First hand encounters of XQD uses for the EX1, EX3 and EX1R?

[James Kreitner]

The PMW-EX1 and PMW-EX3 only are in the directory where my firmware was downloaded from, so the EX1R is not mentioned in the "Read before downloading firmware.txt. I poked around a little and found a separate directory for the PMW-EX1R, but it does not have that same type of text in it. It does have these firmware versions in it:
1.10_1701
1.20_2171
1.30_2421
1.31_2451

After over-studying the instructions for upgrading, I ran the firmware updater on my Macbook Pro (10.7.3, even though the instructions say to use Tiger, Leopard or Snow Leopard, Intel hardware- my friend at Sony told me it should work with Lion and probably Mountain Lion). I remove the shoulder pad retaining plate on the EX3, removed the pad from the camera. The retaining plate also covers the maintenance connector (mini-USB). Powered the camera with the AC supply and a battery in case of power failure (although it was plugged into a UPS anyways- like wearing 3 rubbers). Plugged the USB cable that came with the camera into the maintenance port and into the Macbook Pro USB port, ran the app and followed the onscreen directions. It loads in the firmware in 2 passes, you are prompted to reboot the camera after the first pass; near the end it got up to about 99.5% done, then got real slow, during which I believe it was actually flashing the firmware in the EX3. When it finished, it notified me it was done and prompted me to reboot the camera and exit the application. I have to admit at this point, I closed the application, pulled the USB cable out of the Macbook Pro, rebooted the camera, and then got a lump in my throat when it didn't power up. I re-booted a second time and nothing. I pulled the mini USB connector out of the maintenance port and switched the camera on, and all was fine! Apparently it detects when the cable is connected to that port and won't come up in camera mode even if the other end isn't connected to a computer. I'm now running ver 1.25(1311) - my previous version was 1.10(1101)! All I need now is for my adapter card for the XQD memory to arrive (allegedly on Saturday) and I can start testing. This was one of the easiest firmware updates I've ever done on anything. The anxiety was a lot worse than the reality.
Easy-peasy!!! (on the EX3 with ver 1.10 or higher firmware- your mileage may vary on the EX-1R). There is a PDF in the EX1R directory about updating firmware using an SxS card; I didn't bother to read it since it didn't apply to me, but it might be a lot easier for you to update than it was for me. I'll probably talk to my friend at Sony tomorrow to thank him for his help, I'll ask him about the minimum version for user upgrades on the EX1R and let you know what he says.

cheers!

[James Kreitner]

Jack, my curiosity got the better of me and yes, the firmware can be updated with just the SxS card and the data download; there's supposed to be an entry in the menu for it (didn't seem to say whether it was the regular or maintenance menu, I would guess the later). Works for the EX1R, the F3 (Doug- you probably already know about that!) and a bunch of other high-end cameras. Seems pretty easy, and it's a lot faster because you're not using USB to transfer data to the camera like the EX3 does. EX1R ver 1.30 adds XQD card compatibility and ver 1.31 improves things related to color correction.

Doug, we've been bouncing around talking about various cameras, but the main topic is XQD compatibility- I just glad I found this thread and knowledgeable people who want to talk about this, because up until 3 days ago, I had a few XQD cards for my Nikon D4 and didn't even know they'd work in my EX3! Having you in the conversation is a bonus as far as I'm concerned, so thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to help out here!

cheers!

[Doug Jensen]

Hi James, I haven't really contributed much to this conversation, nor am I busier than anyone else, so there's no reason to single me out, but thanks for saying so anyway.

Just to update my previous comments about XQD cards after having spent a few more months using them once in awhile, I have found them 100% reliable and very rugged. My first choice is still to use SxS cards, but I have no qualms about shooting on XQD. In fact, I have even recorded 4K XAVC files and 50 Mbps XDCAM HD422 files simultaneously to XQD cards with my F55 a few times. Now that's a lot of data!

