Same thing as P2, only a different form factor.Bucknfl said:
Not likely. Thomson's trying to use it for Infinity but they haven't even been able to release it yet.
As "beyond" P2? Not gonna happen, in fact it'll go the other way; Sony's the only manufacturer making blu-ray camcorders and they're already moving towards solid state.
Guaranteed.
Same thing in regard to them both being solid state, but very different in some important respects - especially price! And not only cost/GB, but not needing the complicated (and hence a fixed premium/card, irrespective of size) controlling electronics. That's significant because Express Card can theoretically be marketed like CF or SD in a wide range of sizes, with price roughly proportional to size.
Yes, agreed to a point, but a strength of the Sony and Grass Valley strategies is that their media can be solid state OR 'consumable' - choose as appropiate. My understanding is that Sony don't see SxS replacing XDCAM disc so much as living side by side with it for the foreseeable future, quite possibly with a hybrid disc/solid state camera.
Are you aware of some announcement of SxS pricing? I certainly haven't heard of any such thing. But based on what they've said, and that they're targeting an 800mbps data transfer rate, I wouldn't be surprised at all to find out that SxS has similar RAID controlling hardware inside it, and will likely be priced comparably.
Yes, but ExpressCard does not = SxS any more than PCMCIA = P2. Yes there will be cheap ExpressCard SSDs, but I haven't heard anything from Sony to imply that they'll work with those. There are also cheap PCMCIA cards, but the P2 system doesn't work with those!
AFAIK no formal announcement has been made, but I've been told that it is expected to be significantly less than P2 on a GB basis. But personally, that is less significant than the expectation that SxS will exist in a range of sizes at proportional price points, whilst P2 cards are expected to get bigger with the price per card remaining level.
True enough, but it is possible that other ExpressCard memory (without the 800Mbs speed of SxS) will work in this system - though not be able to download with the same maximum speed. That's still to be seen of course, so would you prefer the sentence to read "That's significant because SxS can theoretically be marketed like CF or SD in a wide range of sizes, with price roughly proportional to size."?
Told by who though? See, here's the problem I have with this concept: Sony has never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever offered media that's less expensive than ANYONE else. Ever. Why should we expect them to break with tradition this time?
It's "perceived wisdom" from pretty well everybody I've spoken to on the subject, (including one rep from Panasonic) but it's also worth looking at http://www.tapelessrev.com/xdcamnab2007.html if you want something in writing. Not an official Sony site, but they do seem to be well across what Sony are doing and were possibly the first to break the Sony NAB news. They say: "The EX will record to the new PCMCIA Express Card format, the successor to the PCMCIA Cardbus style interface that Panasonics P2 uses. This will allow faster file transfer than P2 at a much lower cost of ownership."
Absolutely, I couldn't agree more. But it's why I say waiting seems good policy at the moment if you can, and not going for EITHER P2 OR XDCAM disc at the moment.
Maybe, and maybe SxS could also have fallen further by then! (And the "coming out" is getting close anyway.) But many people are less interested in the per gigabyte cost than the minimum cost per individual card - 8 or 16GB cards getting ever cheaper, rather than being replaced by 32 or 64GB etc in future at the same price.
True enough, and I wouldn't like to have been one to have to make a choice between XDCAM disc or P2 solid state - they have complementary advantages and disadvantages. But XDCAM as a family now means BOTH, and a hybrid camera would be the real icing on the cake from a freelance point of view IMO. No longer a choice between the two formats or media when you're buying gear, just use the most appropiate media on a shoot by shoot or client by client basis.
I think what has been said is that the cost/GB would follow Moores Law. I don't dispute that. But the point at issue is whether a 16GB card (say) will remain available for a number of years with it's cost halving year on year.
Errr.. well yes, but presumably at much higher cost than an 8GB one.........
I didn't think the actual 640Mbs P2 speed was at all theoretical - it's an advertised spec. True, few people can even begin to take advantage of it at the moment (100-200Mbs is nearer the mark for most users), which is exactly why a cheaper than SxS ExpressCard memory may be highly attractive in the future - if it works. This is what a lot of people are very eager to discover........
Expensive..... compared to P2........!? Regarding why anyone should wish to go there, then two answers are instant archivability and the ability to hand rushes immediately to a client after shooting. No laptops, no P2 store, no downloading time. But OK, in other circumstances solid state may be a better way to go. I'm certainly not saying "disc is best", period, - rather I'd like to be able to make the "horses for courses" choice shoot by shoot.
Well, all of television technology is a compromise, has been since the days of John Logie Baird, and both the NTSC and PAL colour systems were certainly "compromises". So likewise is DVCProHD with it's restricted horizontal resolution (960 for 720p, cf 1280 for square pixels), and high bitrates relative to HD XDCAM. ALL Tv production systems are inevitably compromises between cost/quality/practicality, and DVCProHD is no exception. I'm not holding the HD XDCAM codecs out as "bee's knees", - the compromises are just in different places.
Which may be why over the last 10-15 years I haven't seen that many Panasonic cameras.............. Just what were the comparative sales of M2 versus Betacam, Jan?
It may depend where you live, but here BetaSP tended to be succeeded more by DigiBeta (high end) and DVCAM (news, corporate etc) with a certain amount of SX and some DVCPro.
