8 Channels
 

Alister,
Sony has responded, and they will take a look at some Nano files and check for XDCAM HD 422 constraints that may differ. Yes, 8 channels seems to be an issue. Dan and Mike are on this and we all hope to have an answer soon. I will love the day we can drop Nano files from an EX right on to an optical disk. To archive EX to 422 50Mb and have proxies generated will be a huge advance. I just hope the copy times are reasonable for field purposes.

The transfer speed will depend on the deck that you are using. The PDW-U1 and XDCAM HD422 cameras are single head devices so the write speed is limited to somewhere around 70-80 Mb/s so for 50 Mb/s files it will be around 1.5x to 1.7x real time. If you write to one of the HD1500 decks this has 2 lasers so the read and write speeds are double. I'm not sure that writing to a U1 will ever be considered fast, but it should be very robust and excellent for long term storage.