[James Kreitner]

The XQDs are really just a stopgap for me... my PMW-EX3 is way past end of life and I've had my sights set on the PMW-F55 for some time now, and financially I'm on target for an end of this year/ beginning of next year purchase. My budget is twice what the body costs to get me a starter rig. The price of SxS cards is astronomical compared to other kinds of storage, and I've been thinking Convergent Design thoughts for a while now, Gemini or Odyssey, instead of SxS cards, but still pondering the workflow. So really, the XQDs are so I can avoid making a bigger investment in SxS cards for a PMW-EX3 that will be a throwaway cam in 6 months and avoid having a bunch of SxS that I may not want and regret having spent the money on when I could put those dollars towards a Convergent Design device instead. Way off topic, though.

[Doug Jensen]

Investing in SxS cards is hardly a waste of money if you intend on going forward with other Sony camcorders. In my opinion, adding an external recorder just to save money on SxS cards is an idea you should seriously reconsider. That's a really bad idea!! You're not even going to be able to take advantage of any of the best features of an F55 if you aren't recording internally, not to mention all the hassles of mounting a recorder, powering a recorder, and a less efficient workflow. If you're going to use an external recorder, just get a used F3 (really cheap these days) and call it good, because an F55 or F5 will offer you no advantages if you use an external recorder. In fact, the F5 and F55 are actually inferior cameras in many ways to the F3 if you aren't going to record internally.

And besides all that, SxS cards are not that expensive when you really look at the service you'll get from them for years and years. And of course there is still the XQD cards that are supposed to be the focus of this thread. What's wrong with those if you don't want to spend the $$ on SxS? They're a way better solution than adding external recorder. You can use them now on your EX3 and later on an F55. Take the money you are thinking of wasting, yes wasting, on an external recorder and apply that to cards. You'll be loving life a lot more.

[James Kreitner]

Hi Doug,
I have a completely open mind on this subject, especially when the conversation is with someone who has experienced the real world ramifications different kinds of storage. You clearly have a strong opinion about this, one that has been formed from experience, and I'm all ears. Could you fill me in on what special features of the F55 I will lose if I use external storage you're referring to?

When I referred to SxS being a waste of money, I wasn't referring to their lack of usefulness in another Sony camera, I was referring to the relative cost per minute of storage I could get out of an SxS card vs a Convergent Gemini or Odyssey recorders. Of course, loss of features available from internal vs external recording would have a serious impact on the equation. Also, my understanding is that SxS cards can only record a compressed data stream, whereas the Convergents can record various compression factors all the way up to fully uncompressed streams if desired.

While using an XQD card in an HD camera like the PMW-EX3 and EX1 has shown to be successful, even when overcranking, Sony does not recommend it. The read/write speed for the fastest 'S' series XQD cards is 168 MB/s read/write. I've heard a number of people report success with UHS-I cards in these cameras as well; the specs are all over the place for these cards even within the same manufacturer and family, but if you look at something live the Lexar Professional 600x cards which are at the high end of the spectrum, their spec is 'only' 90MBs max read and 45MBs max write. This is probably really pushing it when it comes to overcranking and the actual design of the card (how data is moved onto and off of the card) is not the best for applications like video. The XQD while higher in price is a much safer choice for the PMW-EX3 and EX1.
The SxS-1 cards have a transfer speed (not quite sure what is meant by this or why they don't spec read/write speeds) of 1.2Gbps, and an estimated lifetime of 5 years with heavy use, one-tenth of the SxS Pro cards. Sony advertises the SxS-1 as 'offering the same performance and reliability as more expensive SxS Pro Cards'. Don't you love salesmen??? The SxS Pro cards have 1.6Gbps max read and 1.5Gbps max write speed and are 'optimized for 4K video capture' (F5 and F55).
So the question is, what's your data rate and are you overcranking? Can the XQD keep up with the F55 at 50Mbps or is it limited to 35 or 25?
Do you want to shoot at over 50Mbps? If you do, the only card spec'd to do so is the SxS Pro, and a 128 GB card @4k will last for 20 minutes at 600Mbps and costs $1390, or a 64 GB card @ 4k will last for 10 minutes at 600Mbps and costs $840. And once you buy the card, that's all it will ever be. As technology advances and SSD drives get bigger and cost less, you can replace the drives in the Convergent Design recorders. With SxS cards, you buy whole new cards.

