Buy EX3 now or wait till NAB?

Buy a ex1 or ex3 by march 31st and you get $500 back if that helps. Search the threads in this ex forum for details.
 
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mico said:
Buy a ex1 or ex3 by march 31st and you get $500 back if that helps. Search the threads in this ex forum for details.
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$500???

All I've seen is a second SxS card and $100 to a referrer.

Where do I get the $500 rebate?

EDIT: OK, found it. It was on page 4 of this forum. Looks like I can indeed get an extra $500 off.
 
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in relation to the origonal question, it all depends on when you need the camera by.

Anything announced at NAB will most likely be just that, and announcement. Typically the NAB announcements of the EX cameras have been followed up with a Q4 product avaliability so even if you prefer what you see from NAB, if you need a camera before the end of the year your choice is still what we have avaliable now.

If however you do not NEED a camera (even rental may be ok), then most definetly wait about one or so weeks to find out if anything new is on the cards.
 
I was not sure what to do either. But the more I talked to people the more I realized how much better can they make the camera and keep the price point.

Besides, it hard not to buy with all the rebates going on. I got a $500 rebate for registering for Sony's HD Creation and Workflow Online Expo, another $500 rebate for the purchae of a 32Gb SxS card (cheaper than buying two 16Gb cards), a $50 check from the Sony referral program (a client referred me and he gets $100), and a free 8Gb SxS card.

Now is a good time to buy :)
 
Why would you bother with the $500 rebate on the 32GB though? It still costs you over US$1000 for that card, you can get a few MxM's and a HUGE pile of 16GB Ultra IIs for that money.
 
Because the last thing I want to tell a client that's paying well over a $1000 a day is that something happened to the media. Some things are worth spending the money on for piece of mind. I am sure MxM or KxS works fine, but I don't want to take the chance. I will get the money back on the rental of the gear.

I also have spoken with a couple of Sony dealers in the area and they have heard of nothing special coming at NAB. In fact, they are wondering how big it will be this year. Red and Apple are not there, however Avid will be.
 
Each to their own but its not like there havn't been some pretty nasty reports of corrupted SxS cards recently, more than with SD in fact...

There is something to be said in decent paying work that shooting to SD is more secure than SxS as you can use it as write once media and unlike SxS, not have to offload and format at any stage.
 
I'm not sure if Sony will have anything at the EX1/3 level. The cameras are newer than their competition, their main weakness being XDCAM EX. Has anyone heard of an XDCAM EX replacement? JVC just introduced two cameras with it.

The rest of the Sony's HD product line is ripe for change. Will it be AVCHD like the HMC150 or a different H.264 implementation (e.g. AVC Intra or the 5DM2 AVC).

Otherwise, the HVX200a, HPX170, HMC150, XL-H1s, XL-A1/G1 are probably all do for replacement. Expecting AVC Intra and HPX300 sensors from Panasonic and some form of H.264 recording and who knows what with the sensors from Canon. I would't be surprised to see the XL-H1 to sport a 8Mp APS-C single CMOS sensor with interchangeable lenses and very fast (say 100Mb/s) 10-bit 4:2:2 long GOP recording to CF memory.
 
MPEG-2 is simply a much less efficient compressions algorithm than H.264. XDCAM is already long GOP 4:2:0. H.264 bring many advantages and no disadvantages. The 5DM2 is effectively recording at less than half the compression of XDCAM EX and it shows. AVC Intra is 10-bit, 4:2:2 but only shows a compression advantage in 1080p and 720p60 modes. At 720p24 the XDCAM EX probably matches it.

The CD Flash XDR talked about in places around the forum is MPEG-2, but 4:2:2 and still less than half the compression.
 
Sorry but your just buying Panasonics sales pitch. First they tell you the DVCPRO HD is much better than MPG2 because it is intraframe and less compressed, now they are using AVC (in various incarnations) they are telling you it is better to use more compressed interframe compression. Don't buy into it, its just their marketing.

I have seen some serious limitations in AVCHD, including the 5DMKII and there is no way that AVCHD achieves the claimed same quality in half bit rate. The 5DMKII is an I frame variant of AVCHD anyway so its compression is actually very high and it shows in what I have seen). AVCHD is much more demanding to edit, so much that the only practical solution is to transcode into another codec to edit. AVC-Intra is nice but is I frame high bit rate so what would you expect? 10bit is nice too but for most people the difference between 8 and 10bit is invisible and your editing options are limited. Even the difference between 4:2:2 and 4:2:0 in quality HD is extrememly difficult to see (don't forget every BluRay you ever watch is 4:2:0). It has become quite common to see comments from people mixing EX and F900 (or similar) footage who say it is very difficult to see the difference and they cut well together.
 
