Don't know.... As I mentioned, I only tested the Ultra II 4GB and the new 16GB Extreme III 30MB/s SDHC (Which I've been testing for over 6 days with no errors in all HQ modes.

Unless the 32GB Ultra II 15MB/s does not live up to their spec, I'm betting it will work flawless with all HQ modes.

As it stands now, both the Ultra II 4GB 15MB/s and the new Extreme III 16GB 30MB/s SDHC cards record all HQ modes with 40% data headroom to spare.

As we get a clearer picture of Sony's USB hard drive performance (or lack there of) and now these SDHC cards, it would seem that Sony has crippled the ExpressCard USB throughput. It is a safe bet to say that Sony is also watching the SDHC and Compact Flash cards leap forward in speed. At the end of the day, Sony and now JVC will naturally want to protect their SXS card revenue streams.

The only way to get around Sony's "imposed limitations" would be to hack the EX1/EX3 firmware. If computers, cell phones etc. can be hacked to achieve end-user satisfaction, surely these camera's can also. Radical perhaps, but is anyone up to the challenge?

Probably, preventing this is high on Sony's list of priorities. This, I suspect, is one reason that they aren't providing the firmware updates to the public and are requiring that a service center perform them.

The bottle neck may not be down to Sony. The kensington (and other) express card adapters have been around for a couple of years. They are cheap mass produced items that have a chip to translate the USB data to data that can be written to the card. It is likely that when the translator chips were designed memory cards were not as fast as they are now, so it could be that a large part of the issue is down to the translator chips. I expect that the SxS to USB adapter used by the PHU-60 hard drive uses a similar chip. Too be honest I'm not too bothered with S&Q. I have plenty of SxS cards and will continue to use SxS for all those jobs where you only get one chance to get the shot, or where I need S&Q.

Where low cost SD cards fit is for shoots where I need to hand over the rushes or where I can do a retake if needed. Now amazon are selling SxS cards and with JVC adopting them I am sure the price will continue to fall. When I got my first EX1 the 8Gb cards were nearly £600, now they are less than £300, a 50% reduction in just 9 months.

Perhaps Sony didn't make a decision to 'hobble' it's Expresscard USB 2.0 speed, but the EX's don't seem to be taking advantage of the possible speeds available with the Expresscard adapters. The throughput required for maximum slomo is, what 12 or or 13 MB/second? We've measured even bargain SDHC cards in their Expresscard adapters at more than this, up to 20MB second through a computer's Expresscard USB 2.0 interface. Now perhaps an EX1 needs to do some things like reading some random bits while writing, and maybe the SDHC cards don't handle these random reads or writes very well and therefore fail at higher bitrates, but then it would seem that Sony's Expresscard-HardDisk solution should be able to do it as even 2.5" 4200RPM harddisks are much faster in transfer rate and random seeks than these cards.

In any case, I do agree with you, slomo is not used that often, and if we need it, we have our luxurious SxS cards available for that. This homegrown solution, however, does free us up to be able to carry a day's worth of media for what is used to cost to carry 1/2 hour's worth, and to jettison awkward and expensive offloading solutions. I'm going to enjoy not having to carry around my Macbook Pro to all my shoots to offload my SxS cards.

Now I just have to worry about losing these tiny SDHC cards!

indeed loosing SD cards is rather too easy :)

I'm not sure if the Kensington/SDHC will work in the Sony SxS reader which is PCIe based.
But, if someone has an expresscard slot on their PC, they could run the CrystalDiskMark to test the speed.

I'm willing to bet it will hit the 15MB/s SDHC speed. The bottleneck is Sony.
Portable hardrives have had data read and write rates over 20MB/s for a while now. Most are over 30MB/s.

don't forget that as well as writing the mpeg to the card Sony are also writing metadata at the same time. It's easy to write large single blocks of data but writing to multiple files at the same time is much harder and this will reduce the maximum achievable write speed.

True, but meta data is very small and is should be written once during each intitial record start. With the slower memory i've tested that has failed, it could run for a minute then fail writing data.

I would not be surprised if Sony did cripple the data rate for USB 2.0. This certainly explains why their own PHU-60K can't even support 13MB/s.

Well today i ordered the Sandisk 32GB Extreme 11 15MBs card and a kensington 7 in 1 adapter They should both be with me in the next few days.

I picked the card up from ebay at £88 ( cheapest I could find in the UK) and the Kensington for £12 from Amazon.

If it works ( and I don't see any reason why it shouldn't) I will buy another card and adapter and have nearly 4 hours of recording media in HQ without having to change out the cards.