Can the XQD record at over 50Mbps?
Can the XQD record at 50Mbps?

What's the maximum data rate you could foresee ever using with the F55?

I see all these questions- internal vs external features, cost, capacity, data rate, lifetime, upgradeability- as matrix of decisions that must be resolved in order to choose a recording media.

[Jack Zhang]

XQD can easily use 50Mbps. The XQD adapters are confirmed to work on newer XDCAM cameras like the PMW-100, 160 and 200.

XQD's future uses include the upcoming XDCAM 4K cameras, so XQD in XDCAM has a tiny bit of future proofing because of this fact.

The only compelling reason I see to get a SxS Pro+ card is the F5 and F55's high speed recording modes (like 1080p at 240fps continuous, not cached)

Also, James, thanks for the help, I'm now on version 1.31 because I was on 1.30 before, so minimum version numbers don't really matter and I was able to load the firmware successfully.

[James Kreitner]

Jack, happy I could return even a small bit of help here where others have been so generous to me. I'm still waiting to hear back from my friend at Sony; yesterday he was really anxious to call me back in the afternoon and see how the firmware upgrade was going... I had previous obligations in the afternoon and didn't get around to it until the evening. Now I'm starting to think he might not have been planning to be at work today. Anyways, glad you got it sorted. Did you do the update by USB and a computer or did you do it by SxS card in the camera? I wish I had the second option for the EX3, it should be standard for all models. BTW, I was advised to update to v1.25 even though v1.20 did what I needed, because I was told that the versions readme only lists major additions and there are almost always performance tweaks that aren't necessarily listed.

<rant mode on> God help us if XQDs become the standard!!! I spent 30 minutes in a chat with a Sony 'tech support rep' (and I'm being wildly generous in that description... because I tried to download the Memory Card Rescue Program from Sony. The problem is, you have to enter your name, email, your card model number and it's serial number. The program guides you to how to identify the model number and serial number on the card if you don't know where it is. The first problem is that the guide for where to locate the serial number is wrong... the card has 3 lines of numbers, the first is the model, the guide identifies the second line as the serial- it is not, my cards have the same number on the second line; the third line is unique to each memory card. The second problem is that the serial number is not accepted. Nothing on the card is accepted; not the second line, not the third line, not a combination of the second line and the third line. The guide tells you to enter the serial number without spaces or hyphens; I did that, no dice. I entered it with the hyphen. No dice. After explaining this all to the Sony rep, she sent me a link to directly download the program. It was the link I was already on. Then she sent me a link to the page that tells you how to identify the serial number. I had already told her twice that I had been to that page. She was like a windup toy that kept bouncing off the wall and going back in the same direction, covering the same territory over and over again. She finally told me I should send the card in and Sony would recover the files from it for me. I explained I didn't have any bad files, I just need to have the program for in case I do in the future, so I don't have to wait 2 or 3 weeks while I send my card to Sony and wait for them to get around to extracting my files. When she ran out of things to read out of her script for the 3rd or 4th time, she gave me an 800 number and said they would help me. I called it, went through the whole routine 2 or 3 more times and finally was told to send the card in to Sony. I gave up in disgust. If my ability to do my work is going to be at the mercy of people like this, I may as well start a new career. I wasted an hour of my valuable time and got nowhere </rant mode off>.

