Very nice, very informative - thanks! Now if I only had that sort of cash to blow on a camera...

My question is, just how BIG is it?

It "Looks" fairly small on the vids I have seen of it, but there is nothing like a side by side with, say Z1, V1, and 150. Would LOVE to see the full specs, but have a feeling that it will be September before we see any more real info on it.

I keep thinking, well, the Z1 was supposedly $8K when it came out, but it is well under $5K now, 3 years later. Can I wait 3 1/2 years for this, or will those nasty marketing types give us something ELSE about that time that makes me forget the EX and start drooling all over, again. I expect they will. Every three years, or so, forever!

Ah, the dream is often better than the reality. Reality wears out and you have to buy a new one.

Well, reality is just a state of alcoholic deficiency. :O)

Seriously, Q, many thanks for that great XDCAM site.

I bet this lineup will be giving Panny some serious indigestion...

De Nada!

Here is even more: A 14X zoom, for instance.

http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/NAB-2007-Video--Tour-of-the-Sony-XDCAM-EX.htm

EX is going to be a serious player in the low-cost arena.
XDCAM HD is a godsend to speedy workflow. Currently in the middle of a four-hour project that we used our F350 for, with 11 hours of captured content, it transferred fast, and editing the proxies is fast, efficient, and exceptionally satisfying.

I guess the only real limitation would be that it's 8 bits after a Vegas render.

it's only 8 bits before it goes in. Are you referring to the internal processes?

Yes, I'm talking about the internal Vegas processes. For HDV I think the 8 bit limitation is no big deal. For true HD I think that 10 bit processing is more important. Than again, I have only ever been a hired hand on XDCAM projects.

Well a lot of HD is only 8 bit.
The recently announced 2/3" XDCAM is 4:2:2 though which is pretty nice and the price isn't hideous for what you get.

Where the competition is coming from is digital film acquisition. Once you ditch the problem of tape drives from a camera design many things are opened up and you can build a camera that's way cheaper, rugged and maintainance free.

XDCAM EX is I suspect only the beginning for Sony. They have to respond. There's such a raft of digital film cameras coming out of the wood work now and some are remarkably cheap. The only real speed bump is the cost of good glass. Sony could probably mass produce a digital film camera for $10K that did 10bit 2K to flash or HD. There's nothing in these cameras that makes them expensive to produce once you go to a large single CMOS sensor. Optics are always low yield, hard to produce items.

Bob.

XDCAM is 8 bit. It's the most widely accepted HD format for ENG, and is being used for a lot of production as well.
10bit internally would be great, that's for sure, but bear in mind that *most* cams are 8 bit output regardless of whatever the camcorder's internal processes might be.

How much difference do you see as a viewer between HDV and XDCAM?

"How much difference do you see as a viewer between HDV and XDCAM?"

If you know what you're looking for; quite a bit. If you're the "average" person at home with OTA, cable or dish HD viewing it on an HD TV with the "stock" out-of-the-box settings; maybe not so much.

The fact of the matter is that XDCAM has better chips, better DSP and better lenses. But at prices starting at just over $1,000, HDV camcorders look pretty darned good, too. Just not as good. You get what you pay for.

I was pondering some forum members obsession over 8bit vs. 10bit video. I had to chuckle when I realized that those extra two bits, in technical terms, are referred to as the "least significant bits." I don't have a point here, I just thought it was amusing...

John

Looking at it at NAB, I'd say it looked slightly bigger than my Z1. Definately big for much hand-held without a shoulder mount, though I don't know the weight.

I'm definately looking forward to it for 1/2" chip low-light sensitivity and REAL lens controls. And I am planning to get the dual-layer XDCAM HD computer drive to master and archive to.

As for comparing HDV and XDCAM, I went to this Sony seminar at NAB hosted by the cinematographer behind this Spear Fisherman show on Discovery, he uses F350s above water and Z1s below water, and he said that they actually do match very well. XDCAM has advantages, but in the proper lighting or in places where you can't put your XDCAM, HDV can be fine for broadcast.

I was pondering some forum members obsession over 8bit vs. 10bit video. I had to chuckle when I realized that those extra two bits, in technical terms, are referred to as the "least significant bits." I don't have a point here, I just thought it was amusing...

