{"id":25,"date":"2007-12-12T23:12:29","date_gmt":"2007-12-13T06:12:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/2007\/12\/12\/xdcam-format-updates\/"},"modified":"2010-07-29T23:07:34","modified_gmt":"2010-07-30T06:07:34","slug":"xdcam-format-updates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/2007\/12\/12\/xdcam-format-updates\/","title":{"rendered":"XDCam Format Updates"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sony has\u00c2\u00a0been moving forward with\u00c2\u00a0a number of significant\u00c2\u00a0developments in their XDCam line of products.\u00c2\u00a0 Two of the three\u00c2\u00a0new variations of the XDCam<\/a> line that were announced back in April at NAB2007<\/a> have begun to ship to customers.\u00c2\u00a0 The dual layer<\/a> upgrade to XDCam-HD <\/a>increases the\u00c2\u00a0capacity from 23GB to 50GB, effectively doubling the recording time, but is only available in the newest revision of the XDCam-HD products,\u00c2\u00a0with the F335<\/a> and F355<\/a> camcorder replacing the previous F330<\/a> and F350<\/a>, and the F75<\/a> deck replacing the F70<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 Doubling the\u00c2\u00a0capacity is the only major feature enhancement in these new products.<\/p>\n

The solid state flash memory\u00c2\u00a0based XDCam-EX<\/a> is obviously\u00c2\u00a0targeted to compete with Panasonic’s P2 flash based recording.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 XDCam-EX <\/a>is different from standard XDCam-HD in a number of ways.\u00c2\u00a0 Instead or relying on BluRay based optical ProDiscs<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0discs, it records to ExpressCard34<\/a> based Flash memory\u00c2\u00a0cards called SxS Pro<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0cards.\u00c2\u00a0 While still 35Mb\/s at maximum quality, the new EX format is able to encode the full 1920 pixel width for 1080i\/p frame sizes instead of downsampling to 1440×1080 like XDCam-HD and HDV.\u00c2\u00a0 Clips are still saved as files on the recording medium, but XDCam-EX uses the MPEG4 wrapper<\/a> with the .MP4 extension instead of the previous XDCam .MXF wrappers of the Media eXchange Format<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 This\u00c2\u00a0is a bit confusing, as the data is actually processed using MPEG2<\/a> compression, but stored in an MPEG4 wrapper.\u00c2\u00a0 I am not clear as to what the specific advantages of that switch are to\u00c2\u00a0Sony or anyone else.\u00c2\u00a0 Supposedly the MP4 files straight from the camera can be imported into Premiere Pro CS3, but the performance is not currently realtime.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Sony has released a Utility<\/a> to convert the XDCam-EX MP4 files to XDCam-HD MXF files\u00c2\u00a0for backwards compatibilty with tools that support the older format.\u00c2\u00a0 Supposedly these MXFs allows full 1920×1080 resolution\u00c2\u00a0files\u00c2\u00a0from the EX1\u00c2\u00a0to be edited in realtime on a Matrox AXIO system, but this has not been confirmed by Matrox.\u00c2\u00a0 The PMW-EX1<\/a> is currently the only XDCam-EX based camcorder available, but I will elaborate on the details of that specific item in a future post.<\/p>\n

Lastly there is the new higher end XDCam-MPEGHD422<\/a> standard, that seems to be in a postion to eventually\u00c2\u00a0replace HDCam<\/a> tape.\u00c2\u00a0 At 50Mb\/s, XDCam-422 will record full width 1920×1080 imagery at 4:2:2 with 8bit color.\u00c2\u00a0 This should surpass HDCam’s 1440×1080 3:1:1 8bit capability, at much lower data rates, and in a compression scheme that can be edited natively.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0The only major limitation that remains is that Sony has not specifically announced 24fps support, and the first generation of XDCam-422 products may be targeted purely at the broadcast market.\u00c2\u00a0 The new PDW-700\u00c2\u00a0<\/a>has 2\/3 in CCDs,\u00c2\u00a0similar to the F700<\/a> and F900<\/a> lines, but may be limited to the broadcast standards of 1080i and 720p 50 and 60.\u00c2\u00a0 With no 24fps\u00c2\u00a0support this product would\u00c2\u00a0still not replace the F900R<\/a>, but one would imagine that the next follow-on product would surely add that capability.\u00c2\u00a0 I have not found any specific info on whether the actual files recorded to disc will be MXF, similar to the current XDCam-HD, or MP4 like the new XDCam-EX.\u00c2\u00a0 Due to the similar changes in frame size, my guess would be that there will be a switch to the new MPEG4 wrapper.\u00c2\u00a0 While more specific information has recently been released about them, the XDCam-422 line of products are still\u00c2\u00a0not expected to ship until after NAB2008.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sony has\u00c2\u00a0been moving forward with\u00c2\u00a0a number of significant\u00c2\u00a0developments in their XDCam line of products.\u00c2\u00a0 Two of the three\u00c2\u00a0new variations of the XDCam line that were announced back in April at NAB2007 have begun to ship to customers.\u00c2\u00a0 The dual layer upgrade to XDCam-HD increases the\u00c2\u00a0capacity from 23GB to 50GB, effectively doubling the recording time, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[24,38,39],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":130,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions\/130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}