[Craig Seeman]

FX1 and Z1 are 1/3″ CCD
F335/F355 are 1/2″ CCD
FX7 and V1 are 1/4″ CMOS
EX1 is 1/2″ CMOS

[Craig Seeman]

[Chris Babbitt] “Does the EX really have better low-light performance than the FX1? I haven’t been able to get e definitive answer on that.”

MAJOR low light performance advantage! Unfortunately specs are not a reliable measure because of how manufacturers report them.

One of the BIGGER selling points of the EX1 is its low light performance. It’s the first “hand held” size HD camera that can rival the venerable Sony PD-170.

[Craig Seeman]

[Nick Righton] “1. Would I see a noticeable difference in picture quality between the FX1 and XDCAM EX?
“

Some people would. Main differences would be 1/2″ chips, 10 bit 4:2:2 coming from the camera head out of the HD-SDI port. Much better low light performance if that’s important to your shoot.

On SxS you can record 35mbps VBR compared to 25mbps CBR of FX1.

HPX or F series would help if you need shoulder mount or, in F series, recording to XDCAM disc instead of SxS card. In many respects the EX1 has more features than 335 although that has a changeable lens. Are those features important? The best I can say is, that depends on what you want/need.

[Craig Seeman]

Direct link to file. Right Click. Save Target As

[Craig Seeman]

HD-SDI out of the EX1 is industry standard format.
The XDCAM files are wrapped in .mp4.
Sony is providing free Clip Browser software and they’ll be various means to unwrap it.
Also the files are 1920×1080 rather than 1440×1080 found in F330/F350 but the Clip Browser may handle that too.

[Craig Seeman]

Works like any other camera given size and weight. Why would you think it would be different?

[Craig Seeman]

I don’t think so. After looking through the manual, it gives no indication of timecode in for syncing/locking.

[Craig Seeman]

HD-SDI contains video, audio, timecode at 4:2:2 uncompressed. You’ll not only need a video card capable of HD-SDI but you’ll probably need a RAID 0 system too.

You might be better off getting a Final Cut Pro system if you’re on a Mac or maybe Sony Vegas on Windows. It might be more cost effective.

Sony’s Clip Browser, independent of any NLE, may be able to create an .MXF file that your system can handle.

While I may use SDI for studio work. limiting yourself to SDI limits yourself to no faster than real time transfer.

Card transfer speeds can hit 800mbps /100MBps. That would be 160 seconds for a 16GB card vs 50 minutes real time. Note their laptop specs include 2x 80GB Raid 0 to hit that speed so hard drive speeds seems to be the biggest bottleneck to throughput.
https://bssc.sel.sony.com/BroadcastandBusiness/markets/10014/xdcamEX_media.shtml

[Craig Seeman]

I have way too many stories and 20 years of working in post houses that all went under plus a few years of running my small business to use your kind of reasoning.

The some biggest clients I’ve worked with have been as much as 6 months behind in payments. Enough of the post facilities I worked for had enough dead beat clients to seriously hurt their businesses.

Only for the best repeat regular clients do I invoice and they usually pay within a few days of the invoice.

[Craig Seeman]

I really don’t trust “on delivery” for any job, especially for a new, out of state client.

There are some things you can do to reconcile this.
50% deposit.
Post low rez copies to prove job was done. NOT APPROVAL though because she has no right to “disapprove” a shoot IMHO.
She pays the other 50% and you ship.

50% deposit
Send P2 folders burned to discs after shoot.
Upon receipt of 2nd 50% you send her the P2 cards she sent you back (you hold P2 cards as collateral in other words).

I don’t see any reason to every hand shoot material over until paid in FULL.

There’s a difference between credit card and PayPal though. With credit card you bill it (number already given to you) upon completion.