Sony PMW-EX30 SxS Deck Has Arrived!
 

For those interested...

We just took delivery of our Sony PMW-EX30 deck for SxS cards. I'm just about to set it up - I'm happy to see it comes with a remote.

I'll post some more followup observations soon.

SG

UPDATE 1: Just running some file copy tests off our network. Getting 12MB/s writing to a loaded SxS card from a network folder using the USB connection to a PC. This compared to 16MB/s when writing to the ExpressCard slot of our HP Mini-Note notebook PC. Reading from the EX30 to the same RAID-5 network drive on a Gigabit network is showing around 18MB/s while reading from the HP Mini-Notes ExpressCard drive shows 32MB/s.

UPDATE 2: Well all seems right with the new unit - it does what it should. One quibble - there doesn't appear to be a way to disconnect the USB connection without powering the unit down. And conversely, when you are powering the unit up and it is connected via USB - you are asked once if you want to establish a USB connection. If you say no initially and later want to - you have to power it off/on again. The built-in screen is very nice and sharp - maybe the same one from the EX1/EX3 cameras. The remote is actually from a camera (it says right on it) but works. The unit itself is small and surprisingly light. This would come in handy when powering off battery during a shoot and you have it mounted/located somewhere exotic.

Hi Steve,
Did you tried EX-30 with 32GB card?
Thanks

I've spent some time with the EX30 at NAB and WEVA. Steve is right about the USB thing. This unit, being small and light, would also make a good field recorder.

Another benefit offered by the EX30 that the EX camera doesn't have... realtime SD downconversion.

-gb-

Hi there,

Currently we only use a single 8GB card in our workflow which acts as permanent "local storage" on the deck for copying files off our NAS and then playing them out to an HDCAM recorder. It's certainly conceivable a firmware upgrade may be required for the new 32GB cards.

SG