Sony announces the XDCAM EX

[Bill Pryor]

What discs do you use if you're shooting on 8 or 16 gig cards? That would have to go to one of the HD DVD formats, wouldn't it? My understanding from other boards is that you can't go into the folders and split up the data without creating problems.

[Mike Marriage]

Originally Posted by Bill Pryor

What discs do you use if you're shooting on 8 or 16 gig cards? That would have to go to one of the HD DVD formats, wouldn't it? My understanding from other boards is that you can't go into the folders and split up the data without creating problems.

Sony has made a cheap XDCAM Disc burner for capture (well, transfer) and archiving on XDCAM Discs. I guess it will have automated software.

BTW, when is this camera supposed to be released??

[Todd Giglio]

Bill,

Sony has it's own BD (Blu-Ray) disc format for XDCAM in 23gb and soon 50gb size. There is also a unit about the size of an external harddrive that will allow you to dump your XDCAM EX footage via computer (not sure if it will allow you to just go straight from the camcorder or not; I doubt it). This is a great option for archiving (though expensive at $3500.00)

Todd

[Wayne Morellini]

Hopefully the V1 will go to $2K to $2.5K in an line shakeup, so the production cost saving XDCAM EX falls to $3K to $3.5K in short time. This really allows for an big growth expansion opportunity fro this new format in future, 4:2:2 35mb/s, 4:2:2 50mb/s, 4:2:2 10-bit 50mb/s, 4:4:4 50mb/s, 4:2:2 10-bit 75mb/s, 4:4:4 75mb/s, 4:4:4 10-bit 75mb/s, 4:4:4 10-bit 100mb/s, not to mention an switch to AVC. Tape is so inflexible, compared to file systems that take an range of rates. That's many years of camera upgrades.

[Gabe Strong]

For those who haven't read it yet, there is an article on XDCAM and the XDCAM EX at:
http://www.broadcastnewsroom.com/art....jsp?id=148318

The part I found interesting is following in quotes from the author Mike Jones:

"XDCamHD EX shares all the specs of its disc-based sister; MPEG-2 IMX, 18, 25 and 35mbps. We assume the new 4:2:2 color sampling Sony announced at NAB07 will be part of all future XDCam HD products including EX."

Maybe this is the surprise I've heard hinted at?? Who knows, interesting though.

[Piotr Wozniacki]

I've been wondering, with the XDCAM format, is progressive also written within 1080i as PsF - like the 24/25/30p on the V1, for instance?

[Greg Boston]

Originally Posted by Gabe Strong

"XDCamHD EX shares all the specs of its disc-based sister; MPEG-2 IMX, 18, 25 and 35mbps. We assume the new 4:2:2 color sampling Sony announced at NAB07 will be part of all future XDCam HD products including EX."

Well that first sentence is DEFINITELY wrong! It's MPEG2 Long GOP, not IMX. The IMX is found only on the PDW-530 SD XDCAM camera and is 30, 40, or 50 mbs with 4:2:2.

I think the author got his wires crossed.

Update: I read the article in question, and the author has posted a response to the original with the corrections. So Gabe, you got your hopes up for nothing.

-gb-

[Mark Kenfield]

That portable xdcam recorder does sound expensive, but it also makes archiving your footage pretty simple. So assuming you had your laptop, the recorder, and bunch of xdcam disk with you - it'd be pretty simple to transfer your footage to an archival medium when out in the field.

Should hopefully mean that dropouts are a thing of the past!

[Paulo Teixeira]

Originally Posted by Mark Kenfield

That portable xdcam recorder does sound expensive, but it also makes archiving your footage pretty simple. So assuming you had your laptop, the recorder, and bunch of xdcam disk with you - it'd be pretty simple to transfer your footage to an archival medium when out in the field.

Should hopefully mean that dropouts are a thing of the past!

You might as well have a laptop with a Blu-Ray drive built in. This is why Sony must make the portable drive compatible with the XDCAM EX. I know that XDCAM discs might be more reliable than standard Blu-Ray discs but you will save a lot of space this way.

[Andrew Bower]

Originally Posted by Paulo Teixeira

You might as well have a laptop with a Blu-Ray drive built in. This is why Sony must make the portable drive compatible with the XDCAM EX. I know that XDCAM discs might be more reliable than standard Blu-Ray discs but you will save a lot of space this way.

Since Sony already makes a stand-alone consumer DVD burner, and there are many units out there that will take a memory card and transfer the contents to a hard-drive (portable media players and video storage units - both consumer priced), I figure it won't be too long before someone makes either:

1) a portable hard drive that lets you dump memory card data to it. These are already out there and primarily used to put photos or movies onto a hard drive, then take it to your livingroom and play them on a TV. Since the new cards will be made by many manufacturers and should start showing up on most new laptops, I expect there will be machines of this type that accept the EX's cards within 6 months or so. Consumer units should run about $300 maximum.

2) a stand-alone unit like #1 that uses a blue-ray DVD instead of a hard-drive. For those that don't trust archiving your material to a HDD, this would be optimal, right?