All for £200. Never thought it woould all get so cheap so quickly.

Steve you meant to write SanDisk 32GB Ultra II 15MB/s, right? Not Extreme?

Let us know how it works.

Also, remember to try setting your EX1 to 720 24P S&Q ON at 40FPS.
Let us know if this works.

If so, the 32GB Ultra II are equal to the data rate (which it should be) of their 4GB Ultra II 15MB/a which I tested.
If it runs at 40FPS S&Q as outlined above, then that means there should be 40% data rate headroom above all HQ modes.

Please let us know.

Hi Steve sorry yes Ultra 11 15MBs. Had a horrible thought for a second I had ordered the wrong card but just checked and OK!

Hopefully it will be just as fast as the 16Gb but withy lots of extra capacity!
If these work fine with no hitches I will be selling 4 16Gb SXS cards on ebay in the next few weeks to get some money back.

I hear you there...
They are not cheap.

Keep at least one around for slo-mo effects..

just my thought, will Sony release the next firmware and secretly block those Keningston and Lexar expresscard / adapor that we have tested so far in order to protect their SXS revenue?

It's possible - but, you would have to send your camera in to have the software upgraded
which I would not.

They will not tell you they block it until you have upgraded to the new firmware. I hope Sony will not choose this path.

Just an update concerning my testing of the Sandisk/Kensington combo.

I have now spent almost a whole workday. Recording, deleting, recording etc etc...trying to get the combo to fail. I have made recordings that fill the 8 GB card and I have made several shorter recordings, deleted every second clip to achieve fragmentation, and then filling up the card with video.
Still not even an error message telling me to restore media! Also - the camera performs and behaves just like I am used to with SxS-memory. No delays or lags. It feels rock solid!

I only hope it will stay this way AND that somebody finds an adaptor that fits behind the door.

Here are some numbers that might be of interest:

Transfering a full 8 GB card via camera USB to harddrive - 16 minutes.
Transfering a full 8 GB card to laptop using the Kensington adapter - 7:22 min
Transfereing a full 8 GB card to the same laptop using it's built in SD-reader - 8:41 min
Transfering 8 GB of media from laptop to card using Kensington adapter 14:17 min

The first number suggests to me that the cameras USB interface is not very fast. Or maybe it has to share the bandwith somehow with the USB-port on the camera, resulting in half speed.

The last one is encouraging as it suggests an overhead of almost 100% in write speed in relation to what is needed for recording (one card can take 28 minutes of HQ video).

Finally - Steven - have you recieved your 16 GB card yet? Is it performing as well as the 8 GB card?

Thanks Ola,
I have not received my 16GB Sandisk Ultra II 15MB/s SDHC card.
Althought I do have the 16GB Sandisk Exteme III 30MB/s SDHC which works well with the Kensington 7-in-1 expresscard reader in the EX1.

I'm willing to bet both the 16GB and 32GB SanDisk Ultra II 15MB/s SDHC will work fine.

nice! I will be ordering my EX3 friday morning (and breaking the bank to do it). You guys just made my year. No need to buy SxS card until the price drops. I'll have 2 8gb sxs cards anyway.

I feel a lot better about buying this camera all the sudden.

Yes, use the SxS for S&Q modes.

Steven!

May I ask why you are risking it with a slower 16 GB card when the Extreme III is so cheap? Also - does the 16 GB Extreme III measure as fast as the 8 GB using your speed test software?

Based on my tests, the Extreme III and Ultra II will perform the same with the Kensington 7-in-1 in the EX1.

The 8GB and 16GB Extreme III should perform the same in the EX1/with Kensington.

Hm - so why not use the much cheaper Transend cards instead? Don't you trust them? (Sorry to bug you but I'm trying to make up my mind on what to buy)

The SanDisk 16GB Ultra II is only $60. Yes the Transcend is less, but $60 for 16GB for reliable memory sounds good to me.


There was one report where the Transcend SDHC card was defective on first try.

I have not looked close at the data rate tests for the transcend, buy the Sandisk data is very repeatable.

I have 4 of the Transend 8bg cards no errors so far $18.99, I think the 16 gb cards are slower. I have 4 SanDisk 32GB Ultra II on order.

I am looking forward to hearing about your results with these cards. This truly is a revolution.
Might I make a suggestion? Since all cards, more or less, are on paper fast enough I think that the overcrank test that Steven suggests is the best way to judge how much headroom the card has when actually recording HQ-video in the camera.

Why don't we make a list of all of these cards (Sandisk Exterme, Ultra, Transend 8,16,32 Gb) according to achieved S&Q fps?

