Memory Card Question
 

Hey everyone,

I was wanting a little clarification on what SDHC card I would need with this camera. AVCHD is up to 28Mbps with 60p, so I would need one at least that then. I found some that say 30Mbps (10Mbps guaranteed). Does that mean they don't always perform at 30Mbps?

Would this card work?
Excuse my ignorance on this and thanks in advance for the answers :)

Re: Memory Card Question
 

I was wanting a little clarification on what SDHC card I would need with this camera. AVCHD is up to 28Mbps with 60p, so I would need one at least that then. I found some that say 30Mbps (10Mbps guaranteed). Does that mean they don't always perform at 30Mbps?

Would this card work?
Amazon.com: Sandisk 32 GB Extreme SDHC Cards (SDSDX3-032G-A31): Electronics

The Sandisk 32 GB Extreme will work fine. There is a big difference between 30 Mbps and 30 MB per second. Use class 10 SDHC cards for 60p and you should be good to go.

Here is a link to get you up to date on the speeds of SD cards.
Secure Digital - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Re: Memory Card Question
 

What's confusing are the abbreviations Mbps (Mbits/second) and MBps (megabytes/second), the capital B, little b have to be observed. You can get a class 10 card rated at 20MBps, it will work for everthing including quick/slow recording on the FS100.

Re: Memory Card Question
 

As stated elsewhere in the forum, also somewhat confusing are the class ratings of the cards, which seem to mean different things to different manufacturers. The thing to remember is to fully test your cards before using them, since read and write speeds may be very different on the same card, and some manufacturers seem to change product specs during the manufacturing life of a card. I also have some doubts about qc as well... For instance, I have a couple of 32GB Class 10 cards from the same manufacturer (bought from a reputable supplier at the same time) that seem to have very different write speeds - to the extent that, after some initial testing, one was immediately relegated to my still camera while the other has been great for video.

Re: Memory Card Question
 

It's like the days of using SDHC cards with the Sony PMW-EX1.

Each card you buy needs to be popped in a camera pointed at a TV set playing something energetic. Record off the screen at a fast framerate using S&Q for the duration of the card. The TV pictures stress the codec.

Rinse and repeat a couple of times. If there are no problems, the card is good to use.

On the EX1, the time it took the card activity light to change from green to red after the start-stop button was pressed to stop was a good base indicator of the card's suitability. I don't think we have an analogue for the FS100 yet.

Class 6 cards will work in S&Q mode IF YOU GET A GOOD BATCH. I was lucky. Since then I've bought Class 10 for both my EX1s and my FS100.