Hey Sony...When will we have Blue-Ray camcorders?

zstevek wrote on 8/25/2007, 5:55 AM
If Sony wants to speed up Blue-ray adoption, I would think releasing HD camcorders with Blue-Ray burners would speed up that process.

Just think, One mini-Blue-Ray disc could hold a couple of hours of video, all consumers would have to do is put the BD in their player and they can view the Hi-Def video.

I know if I was on the fence about what to buy, Blue-Ray or HD-DVD, this would make my decision very simple.

Does Toshiba even make camcorders? The simple fact that Sony is a huge player in the camcorder industry gives them some serious leverage here.

Comments

Per1 wrote on 8/25/2007, 7:33 AM
Check out Hitachi.
Sony: XDCAM F300-series - another price range...
XDCAM EX have solid state memory.
Perhaps Sony will do a BR-camcorder in the range 3k-9k - we'll see. It will compete with the EX so I don't see any reason for them to do so.
Canon will prob. very soon take up Sony on the lead they currently have in this area. I'd guess the "A2" will be solid state or BR. The problem is to maintain quality and not compress to much, I guess.
bigrock wrote on 8/25/2007, 10:13 AM
The beginning of the end of BuzzardRay came this week. It won't be long now....

Did you read the comments of Paramount's tech people after the inital buzz died down, pretty damming for BumbledRay. It will soon be yet another format on the Sony pile of abondoned proprietary crap.

Why would I pay the same amount for 1 BozoRay disc as 10 DV tapes, I'm not that stupid. The video coming out of those burner cameras is too overcompressed for professional work anyways.
Quryous wrote on 8/25/2007, 12:15 PM
Hmm. Are we to take it that you are not a Sony or Blu-Ray fan?
Spot|DSE wrote on 8/25/2007, 12:19 PM
Right.
XDCAM SD/HD are the predominant format in the broadcast industry, both as already installed units and units being delivered.
I suppose it's easy to confuse consumer BD with XDCAM BD, but the only similarity is the media and method it writes.
Per1 wrote on 8/25/2007, 12:37 PM
The questions is 2-part I guess

1. Will XDCAM *technology* be available in the 3k-9k range
2. Will XDCAM *media* be available in the 3k-9k range.

1. Not likely until there is some 10x better quality for the real pros.

2. Very likely - I'm sure both Sony, Pana, Canon et al. want to see the end of tape very soon - and so would we - well, I at least.

What else can they offer and tempt semi-pros to "upgrade" next time? They could "give away" the technology found in their 50k cameras (yeah right, for 3-9k...) or replace the tape with a BR *without* loss of image quality - and all semi-pros will cheer and buy the next generation on the spot - and Sony et al will be happy - so will TDK and some other BR manufacts.

What are the specs in the XDCAM EX? Is that not as good as the tape XH A1, FX1 etc.?
Coursedesign wrote on 8/25/2007, 1:29 PM
Why would I pay the same amount for 1 BozoRay disc as 10 DV tapes, I'm not that stupid. The video coming out of those burner cameras is too overcompressed for professional work anyways.

Spot showed rather convincingly a week or two ago how DVCPRO-HD had effectively higher compression than XDCAM-HD.

So are you perhaps referring to something else?
farss wrote on 8/25/2007, 2:38 PM
The question is not as silly as it sounds.
Long, long ago there was a simple to use format, VHS-C. It was a dog in some respects compared to what we have today but it had one compelling feature that we still haven't gotten back.
You could put a cheap bit of media in the camera, shoot something and take that piece of media back to your equally cheap player at home and watch what you'd shot. The process was as idiot proof as it can be. If anyone knows of a replacement for that ancient technolgy I'm all ears. And don't suggest those DVD camcorders, I did say idiot proof OK! We bought two of them and it was a disaster, that finalise bit caught out almost everyone and the media was a tad on the expensive side.

Bob.
blink3times wrote on 8/25/2007, 2:53 PM
"If Sony wants to speed up Blue-ray adoption, I would think releasing HD camcorders with Blue-Ray burners would speed up that process."
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I could be very wrong but I seriously doubt these things are going to be taken seriously at all.... IF they come out, they will be looked at as more of a novelty as opposed to anything else. It's not exactly like DVD cams have been that successful

Sony IMO has a good thing going with HDD cams and AVCHD and they should keep on that track. There are some problems with AVCHD but it's nothing a bit of time and maturing won't take care of.

As far as blu ray adoption is concerned... I really don't think blu ray cams will do too much in the way of settling the format war. Sony has BD burners out for quite some time and HD DVD not and this has had very little effect on the format war. And even IF blu ray cams come out my guess is that the cost of them will be so outrageous that they may as well have not come out in the first place.

