nanoflash with ex1r

[jimstamos]

from what ive read, connecting the nanoflash to the ex1r will give you the option of recording to compact flash at 50/100/200 mbs.
i was telling a friend this and she is convinced that the inner workings of the camera only allow 35mbs out of it and that is that.she also asks why would sony make a cam that records at 35mbs and allow the option to connect a nanoflash , thats its not in their best interest to do this. i need a detailed xplanation of how you get the true recording at the higher bitrates and that there isnt some sort of limit.
thanks

 

[Fohdeesha]

Uh well, she's completely wrong on this one.

The ex1, or ex1r, or any camera for that matter, capture and process video uncompressed. It's when the camera goes to record this data onto a medium, it compresses the uncompressed data to a compressed format, such as 35mbps XDCAM ex in the case of this camera.

The ex1 and ex1r, luckily, have an HD-SDI output that completely bypasses the cameras recording stage, and outputs the completely uncompressed, 10bit 4:2:2 signal that the camera is seeing and processing. You can take this uncompressed signal and send it to a recording device, such as a computer with an hd sdi card, a nanoflash, an aja ki pro, etc, and record and compress it in a variety of formats. This also applies to the component output and the hdmi output of the ex1r. This all applies to any camera with a component, sdi, or hdmi output, all of these are obviously going to bypass whatever compression the camera is doing to store the video. there isn't any kind of "limit" to how high of a bitrate recording you can do, it depends on what device you're recording to. However, the nanoflashes 160 and 200mbps bitrates are more or less visually lossles, et al they look just about exactly the same as the raw uncompressed video.

and why is it not in their best interest? who in the world would spend 6 grand on a prosumer camera that doesn't even have an uncompressed output?

sorry if this is jumbled, its late and im tired!

 

[Duke M.]

Fohdeesha is right. The HD-SDI signal has been tested many times and delivers 4.2.2 uncompressed 10 bit signals when captured live.

The only way that your friend is right is if you have recorded to the card and are playing back through the HD-SDI port. If you do it that way you have already thrown away the data. The camera will do its best to approximate it, but you've already lost the data.

More than one camera can do this. I will say that there is some debate over whether the EX1 is prosumer or the lowest level of a Pro line of cameras.

Since the EX1 has a bigger, higher resolution sensor than any other 'prosumer' camera I put it in the Pro category. Coupled with the Nanoflash it can actually keep up with its more expensive brethren in most regards. As much as I love the XH-A1 and HMC150, they can't. (The Canon A1 was introduced as a pro camera.)