XDCAM EX in SD
 

Does anyone have any ideas about this camera's SD capabilities. While I love the camera for its HD abilities at the price I still shoot mainly SD (and will do for some time) so I would like an option of higher quality SD such as a 4:2:2 option (like the HVX's DVCPro50 capability) along with a standard DV mode (for backwards compatibility).

I am aware I can shoot HD and down convert in post, but if I am shooting a job that will only ever be SD who wants to do all that rendering if it can be just shot in a high end SD codec to start with. HD also bogs the NLE down with RT effects etc while editing etc.

I would think some type of 4:2:2 MPG2 SD at 15-20Mbps would provide great quality SD and very good record times onto the cards.

Did anyone find out anything at NAB about this?

I think that with all the XD Cams you can shoot in 480 or you can shoot in HD and either the camera or deck will downconvert to 480 on the fly. So you capture into your NLE as standard def DV .avi

Perhaps but with ExpressCard media there will be no 'capture' phase, just a copy of files from card to disk.

I think the EX will downconvert and output DV .avi thru the firewire. EX reads and downconverts off of the card instead of the blu ray disk like the other XD Cams. You shouldn't need to download the card mpg2 files at all.

You are talking to someone here with no XDCAM experience so please bear with me. Wouldn't the process of downconverting and capturing in SD via 1394 mean you would have to go back to only a real time capture process not copying the files faster than real time?

If I stick the Express Card into my laptop to read them there is no camera involved.

That is correct as far as the full size cameras are concerned. They can also shoot in native DVCAM which is 25mb 4:1:1. I wouldn't sweat it too much because it doesn't really take that much time to downconvert HD to SD in post. Just do it BEFORE you do any other editing such as CC or FX.

There may ultimately be other options with the new XDCAM EX camera, but we don't know as of yet.

-gb-

Thats the problem though, it does take some time to render, time I want to avoid and don't see any reason to just accept more wasted time in my life, and it consumes twice the HDD space.

I guess this thing will have a DV mode (probably called DVCAM by Sony but DVCAM onto anything but tape is just DV) but if this is all it has then the Panasonic does have one trump card being able to shoot directly to a 4:2:2 SD codec.

I see this camera to me as an opportunity for moving into a non tape SD 16:9 unit about the same as a HD unit.

Good point Guy, I feel the same.

Only I doubt if NLE developers will waste time supporting new SD codecs with so much happening in the HD world.

A 4:2:2 20Mbps SD MPEG2 (or even 4) codec would look great. The 19Mbps 576p50 (or 480p60) looks great on the HD100. Shame that so few NLEs support it natively.

Mike

I guess it depends on your hardware, software and methodology. I shot a project in HDV on my Z1 recently and decided to downconvert in post as opposed to using the camera to downconvert during capture like I usually do. I was surprised when it took around 4 hours to convert an hour of HDV on my dual G5/2.5ghz.

I'm not going to try that again anytime soon :-)

Here's what Sony has to say on their web site regarding standard definition on current XDCAM HD cameras:

"Q: Can XDCAM HD decks or camcorders also record standard definition?

A: Yes. The PDW-F350 and PDW-F330 camcorders and the PDW-F70 recorder
will all record DVCAM 25 Mbps standard definition in NTSC (480/59.94i) or
PAL (576/50i)."

http://bssc.sel.sony.com/Broadcastan...XDCAM_FAQs.pdf

So it doesn't sound like there's an SD 4:2:2 recording option, and if that's important to you Panasonic has an advantage there. But with the world moving to HD production and computers continually getting more powerful, this becomes a less and less relevant issue. Plus I would think you could capture from XDCAM HD via HD-SDI to an SD 4:2:2 editing solution, using something like a Kona or Blackmagic capture card.

As far as downconversions go, Sony says all their XDCAM HD camcorders and decks can downconvert to standard definition. Some editing programs (e.g. Edius) can downconvert to SD in real time, or work with multiple layers of HD without rendering on sufficiently powerful computers. Given all this, if you have a good HD camera you might as well shoot most projects in HD and sort out what to do with the footage in post.

P.S. There isn't a practical way to deliver 4:2:2 SD or DVCProHD to consumers, but it may be possible to deliver XDCAM HD at full quality on Blu-ray discs. That's a significant delivery advantage for the XDCAM format as we head into the HD era.