I would want something like #1 but with a removable hard drive. I just picked up a 1TB drive for less than $250 and would have no issues loading up a drive and setting it on the shelf to archive my footage. I already do it with smaller drives (mostly 320GB and some 500gb) and like to keep one project per drive since they are now so very cheap.

OK, that's my hope for the future. I am very excited about this new camera and am already bugging my local rental house to get some - so I can try one out before purchasing.

Just my $.02 (or probably only worth $.01 or so...)

Andrew

[Alex Leith]

I can't help but feel that the need to offload to HD in the field not going to be something that is quite so in demand.

The XDCAM HD cards are much lower in cost and have a higher capacity (in terms of minutes of recorded footage) than P2.

Many people will be filming less than 90 minutes of recorded footage per day. And even if you average 2 hours per day you only need 3 x 16GB cards ($300 a piece). Okay so $900 isn't the price of three HDV tapes, but it's more within the financial grasp of lower-end PSC camera-jockeys than 135 minutes of P2 cards.

I'd quite happily spring for the extra cards just to avoid the headache of working out where and when I'm going to shift my footage from card to HD.

[Paulo Teixeira]

Originally Posted by Alex Leith

Many people will be filming less than 90 minutes of recorded footage per day. And even if you average 2 hours per day you only need 3 x 16GB cards ($300 a piece). Okay so $900 isn't the price of three HDV tapes, but it's more within the financial grasp of lower-end PSC camera-jockeys than 135 minutes of P2 cards.

A lot of the freelance work I’ve done were over 90 minutes of shooting and if your producing a documentary or a film, you may need a minimum of a few hours of footage each day and there is an event that I want to tape overseas that may be up to several hours of footage each day for around 3 days or more. For that situation I would obviously get a laptop to dump my footage but it would be a lot quicker if they had a portable XDCAM unit. You mention that you can always buy more memory cards if you need longer hours but for my case I would have about 15 hours of shooting and if it lasts a whole week, that’s about 35 hours of footage. Now that’s a lot of memory cards. Sony should also make a more economical unit that uses standard Blu-Ray discs instead because 4,000 dollars is pretty steep for your average person. A unit like this should cost 1,000 dollars and the discs would only be around 10 dollars each since you can already get 25 gig Blu-ray discs for fewer than 15 dollars apiece.

[Vaughan Wood]

We have many dance concerts every November and December and we are looking at these cameras for good low light performance to take over from Vx 2000's. (FX 7 is just not good enough for dark concerts)!

The longest concert is just under 4 hours, with three cameras, repeated next day! Last year I had 24 hours of tape to wade through!

So you can see I'm VERY interested in economical workflow for these cameras!

Cheers Vaughan

[Alex Leith]

Originally Posted by Paulo Teixeira

A lot of the freelance work I’ve done were over 90 minutes of shooting and if your producing a documentary or a film, you may need a minimum of a few hours of footage each day and there is an event that I want to tape overseas that may be up to several hours of footage each day for around 3 days or more. For that situation I would obviously get a laptop to dump my footage but it would be a lot quicker if they had a portable XDCAM unit. You mention that you can always buy more memory cards if you need longer hours but for my case I would have about 15 hours of shooting and if it lasts a whole week, that’s about 35 hours of footage. Now that’s a lot of memory cards. Sony should also make a more economical unit that uses standard Blu-Ray discs instead because 4,000 dollars is pretty steep for your average person. A unit like this should cost 1,000 dollars and the discs would only be around 10 dollars each since you can already get 25 gig Blu-ray discs for fewer than 15 dollars apiece.

I don't think it would be quicker or more convenient to have a portable XDCAM disc unit in the field (I'm guessing we're talking about the professional media discs rather than hard drives...?)

It's not going to run at much faster than real-time. If you shoot 3 hours of footage in a day, then generally you're working pretty flat out - and I'm guessing you're not going to easily find another 3 hours to offload footage from your cards. You could double up on your cards, but by the time you've done that you can shoot your 3 hours anyway! If you're working with a laptop at the end of the day that's more practical as transfer speeds are going to be faster (given that an HD can transfer faster than Sony Optical Media), and you don't have to interrupt your flow if (like me) you're working without an assistant to help transfer files in the field.

[Thomas Smet]

Originally Posted by Paulo Teixeira

Now that’s a lot of memory cards. Sony should also make a more economical unit that uses standard Blu-Ray discs instead because 4,000 dollars is pretty steep for your average person. A unit like this should cost 1,000 dollars and the discs would only be around 10 dollars each since you can already get 25 gig Blu-ray discs for fewer than 15 dollars apiece.

Well thats why the camera is targeted at the pro market. It isn't aimed at an average person. XDCAMHD is in no way designed to be cheap for everyday people to use. $4,000 is not a bad price considering my old DVCAM decks cost more then that and the tapes were about the price of what a XDCAM disk costs. Thats the price of the pro market.