will my editing set change wi. XDCAM EX?
 

Hi there,
I was on the verge of buying a Canon XH-A1 when I heard about the soon-to-be-released Sony XDCAM EX. Aside from what this new camera has to offer re picture quality and (via ExpressCard) drag-and-drop workflow, both of which sound really appealing, can someone tell me if I'm going to have to change my editing set up for the XDCAM EX?
Currently I'm using a PD170 SD camera; I'm editing on a Mac (OSX, lots of RAM), using Avid Xpress Pro 5.7. I'm storing all my footage on external FW800 drives.
Will I need new RAID drives, with the XDCAM? Will I need some sort of HD i/o card? Anything else?

Thanks for any advice,
Malcolm

Its a little early to tell... the cam isn't out yet... but there is enough info
that some folks seem to be poised to pounce on the EX footage when it shows....

Cineform is presently working with their software to encompase the footage and they are also courting the Apple platform... So most likely by the time the EX shows, Cineform should be ready to handle Apple or PC platforms with ease...
The Cineform intermediate is AVI based and will work on most editing software.

As to I/O cards... nothing mentioned yet but maybe BlackMagic will be ready to release something about the same time as the EX release also.....

Raid drives should not be an issue... as its not an issue with the PD170...

With the PD170 being SD only it does not require a raid setup....

Raid will become more important as folks decide they want to ingest from a
HDMI port, uncompressed....

You can ingest from the HDMI ports for HD presently without Raid if you use
wavelet or jpg compression at this time on single drive setups without issue.

There is very little difference in footage quality...

PDZK-P1 v2 of the XDCAM Transfer software for Mac should be released next month by Sony.
It should be very similar to its PC counterpart that allows import into AVID.
I am assuming V2 will be able to do this on a Mac.

This is very strange replying to someone with the same name!
Hi Malcolm & cheers,
Mal Hamilton
XDCAMeraman, Sydney, Australia

Thank you Ray and Mal (and yes, it is strange bumping up against your own name) for the information. I'm pleased to hear that Sony is going out of its way to work with Apple on this. And I'm also pleased (but surprised) to hear, Ray, that I won't need any new parts and pieces for editing. Especially since this camera, if I get it, will set me back a purported $8,000 (not to mention what I'll have to spend on ExpressCards).
I'll keep my eyes peeled for more information as it comes available.
Cheers,
Malcolm