That would be invaluable information for anyone looking into buying SD-cards for their EX1/EX3.

Transcend 8GB in Bristol,uk. Genuine items.
 

I know people don't like buying memory off ebay, due to the amount of fakes, however, i just found an ebay shop which happened to be 1 mile from my house so i went to the shop and bought the transcend 8gb class 6 cards, £20 each,they work, they're genuine.
They've got loads in stock.
Also sdhc to usb readers for £5, instock.
Also sxs cards there for £80ish for 32gb, transcend.

So if anybody wants the details of this supplier then pm me and i'll give you the details, i won't post the details because they're not sponsors.

I'm not in any way connected to this shop, they're just genuinly down to earth people who helped me out letting me test cards in the shop, so i thought i'd return a favour.
They take paypal and post next day.

Paul.

To repeat my findings so far in EX-3, I am working perfectly in SQ and HQ modes with Kensington reader + Transcend 8gb and SanDisk Extreme III 16gb. My next test will be to pick up a SanDisk Ultra II 32gb.

While I honestly have not shot any under/overcranking since starting to test the SD cards, my plan generally will be to keep one SxS card in the camera and one SD card.

that's the test I want to see. :)

Brian, based on the smaller Ultra II that has been tested, these should work fine.

But, I hope they offer a return if they do not work..

Honestly, again based on their smaller Ultra II SDHC cards, the 32GB cards should work the same. Ultra II claims 15MB/s data rate.

I'll be ordering a 32GB Ultra II soon.

32gb Ultra II do not seem available at the moment. I did find a UK vendor claiming stock but B&H notes not yet released. I imagine we will start seeing them in the coming weeks. Interesting to note that the 32gb Ultra II is labeled a Class 4 card.

Paul, Amazon are cheaper than that.

Running tests today on a couple of Transcend 16Gb cards and a couple of 8 Gb Sandisk Extreme III cards.

Shooting in 25P S&Q mode I am getting very similar performance from both these cards. At 52 FPS both will give media errors pretty quickly, at 50 FPS I get occasional media errors on long clips and at 48 FPS both are error free. Both are quite a bit faster than my 8Gb Transcend cards which only make 38 FPS (still plenty fast enough for regular HQ mode).

Given that the 16Gb Transcend card is around the same price as the 8Gb Sandisk Extreme III yet offers such similar performance I will be using the 16Gb Transcend card.

As an aside, if Sony had crippled the interface then we probably wouldn't be seeing the differences in performance we are finding from different cards.

Just filled a whole 16Gb transcend card with 2x 50FPS S&Q clips without any errors!

Class 4 is slower than Class 6, I would NOT get the Ultra 2 cards.

Yes,
When SanDisk released the Ultra II, this was the highest Class (4) to rate them at that time.
Class 6 came out later which states 6MB/s minimum. The Ultra II tests at 15MB/s


I hear you on the 32GB Ultra II SDHC. I'm not sure how some are ordering.

Yeah i know what you're saying but for the sake of a couple of quid i'd rather just wander up the road and physically pay for them and have them put in my hand, then i don't have to wait in for them to be delivered, then they get delivered when i'm out, then i have to go and collect from somewhere, blah blah blah. All to save a few quid.

Paul.

I just wrote to SanDisk PR wearing my journalist hat and asked for an eval 32gb card. Most vendors jump at the chance for product review so we shall see what happens.

I'd like to thank everyone who contributed to this great thread.

This is just great news!

Now, do you think you can take a look into the inks for my Epson printer? It costs me $110 for one set of inks, and the actual printer cost $90!!

When the ink is half way empty, sell the printer with half the ink as "perfect working order" on ebay for half price !

Then put $45 to the money and buy a new printer.

Paul.

More on SDHC cards...
 

The PHU-60K is a very nice addition to the EX1/3. It has only one drawback and that is the limited capacity, 60 GB is not very much.

I wonder if it would be possible to remove the standard 1.8" disk and replace it with a 120 GB single platter (8 mm height) 1.8" Toshiba SATA disk with 5400 RPM.

My questions are relatively simple:

1. Is the physical height of the replacement disk (8mm) OK? Or could even a 2 platter disk with 160 or 250 GB fit?
2. Is the disk controller a SATA type?
3. Is 5400 RPM supported?
4. Is this feasible with the limitation of breaking the warranty?

What do you think?

On the Kensington 7-in-1 expresscard reader - Has anyone had problems using this with a MacBook Pro?

I hear that the MacBook does not work well with this.

Why bother doing all that now that 8gb/16gb cards can be bought for next to nothing ?

Paul.