How to Beat XDCAM EX

[ianbailey]

Okay, Sony are market leaders when it comes to digital camcorders, so this is gonna be really difficult... but we'll give it a try:

- Make it a similar price

- Give it a better colour resolution than 4.2.0

- Put teeth for a focus follow device on the focus ring

Feel free to jump in with this one.

[Vincent Rice]

Well you have correctly identified the one Sony winner to come out of NAB (except perhaps for the new monitors - 'spensive). This is a great looking camera and that's the sort of functionality I'm hoping for in the 'RED Pocket Professional'.

[mjeppsen]

Well you have correctly identified the one Sony winner to come out of NAB...

What "winner"? Oh, you must mean that painted block of wood they had on the turntable... ;-) I keed, I keed. It does sound like great specs, yes. But that's all it is right now, and they are rather vague ones at that. More like a performance envelope for Sony engineers to aim for...

Funny, they actually won a TV Technology award (http://www.tvtechnology.com/pages/s.0096/t.5315.html) for it. Sony doesn't even know what kind of sensor it's going to have yet, and they win an award. Wow. That's bogus... *shakes head*

[GlennChan]

Well Red did get a lot of attention (and I think some awards) even though they didn't have much to show at NAB last year. Anyways, buzz about not-yet-existing product is exactly that. Hopefully Sony follows through on their word without a lot of delays.

XDCAM IMO does have a nice workflow for particular uses.
Offline/online process is very nice. No tape shuttling makes re-capture so much faster.
XDCAM proxy makes reviewing footage easy (i.e. good fast forward and rewind)... integration with Vegas makes it look really nice for very fast turnaround work.

Red will of course likely put out better images (the Peter Jackson footage was really good). But depending on what you need, XDCAM might be right for you... i.e. for stuff where your footage doesn't have to look really amazing (i.e. news), and you need a fast workflow.

[mjeppsen]

I'm not knocking XDCAM, no way. I really think this EX model could be SWEET. I just wish there was more than a mockup and paper specs right now...

[GlennChan]

Ah, no problem.

By the way, great work with FresHDV... it's interesting to see what all the companies are saying about their product (i.e. Dalsa; also see the thread http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=1676 ).

[mjeppsen]

Thanks man. It was good to meet you (and Wendy and some guy named "Graeme") ;-)

Did you catch this little dig in the Dalsa Podcast (http://www.freshdv.com/2007/04/nab-video-dalsa-evolution.html)? "It's an EVOLUTION not a REVOLUTION..."
We got a kick out of that.

[GlennChan]

Lots of companies have little digs against Red. It makes life interesting I guess.

Like 12 stops of dynamic range that's not like 9 stops below and 3 stops above.

(Ok ok, I'll stop with my Dalsa dig. :D )