Each bit = 1.02 stops to be precise.
Least significant technically, well yes they are, unfortunately for Vegas they're the most significant bits.
They're the reason Vegas cannot handle the most common broadcast standard in the USA today, Betacam SP.
They'd be mighty handy too for the common broadcast standard down here, Digital Betacam but fortunately their impact on DB isn't as savage as it is on SP.

All that holds Vegas back is those two bits. Some would add EDL to that list.

Bob.

I interviewed Robin Berg and Dr Terry Mass last winter for my website - Their insights for shooting with both cameras was insightful. I've known Dr Maas casually for a number of years since I have been a writer on the sport of freediving since the late 90's.

I even have an invite to go freediving with him to shoot video ... ;-)

Don't get me wrong, I love "bits" but viewing the 8 and 10 bit videos on present day HDTV's 99.9% of the people could not tell the difference. And after a few beers 100% could not tell the difference.
JJK

"Least significant technically, well yes they are, unfortunately for Vegas they're the most significant bits.

That's what I found amusing. Don't get me wrong, I'm firmly in the "Vegas needs 10bit" camp.

John

Why is a bit 1.02 stops??? Pray tell, I must have been sick that day in school.

I have to say that having two more stops to play with (adding 2 bits in the most significant positions...) has given me more freedom to get the look I want in my post work.

Even if I had shot in 8-bit, I would still benefit from working in 10-bit. Vegas works in high-bit internally, but gets rounding errors between operations as soon as it's back to ye olde 8-bit.

But this dead horse has been flogged so much in this forum, there isn't even enough left to cover a small finger sandwich.

Betacam SP is an analog standard, although it is of course always converted to 10-bit video in a broadcast environment.

All that holds Vegas back is those two bits.
If you shoot on an 8-bit Y'CbCr format, converting to 8-bit R'G'B' will incur some rounding error. It is better to work in 10-bit (but even then I believe you get rounding error unless you have something like Sheervideo Synchromy).

2- A somewhat easy test of how much bit depth you need would be to go into Photoshop (or AE) and add adjustment layers. Change the bit depth of your project... on real world images, you probably won't see a difference. You might see a difference on noise-free gradients (big ones).

Make sure you add multiple adjustment layers.

3- I doubt that the problem with Vegas and betaSP is 10-bitness, though I haven't looked into this deeply.

Some would add EDL to that list.
Doesn't Vegas have a real EDL option via the scripting options? (Not to be confused with file-->save as, which does not output a real EDL.)

I haven't tried it personally, but that EDL looks like it has the right formatting. No options for b-reels and pre-read edits though (and audio); though very few people are onlining linear nowadays.

4- For a while, Quantel fooled a lot of people with its 8-bit dynamic rounding.

1) Why assume everyone is shooting with an 8bit camera? 8 bit cameras basically mean the look is burnt in when you shoot, strictly yesterdays technology. Well even that's not true, I should say yesterdays digital technology, film has had this advantage over video for decades.
2) Agreed to some extent, extra bits can means just more bits of noise but even a half decent DSC is good for more than 8 bits in RAW. I can sure as heck see the difference from scanned film as well using 14 bits over 8 bits.
3) Quantization errors are the problem. Converting analogue to digital and back again the errors mount up very quickly. Spent quite some time with an ex Vegas user over this one, he must have a very tolerant boss.
4) EDL, no sorry does not and cannot work properly in Vegas by design. This got done to death here some time ago. If you're just transferring files yes, you have a shot at it but EDLs from source tapes, forget it. Search for numerous posts by Filmy. Yeah I know it don't work too well on Avid etc but at least it's not by design that it doesn't work.

Bob.

I re-read Filmy's posts...
[url=http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=484764]

The comments about Vegas not keeping tape names (reel names) and tape TC isn't true for the EDL export via scripting. EDL import looks bugged though (OTOH, I wouldn't really see Vegas as an online editor). As an offline editor, Vegas looks functional.
*I haven't tested the EDL with other apps, but it looks good.

I really hope you're right.
Last time I tested this it looked right at first, took me a fair while to understand what Filmy was talking about but then I saw the problem. I'll check again with V7 but as the tape in/out points are only stored in VidCap I don't see how it can work. It's getting the tape in/out points that are the key, the EDL script seems to export the T/L TC, not the tape TC. This would be fine if moving the files and the EDL but not if you needed to recapture on the other system.
Getting Vegas to do an online via SDI is quite easy as the capture utility reads a fairly simple XML file, it'd be trivial to write a EDL to XML converter and do an online.

Bob.