to flash memory as a recording medium.

Tape has well known problems. No need to rehash.
If you have a builtin hard drive, what do you do when it fails?
None of them so far is user replaceable. It's not like you go to
BestBuy, or anywhere else, and pick up a notebook drive to pop in.
So replacement/repair is very expensive.

But flash should be far more reliable than either.
And if a stick fails, replacement is easy.

What does interest me is a camera like the Canon XH-A1 being updated
with this sort of technology. And this is a technology that would be very
easy to migrate downward to consumer camcorders.

I haven't had any reliability problems with tape since the 3/4" days. However, I do think different things will eventually replace it, but not for many years. The high end HDCAM and Varicam cameras are going to continue using tape for a long, long time, and so are the HDV cameras.

With its complete system, ie., not just the camera but the cheap XDCAM disc burner that allows you to make XDCAM HD discs of your footage from the SxS cards, Sony has made a tapeless workflow actually useable for people like me. There's still the hassle of having to load the data from the cards to a computer and then burn the discs, but at least you have a way of getting the contents to disc easily and economically. It would be better to get an XDCAM HD F350 and record directly to discs, but a guy can buy the EX and the burner for half the price of the bigger camera. Actually, when you throw in a decent lens for the F350, EX looks even cheaper.

My first Betacam camera with lens cost about $40K. The current DVCAM package was about $25K. The two decks were $10K each. The XDCAM EX is only $8K. Assume another $2K worth of cards, and about $3K for that XDCAM disc burner (it can be networked, so no need for two in our place), and switching to XDCAM HD is a no-brainer for us when we get ready to retire the old camera.

The only question will be, is the cost savings of EX worth the hassle of having to spend the time burning all the footage from cards to discs, or would it be best to spend more and go for the F350.

Bill, you only have to burn to disc if you want that as an archival medium. Otherwise, you can store the stuff on your hard drive if you trust it as an archival system. Some folks say okay, while others say nay. As cheap as hard drives are getting, setting up a mirrored RAID for integrity wouldn't be a totally bad idea.

-gb-