Flavors of Sony SxS

[Ian Cook]

Hi Bob,

The only functional difference is the shorter lifespan on the -1A cards.

Best,

Ian Cook
Sony Broadcast and Professional Company

[Bob Cole]

[Ian Cook] “the shorter lifespan”

Thanks Ian. My “reliability” question is: does the shorter lifespan come as an unpleasant surprise (i.e. you lose media), or is there some fair warning that the card is dying?

[Don Greening]

According to my Sony source there is some sort of prompt or message that comes up in plenty of time to make arrangements to replace the card. Remember though, that the economy cards are good for 5 years of (almost) continuous use before they give up the ghost. That’s a whole lot of recording.

– Don

Don Greening
Reeltime Videoworks
http://www.reeltimevideoworks.com

[Ian Cook]

Don is correct. The camera will prompt you when the card begins to near the end of its lifespan.

[Michael Palmer]

Ian,
Great to hear there will be a warning, so can you tell us just how the camera is capable of diagnosing the condition of a media card.

My guess is that the latest firmware creates a counter file held on the memory card and when it reaches a given number it reacts. Perhaps this is another reason for the reduced record time with the newest firmware.

I’m sure many here would also like to hear the technical differences of the 2 types (SLC / MLC) of SxS memory as well, and does the camera also know the difference?

Good Luck
Michael Palmer

[Ian Cook]

The card keeps track of read/write cycles and automatically triggers a warning when you start reaching EOL

[Brent Dunn]

Well, I guess eventually we’ll all find out. I hope it’s not like the idiot light our cars used to have when you were low on oil. Once it came on, it was too late.

Brent Dunn
Owner / Director / Editor
DunnRight Films
DunnRight Video.com
Video Marketing Toolbox.net

Sony EX-1,
Canon 5D Mark II
Canon 7D
Mac Pro Tower, Quad Core,
with Final Cut Studio

HP i7 Quad laptop
Adobe CS-5 Production Suite

[Michael Palmer]

I agree.

It would be great if there was a diagnostic program to evaluate the memory cards.

Here is a PDF I have posted before and thought was interesting.

https://www.supertalent.com/datasheets/SLC_vs_MLC%20whitepaper.pdf

Good Luck
Michael Palmer

[Bob Cole]

Bottom line: assuming that the camera will be obsolete before the card is “used up,” is there any reason to buy the more expensive cards?

[Don Greening]

[Bob Cole] “is there any reason to buy the more expensive cards?”

I suppose it all depends on the environment in which you’re using the cards. Assuming that the more expensive SxS is single level cell technology and the less expensive one is multi-level cell tech then there are distinct advantages in favour of the higher cost ones:

• better endurance
• more extreme operating temperature range
• lower power consumption
• faster write/erase speeds
• longer write/erase endurance – 100,000 cycles as opposed to 10,000 for the SxS-1

If the SxS-1 card is operating in higher than recommended temps there is a real risk of losing data.

MLC technology is considered consumer grade and SLC is industrial grade. Thanks Michael P. for posting the PDF file.

– Don

Don Greening
Reeltime Videoworks
http://www.reeltimevideoworks.com