At this stage anyway.... nobody is even too sure blu ray will be adopted at all in the first place... could well be that we're all going to adopt HD DVD! :)
Spot|DSE wrote on 8/25/2007, 3:50 PM
I think folks need to do a little research...all of this information is readily available.
Blu-ray (BD) is a means of recording media. The media used for motion picture releases isn't the same media, nor content that is used for XDCAM HD/SD. The format of the XDCAM cameras is MXF (Material Exchange Format).
MXF is a wrapper that can contain many different features/parameters. None of this is found in a Blu-ray disc containing a feature film. You cannot take a BD from an XDCAM and slide it into your Blu-ray player nor can you take a blank BD disc and put it in an XDCAM.
XDCAM EX is an XDCAM that doesn't use a BD disc, but rather uses solid state media that costs far less than the 3-9k range you're asking about. It's a .5 chipc camera that uses the same technology as the larger XDCAM HD cameras, but with more limited features to reduce the cost.
To answer the other part of the question, the XDCAM EX camcorder is significantly higher in quality than an FX1 or similar.
BD cameras are soon to be available from both Sony and Hitachi, others to follow soon, but at least two before this holiday season. They are consumer camcorders.
On the professional side, we already have BD cameras. They're called "XDCAM."
Per1 wrote on 8/25/2007, 4:17 PM
OK Spot, some confusion from my side - I agree.
What I meant was:
I think BD will not live for long - it will pass, much quicker than any media seen so far I guess.
XDCAM EX I think shows the way and Canon et al. will follow.
Not even consumer camcorders with BD will be long-lived I think.
Solid state is the future. The adv. of the XDCAM HD media is that it can be sent away and don't have the price of solid state, but with time solid state will be cheaper.

The camcorders traget two different groups. ENG teams that post their footage (upload?) to where-ever - these need inexpensive media and for now the BD works, in the future it might be cheap solid state as well. We, i.e. folks that just go home with the footage and try to get it into the NLE, we could prob. not care less about BD as media and would be happy with a 200 GB drive in the camcorder that we connect to Vegas. Many praise drives like the DR60 - how about having it built in from the start?

Look at the high-pro SLRs - they use solid state - but that is not enough for the real pros - today they transfer the footage wireless to photo editors that pipe it to the editors - I'm glad I don't have deadline like this - and neither will any wedding photographer have - unless they plan to sell a finsihed DVD at the ending chord of the exit march out of the church to all visitors :)

As for Hollywood they'd velcome the death of all media - some hugh servers and internet, that they'd like. Some test were made in Sweden recently and the *say* that it they have the worlds fastet internet now working (whatever that means) - 40 GBit rate IIRC - they transfered a movie in 2 seconds. This is what Hollywood wants to see for movie distribution - not some plastic that needs to be handled. Naturally, many pirate site also like this rate... :)
FuTz wrote on 8/26/2007, 1:53 PM
"When will we have Blue-Ray camcorders?"

I guess you'll have flash memory card camcorders before having blue ray ones.
farss wrote on 8/26/2007, 2:44 PM
Got them already!
Laurence wrote on 8/26/2007, 7:22 PM
"You could put a cheap bit of media in the camera, shoot something and take that piece of media back to your equally cheap player at home and watch what you'd shot."
_____________________________________________________

That's pretty much exactly what I have with my CX-7 and my Playstation 3. Actually it's quite a bit better. I shoot HD video, SD video and high resolution stills with my CX-7, I pop the SD card out of the camera and into the PS3 and I can immediately look at whatever I shot. If I want to back it up to disc, I just copy the entire contents of the SD card to a a data DVD. If I want a backup, I copy it twice. If I want to edit the footage, I just copy it to my hard drive, generate proxies with Gearshift and get to work. It is amazingly simple.

The other night I was working on a bit of video from the CX-7 and when I took a break for dinner, my wife asked me if I was done capturing the video yet. I laughed because I hadn't even thought about how nice it was to skip that whole step!
Spot|DSE wrote on 8/26/2007, 11:58 PM
One aspect that so many seem to forget...ENG *wants* to have a shiny "something" they can put on a shelf. ENG isn't entirely thrilled at HDD-based storage. Having XDCAM discs on the shelf is very comforting to this world. It's a very real concern for broadcast to not have a real-world backup. Imagine trusting all your content to an HDD system? Ouch. Scary. Even for the much smaller world most of us are in, this is a nerve-wracking problem. Archival is easily the looming albatross in the media world today. This is just one reason XDCAM will survive for quite a while. It may well be the last generation of cams with removeable storage...but it will be here for a long, long time.
How many beta cams are still in the field today? Lots. Even as the owners are turning to HD....still lots of Beta in the field.

I agree re: consumer BD cams. It's a silly idea, and will likely follow the path of micro mv.
PeterWright wrote on 8/27/2007, 3:02 AM
That's good to hear Spot.

I'm happy that the news vendors can keep XDCAM going as a viable medium with their BD discs, and as a small producer, I'm really looking forward to the XE version with the two 16 Gig solid state reasonably priced cards - will shoot about two hours, I believe.

Do you know if it will it be possible to remove one card whilst recording to the other, and thereby having continuous recording capacity even beyond the two hours? - I wouldn't often need that, but for some continuous performance recordings it could be handy.
FuTz wrote on 8/27/2007, 5:48 AM
Wow Peter, I don't know if they tought about this but it would be a very nice feature, combined with the 10 seconds of pre-recording we could also get. Imagine filming whales for example. Might as well boost that buffer and use it, as we're here,nowadays, with cams. : D