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Guy speaks the truth.

The more I see these newer cameras, the more I think they look more similar than different - which is they all look very good!

The techno babble seems rather insignificant to me unless you have strict broadcast requirements.

I recently aquired an EX-1 and I am very impressed. Best $6,000 one can spend for a video camera imho.
 
Sales pitch? First, i claimed the opposite, long GOP is better than I-frame. I-frame is an editing short cut. Temporal compression improves compression efficiency.

Second, variable block size produces huge improvements in compression. There are numerous comparisons showing 17-21Mb/s AVCHD is a match for 35Mb/s XDCAM EX.

The difference between 4:2:2 and 4:2:0 and 8-bit and 10-bit compression would be hard to see at 35Mb/s. Less so at 100Mb/s. Let's look at an apples to apples comparision: DVCPro50. In the SDX900 there was a difference. 10-bit means more when your compression can capture it. And it means more in editing.

That the editing tools are just catching up is similar to the issues in HD editing 4 years ago. Does that mean you don't do it?

P.S.
The 5DM2 has many limiting issues (asymmetric photo site resolution, vertical scanning way below the optical low pass filter frequency, lack of adequate controls and features for video, limited frame rate etc.). The only compression issue would be 4:2:0 and 8-bit. The images speak for themselves.
 
I think that if your going to be projecting the image the 10 bit 4:2:2 image is the way to go with a noticeable difference.

for the OP- If you don't need a camera this second, I would put my hands under my butt and wait for scarlet,

assuming you are using this more for film making and not eng/efp stuff.
 
tonykart125 said:
I think that if your going to be projecting the image the 10 bit 4:2:2 image is the way to go with a noticeable difference.

for the OP- If you don't need a camera this second, I would put my hands under my butt and wait for scarlet,

assuming you are using this more for film making and not eng/efp stuff.
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288Mb/s RAW footage?
 
DavidNJ said:
Sales pitch? First, i claimed the opposite, long GOP is better than I-frame. I-frame is an editing short cut. Temporal compression improves compression efficiency.

Second, variable block size produces huge improvements in compression. There are numerous comparisons showing 17-21Mb/s AVCHD is a match for 35Mb/s XDCAM EX.

The difference between 4:2:2 and 4:2:0 and 8-bit and 10-bit compression would be hard to see at 35Mb/s. Less so at 100Mb/s. Let's look at an apples to apples comparision: DVCPro50. In the SDX900 there was a difference. 10-bit means more when your compression can capture it. And it means more in editing.

That the editing tools are just catching up is similar to the issues in HD editing 4 years ago. Does that mean you don't do it?
.
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With all due respect David you said "MPEG-2 is simply a much less efficient compressions algorithm than H.264." And that H.264 has no disadvantages. That's incorrect.

MPEG-2 is easier to edit. Older machines can edit it and older NLEs support it. H.264 is more processor intensive and therefore rendering takes longer. At least this was the issue a year ago. Perhaps NLEs have become better recently?

H.264 is more efficient in data rate compression...absolutely. And I'd choose it over MPEG-2 for my final format when delivering footage on the Internet or onto Bluray. As an editing format I would choose MPEG-2 over H.264 everytime as it is a matured format.

The Panasonic SDX-900 vs. an EX1/EX3 is not apples to apples. It's unfair to compare a compact sub-$10K camera vs. a $30,000 monster. A more apples to apples comparison would be the SDX900 (or HPX3000, for that matter) vs. the Sony PDW-700. The 700 has in-camera SD shooting and 4:2:2 color sampling. It's also a full ENG-sized 2/3" CCD camera.

Let's then take a look at the footage between those two cameras with the same lenses and see which one (10 bit vs. 8-bit) fairs better/if something like a da Vinci color corrector sees much of a difference. It'd be an interesting experiment but one I don't have access to! I don't doubt there would be a difference because my RAW files from my Nikon D300 can be better manipulated than JPEGs. However RAW files vs. compressed formats (I guess it'd be better to say an AVC-Intra at 100 MBps = TIFF and XDCam EX = JPEG Fine quality) is a different matter in terms of color correction.
 
I was comparing a camera that did 8-bit 4:1:1 (DVCPro) and 10-bit 4:2:2 in the same camera. You could do the same by taking a still picture and compressing it with both protocols then examining the result Since it is an I-frame protocol, motion is irrelevant.

The AVC Intra 100 vs XDCAM EX 35 is clouded by one being I-frame (an editing not a compression advantage) and the other being long GOP. I would imagine they would be close at 720p24.
 
Yes...I agree, more is good. And RAW would solve sooo many shooting problems. However, 35MB/sec, 8x XDCAM EX, can challenge many computers and probably requires more time and equipment than most budgets can handle.
 
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