[Don Greening]

I just did a little test. I recorded in overcrank mode to an 8 Gig SxS Pro card. My setting was HQ 720 30p with the S&Q frame rate set at 60. The camera displayed the card’s empty record time as 28 minutes but it only took 14 minutes of real time to fill it up.

– Don

[Don Greening]

[Steve Wargo] “I believe that you just press the button that controls which card you’re recording to.”

Yup you can do that for sure but I believe the poster is asking whether or not the camera will automatically switch recording from an SxS Pro card to the SDHC card (or visa versa) without issue once the first card is full. Unless I misunderstood the question.

– Don

-addition: You know I don’t think I’ve ever tried to manually switch cards without first stopping the recording. I’ll have to try that to see if any footage is missing afterwards. I don’t know why anyone would want to do this because the whole idea of switching cards is to keep the clips on each card self-contained to that particular card.

[Don Greening]

I’ll respond to your questions in reverse order. No, I don’t know why. I just feel like it for some reason.

3. I haven’t heard of any back focus problems with cameras that have the latest firmware so I think it’s a non-issue with regard to buying a new EX1. If you were buying someone’s used early EX1 I’d have some concerns, but this isn’t the case for you. The original EX1 back focus issue happened when using the built in ND filters. This changed how the light focused on the sensors and the original firmware wasn’t compensating for the difference. This has since been fixed.

2. You can’t use overcranking with any setting higher than 720 anyway, because the data rate is too high even for the SxS Pro memory cards. That’s why there’s a 720 60p (regular speed) mode but not 1080 60p. Only 1080 30p. You can, however, undercrank using any of the shooting formats. With that in mind you’d be able to get the same amount of shooting time on the 8 Gig card (27 minutes) doing overcranking, the same as shooting regular speed in 1080 30p or 1080 25p, etc because the overall amount of data would end up being about the same.

1. [wing poon] ” Should I need to, could I switch from SDHC to SxS on the fly or does it require a shutdown or a pause in recording? “

I don’t know, since I don’t use the SDHC setup. I do know that the switch between 2 SXS Pro memory cards is absolutely seamless without losing a frame of video. I am going to go out on a limb and say that yes you can jump from SxS card to the SDHC card and visa versa without issue since I haven’t heard anything to the contrary. If this wasn’t possible I think I would have heard by now.

– Don

[Don Greening]

Thanks, Kathlyn.

I’ll keep my eye peeled for any upcoming Sony announcements at the COW news link.

-Don

[Don Greening]

[Steve Connor] “Sony also tend to pre-announce as well so anything new should be known before the show”

That would be good because I’m about 2 weeks away from getting another EX. I guess I’ll rent one for the few times i’ll need a second EX before NAB.

– Don

[Don Greening]

Looks like the Canadian site has it if you’re looking for XDCAM Transfer Tool v.2.9.

https://www.sony.ca/xdcamex/support.htm

– Don

[Don Greening]

Also be aware that the size of the XDCAM disc “general” folder is still limited to 500 Mbytes. This won’t be updated for the PDW-U1 until the middle of the year (according to our Sony insider).

– Don

[Don Greening]

Doug Jensen would probably tell you his are the best.

https://www.vortexmedia.com/

Then there’s the COW’s own Noah Kadner. He might tell you the same thing.

https://www.callboxlive.com/store/sony-guidebook-p-39.html

I’m sure there are more EX training DVD’s out there but I think you’d be hard pressed to find someone who has them all and can make a judgment call on which one to buy. Of the two mentioned above I think Noah digs a little deeper into the actual menu settings than Doug does.

– Don

[Don Greening]

[Justin Gaar] “And if they open up the general folder wouldn’t I be able to just copy a BPAV folder over instead of worrying about codecs?”

Well, you’d think so. That seems the most logical train of thought. Someone’s going to have to take the plunge and do a test. Or if anyone has Juan Martinez’s phone number handy……….

– Don

[Don Greening]

[Craig Seeman] “If they’ve done that then it doesn’t need to support the codec specifically as long as it can handle it as a data file. “

True enough and I hope that’s exactly what they’ve done. But it does seem strange that they’d list all the various XDCAM optical disc formats that are supported if any file can now be written to XDCAM Disc via the PDW-U1. Knowing me however, I’m probably reading too much into this and 1920×1080 EX formats will now be easily written to the disc.

I think Steve Wargo has a PDW-U1 paperweight sitting on his desk. Perhaps he’ll do a little test for us (nudge nudge-wink wink-say no more)

Shades of Monty Python.

– Don