I’ve seen it with my own eyes! The PWX-EX1, XDCam from Sony. In a post from last week, I wrote without a lot of hope about the MPEG-2 compression on the camera along with a number of other things. After seeing the camera and a demo with the camera, I’m still not completely sold, but am a lot more interested in seeing it really put to use. A Sony rep. who was at the demo was boasting the EX’s stunning low light capabilities, and I must say, based on what was shown, I am seriously impressed. Here are some other things that might make you think about opening your wallets for the sub-$7,000 camera:

1. Tapeless media sold by Sony and San-Disk. They are calling the media, SxS (spoken, “S by S”). Since it is being made by both companies you can probably count on cheap media. Cheaper than P2 cards that is.
2. The SxS card will slide of so nicely into your slot on the MacBookPro. Take your download speed up to 10x real time. If you have 100 minutes for footage, you can be editing on it in 10 minutes in FCP. You can buy a USB 2 reader which will download in about 3x real time.  The camea is equipped with a SP and a HQ record setting. SP records 1440×1080 @ 60i (the equivalent of HDV) at 25mbs (thats mega-bits). The HQ setting records all formats at 1920×1080 and writes 35mbs. Quite a quality jump.
3. Fujinon Lens. Yes, you read correctly, a serious lens on this camera. A user of the Ex1 at the demo was raving about how much sweeter it is than the HVX200’s lens. And from the looks of it, it does appear that way. Since it is a Fujinon lens, it has a iris ring built into it which will stop turning when its all open or all closed. (AMAZING). As well as a focus ring which will slide forward and back to which between auto and manual focus. This could be turn in to a real nightmare for this camera, I’ll be listening to see what people think.
4. Uncompressed audio recording is a great addition to this package. Unlike some other solid state cameras, this thing gives you 2 uncompressed tracks. I know in my previous post I was doggin on the EX’s audio abilities, and I’m still not loving only two tracks, but I’d rather have two uncompressed than four compressed.
5. Lastly, 1/2″ CMOS chips. Three of them for that matter. And they all record full 1920×1080. Each chip is 2.2 mega pixels and records a full progressive frame.

There are other things to note about this camera, but for now, go and play with it. I could see this camera being a reality in my shop sooner or (more likely) later. Its too bad though that Sony couldn’t match or beat Panasonic’s price point. We’ll see how things unfold in the coming months.

Happy techo-lusting.

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Sean R. Smith
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There is a lot of talk around the interwebs about HDV and Final Cut Pro. Most notably from my readings, the Creative Cow (or The Cow) has thousands of posts relating to this topic. While I’d like to say I have a crack research team that has read all posts on The Cow and has provided me with a summary of them, that’s simply not the case. What I do have though is experience working with HDV natively and mixed with HD footage. HD certainly was around before HDV, but consumers couldn’t afford it. So what happened? The manufactures got SD DV man and HD woman super drunk, got them a hotel room, and nine months later, out popped baby, “HDV.” The story goes on, but basically after HD remarried P2 dude, HDV became “The Half Child.”

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