Sometimes I shoot HD and let the camera down convert to SD uncompressed which I send via component into one of my SD uncompressed systems. This may not be as good as a native 4:2:2 but it sure beats DV and only takes as long as the footage to capture it this way. I then have a pretty nice high quality psuedo 4:2:2 SD format to work with. Depending on your system you could use other 4:2:2 formats as well such as DVCPRO50 or photojpeg.

Even with HDV cameras I have been able to get very good results by using this method. Why spend the time letting your computer decode and down convert when the camera can do it in realtime? Perhaps you could push a little bit better quality by down converting in software but the tradeoff is 4 hours vs. 1 hour for 60 minutes worth of footage. Plus even with XDCAM it still takes you some time to transfer that footage to a hard drive so you are looking at 4+ hours.

With HDV and very fast movement even with down converting I noticed some artifacts but with 35mbit XDCAMHD you should hardly ever see any artifacts when the footage is down converted.

Yup, that's essentially what I said in post #6. I was pointing out what the current full size cameras (and decks) can do since I own one of them. We just don't have the final details on the XDCAM EX as of yet.

-gb-

Does this look like a good firewire solution to get the SD cards to quickly transfer to my computer

http://store.lexar.com/?category=22&...ctid=RW024-001

that seems to be a Compact Flash (CF) card reader ... if you are shooting to compact flash and do not have an ExpressCard interface option then it would be a good solution

I'm with Guy on this one - any reason Sony decided to dump the IMX35/50 format from the previous range of XDCAM? Would have neatly addressed his concerns. IMX never really took off in Australia so I don't know much about the history.

One thing I heard about the IMX codec was the incredibly high licencing cost Sony had to pay to use it (many thousands of dollars per camera). I can only go on the word from the fella in the Pro Video shop on this one, he could have been full of it but it would explain why it wasn't more widely used by Sony.

It's my understanding that the XDCAM EX camera will shoot HD only. No SD mode.

-gb-

I would like to ask a similar question to the orginal post.

How is the quality of the SD?

I am looking at justifying a purchase of these cameras and realizing that I will need to deliver on DVD for some time to come.

Right now, I shoot on 1/2" chip SD cameras and I'm thinking - that's a lot of money to purchase another 1/2" chip camera if the footage is still 4:1:1.

So is the SD quality very much better that a "DV only" camera?

Thanks

The camera isn't released yet, so we'll have to wait and see.

Sorry, I was speaking of the 330 or 350 models.

The F330 and F350 both look very good either shooting SD or HD downconverted to SD. In theory your best option is too shoot HD, edit HD and downconvert to MPEG2 from the edit timeline. If you shoot NTSC SD DVCAM the chroma is sampled at 4:1:1 while MPEG for DVD is 4:2:0 so there is some loss in chroma detail, although it is barely noticeable. If you shoot PAL DVCAM then this problem does not arise as PAL DVCAM is 4:2:0.

What is your impression of the DV quality compared to a SD DV camera?

My concern is that the image quality of the SD will not be that much if any of an "upgrade" from my 1/2" chip SD cameras.

The HD will look great, but until Blu-Ray is a household name, DVD will remain my delivery vehicle.

Tim, since you're not that far away from me, I might be able to demonstrate the camera's capabilities first hand if you'd like to meet up sometime and do a side by side comparison of 1/2 SD vs. 1/2 HD shooting in SD. I suspect the dedicated SD camera will be a bit more sensitive to light because of the lower native pixel counts.

-gb-

Thanks a lot Greg!

You would really help me with an A-B comparison and a chance to see this cameras output..

I will P.M. you my info.

I'm sure Greg's offer is your best bet. Compared to a Sony DSR300 the F350 is quite a bit better. The F350 is the best 1/2 inch camcorder I have yet to come across. You should be aware as has been said that HD cameras are less sensitive than SD camcorders, normally by around one f stop.

It's not just the picture quality, it's the work flow, feature set and all the other nice little functions that for me take it to the next level.

Thanks for your opinion.

This is what I need to hear to entertain buying this camera.

The 300 series was the highest regarded 1/2" chip SD camera, so this is good news.