In other news, 50Mbps is good, but I've compared detailed samples shot at multiple data rates in 1920x1080 and there is an slight but obvious improvement even going from 50Mbps to 90Mbps; so the question is still, what's the max data rate you can conceive of shooting at and do you intend to overcrank? I know their putting XQD into some new 4k Sony models, but will they be the cards that are currently out there, or will there be an XQD-1 or XQD-Pro for those cameras when they come out? Because there's a big difference between 168Mbps R/W of the 'S' series card and the 1.6Gbps Read/ 1.5Gbps Write of the SxS-Pro cards for the F5 and F55 4k cameras, roughly 9x; it's not for just the frame rate, it's for the combination of frame rate and data rate. If I can see a difference between 50 and 90Mbps @ 1920x1080, what's the equivalent data rate for 4k?

Well, for the time being 50Mbps will do almost anything I want with the EX3, and the XQD cards work in my Nikon D4, so I'll be able to make use of them one way or another.

[Doug Jensen]

Originally Posted by James Kreitner

Can the XQD keep up with the F55 at 50Mbps or is it limited to 35 or 25?

Please read my comments in post #18 again. Let me repeat, I have successfully recorded 4K and 50Mbps simultaneously to the same XQD card. I invite you to do the math on that data rate.

James, please don't take this the wrong way, but I've said all I can say on the subject of XQD cards and the relative disadvantages of external recording with an F55. Your last two posts are filled with inaccurate statements, wrong facts, and mistaken assumptions that I don't have time to address or even point out the problems. In addition, it really seems like you are banging your head against the wall and worrying about problems and situations that don't even exist yet . . . and probably never will. It's no wonder the Sony folks can't really help, you're probably the first person to call about a problem . . . and you don't even have a problem yet. What does that tell you about the reliability of the media?

BTW, I've NEVER had a failure with an SxS card, XQD card, or XDCAM optical disc. But I have experienced failures with SD cards, a CompactFlash card in a NanoFlash, and an SSD in a Atomos Samurai -- and I rarely even use those devices! On the other hand, I've used XDCAM daily since 2006 and never had an issue. Not one.

I recommend that you read the Film & Digital Times report on the F55 and then think about what you lose by going with an external recorder. Unless you want to hire me as a consultant, I've done all I can do for you. Good luck. :-)

[Jack Zhang]

The primary discussion of this thread is to find out if a previous generation to the 100, 160 and the 200 can support XQD. I kind of don't want the politics of external recording to be clouding the issue at hand.

All I want to know is: Can any of the previous gen cameras use the XQD adapter without issues? Once that is answered, I can safely say you can do this if you have the absolute latest firmware. (which for me and the EX1R is 1.31)

[James Kreitner]

Doug,
Thanks for your honest critique, I spent the whole day re-thinking the subject and realizing that I made many mistakes in my calculations, had planned to make corrections on my post when the notification arrived that you had posted to the thread. After correcting those errors I arrived at the conclusion that the S series card is somewhat faster than the SxS Pro cards and somewhat slower than the SxS Pro+ cards. I will edit my posts to correct the errors that I am aware of in the near future. Thank you for referring me to the link at Film & Digital Times, I will definitely read it at my earliest convenience, and genuinely appreciate your advice. Also, regarding post #18, I did miss that part about 4k and 50Mbps 'SIMULTANEOUSLY' on the same XQD card. That's impressive.

" In addition, it really seems like you are banging your head against the wall and worrying about problems and situations that don't even exist yet . . . and probably never will."
Do you have a spare tire in your vehicle? Did you wait until you got your first flat before you thought about getting one?

" It's no wonder the Sony folks can't really help, you're probably the first person to call about a problem. . . and you don't even have a problem yet. What does that tell you about the reliability of the media? "
This statement is completely without any basis, factual or otherwise. I called about a utility offered on the Sony website to recover data from memory cards, it was not made to recover only XQD cards. Neither you nor I know how many other people had the same problem with this or other cards. Doug, why is it that Sony has this utility on their website if it's so unnecessary, why did they even bother to waste their time developing it at all? The folks at Sony Broadcast have my utmost respect, I've always gotten fantastic response from them. But the folks at Sony who handle this memory are not at Sony broadcast, they're at consumer support, albeit in name only.

