Yes Mark, even if the cards are more expensive than we first thought or liked, the fact that others will be producing them, and that they have a much greater recording capacity is a massive advantage over P2.

Would someone kindly tell me how many hours of footage will fit onto a 16GB ExpressCard Pro?
thanks,
malcolm

Sony is saying that 16GB will hold a minimum of 50 minutes of full-quality footage at the 35 Mbps (variable) bit rate, so two cards would hold 100 minutes. (And recording time will be longer in the lower quality modes.) That's not enough for a whole day of shooting for some of us, but it's at least a good length of time before you have to think about swapping cards. Once the 32GB cards are available that would be 200 minutes of continuous shooting before swapping cards, which is getting close to being enough for a full day. Compared to P2 this is both significantly more continuous recording time and a lot less money for a day's worth of cards, assuming the SxS pricing comes in at currently reported levels.

Thanks Kevin. If you don't mind... if I record at a slightly lower quality mode (something in between full-quality and HDV, say), how many minutes/hours can I fit on a 16GB card.
Malcolm

at the next level down from the 35Mbps max, it would be 25Mbps CBR and that will give you approx. 70minutes for one 16Gb card.

Thanks Stu. How would that compare, quality-wise, to HDV?
Malcolm

My understanding is that the 25 Mbps mode on the EX1 will be standard HDV, so no difference other than that it's coming from a very good sensor. (In other words, it should be about as good as HDV can get.)

I know that there has been some discussion on what I'm going to ask, but if the 25 Mbps mode on the EX1 will be standard HDV, then it stands to reason that Premiere Pro can edit it straight from the timeline without any need for something like Cineform Aspect isn't?

I'm not sure the files on the express card is HDV, but you CAN capture via firewire and that video stream will be HDV, so yes, PPro should be able to use that, but I don't know about the actual files on the express card.

I believe those are still XDCam HD even though they are 1440 x 1080. I believe that's what the other XDCam footage is as well from other cameras, but I could be wrong.

The audio is encoded differently (given that it's uncompressed not mp3) and I think the 25Mbit files will still be presented in an MP4 wrapper. So... I don't think they're directly HDV compatible.

Time=money=space
 

P2 cards cost a fortune up until they brought out the 16GB card and now the threat from Sony I think we are going to see a price war. Sony have lost a lot of ground to P2 so they need to be competitive entering the solid state arena.
It looks like we will get 2 8GB cards as part of the initial purchase of the EX then if pockets can stretch get 2 extra 16Gig cards, this should cover most events. Remember our old friends Focus will bring out a Sony Firestore EX this would give you belt and braces if recording time becomes a problem.
Now that you are forced to think about TIME = MONEY = SPACE some of you may have got into a mindset that your DV tapes are £2 a pot so shoot more than we need to cover yourselves. I noticed 95% of professional photographers going down this route when they had lots more pictures to take so they took them, all 1600 of them per wedding. Give them a 12 exposure medium format camera and they thought about every shot and had little to no waist and the output dropped to 300-400 pictures. Video has for some gone the same way this very much depends if you have been professionally trained or not. The more you shoot the more you have to trawl through in the edit. I had personal experience of this recently when shooting for a client who did not have a clue what he wanted. I was filming various processes around a factory and instead of filming the beginning, middle and end of a process he had me filming the whole process, his very words were don't worry I will trim it down in the edit. I handed the 7 mini tapes to the editor and apologized for the amount of material. Glad I wasn't using EX on those 3 days.
I personally think I will be offering the EX only to my corporate clients at a far higher price than my DV cameras and making shure the approved script is water tight before filming begins. I will be hanging onto my DV cameras for stage shows etc as this will still prove the best and quickest way for editing through put.

Except that ieee1394 output is HDV only - no 35Mbit XDCAM...

Correct... the Firestore EX will only record in HD the same as the camera but with a lot more space 100GB or more.