" BTW, I've NEVER had a failure with an SxS card, XQD card, or XDCAM optical disc. But I have experienced failures with SD cards, a CompactFlash card in a NanoFlash, and an SSD in a Atomos Samurai -- and I rarely even use those devices! On the other hand, I've used XDCAM daily since 2006 and never had an issue. Not one. "
Doug, I was a competition skydiver for 15 years. I made many thousand jumps, usually 20-30 a week during training. I always packed my own parachute. Of all those thousands of jumps, I never had a single malfunction, but I always had a reserve parachute just in case. I wish I could say that I never got a scratch the whole time I was skydiving, but that would be untrue, because one time and one time only, I did scratch my leg on the door of the airplane as I was exiting. Should I draw the conclusion from this that I'm a really good packer? That equipment never fails? That I'm a better skydiver than most other people? Or that I'm really just very, very lucky? Of the team I used to jump with, our cameraman had a double malfunction and was hurtling to earth at 100mph when that ball of crap that was supposed to be a parachute somehow got tangled in tree branches as he fell through them and slowed his fall enough that received only a few bruises, when he should have died. Another member of the team broke his back and is paralyzed from the waist down. And a third member, my best friend, had a double malfunction and had a compound fracture of the femur, and shattered his pelvis in numerous pieces when he spun in. One titanium rod, 4 or 5 plates, about 25 screws and 12 operations later he was more or less back to normal (after several years). That's just my team- I lost about 20 good friends over those 15 years to deceleration trauma. What has this got to do with anything? The point is Doug that your statement bases the reliability of a technology solely on your own experience, and when it comes to statistics, a sample of one is not an indication of anything and especially not reliability, statistically speaking. It's merely anecdotal.

I accept the good criticism you have given me and appreciate it. The rest, I'll forget about, and continue to respect you as I did before,

Regards,

jk

PS, sorry Jack, your post arrived while I was composing this... it won't be brought up again.

[Doug Jensen]

Hi James, no problem. I'm glad that some of my comments were helpful and you are certainly welcome to ignore the other comments if you feel they don't apply. But the bottom line, and to get this thread back on track, is that I have full confidence in the performance of XQD cards.

[Lukas Hribik]

Originally Posted by James Kreitner

Because there's a big difference between 168Mbps R/W of the 'S' series card and the 1.6Gbps Read/ 1.5Gbps Write of the SxS-Pro cards for the F5 and F55 4k cameras, roughly 9x;

Hi James,

there is a big difference between small "b" (bit) and capital "B" (byte). One byte has 8 bits. XQD speed is 168MB/s that is identical to 1.344 Gbps.

XQD cards are just a little slower than SxS-Pro cards.

[James Kreitner]

Yes, Lukas, that is true... that is what I was referring to in post #26:

"Thanks for your honest critique, I spent the whole day re-thinking the subject and realizing that I made many mistakes in my calculations, had planned to make corrections on my post when the notification arrived that you had posted to the thread. After correcting those errors I arrived at the conclusion that the S series card is somewhat faster than the SxS Pro cards and somewhat slower than the SxS Pro+ cards. I will edit my posts to correct the errors that I am aware of in the near future."

[Jack Zhang]

BTW, regarding the statement of XQD-1 and XQD-Pro, that's already happening.

The N series cards are now the only ones available for sale for the 64GB capacity. (Not counting the Lexars, which I've heard is NOT compatible with the QDA-EX1.) Those are slower at 125MB/s. Where did the S series 64GBs go? That card would have been the ultimate future proof card for XDCAM EX, HD422 and all XAVC variants. (minus F55 overcrank)

B&H lists Discontinued, so that does not bode well. When you're introducing 4K cameras that need that speed for 4K60p, why move backwards?