Earlier this year, more specifically during the NAB Show in Las Vegas in April, Sony surprised its customers, specialized media and the industry in general, with the announcement of a new camcorder that it would use solid-state media as a recording medium. The announcement surprised not only because Sony had eluded even that moment endorse the solid state technology of your main competitor, but because the advertised features they showed a very solid and revolutionary product. Sony clarified at the time that the PMW-EX1 was only a prototype and that it was not planned to abandon optical disc technology, fundamental in the workflow established as the cornerstone of the XDCAM products.
The past 18 of September, Sony surprised again with a real product, used by several professional photographers, who highlighted the high quality of the captured material.
Sony has included the PMW-EX1 inside of the XDCAM product line, a line that includes camcorders and decks equipped with optical discs. The distinction of the PMW-EX1 model is that it records and stores the contents on cards high-speed ExpressCard flash memory. This provides the user greater flexibility in the workflow, with selectable bit rates, plus an extensive list of editing and special effects capabilities.
Angiecarla Eyzaguirre, Senior Manager professional video product marketing at Sony Electronics, Broadcast & Professional Latin America, highlighted that the new camera is compatible with a wide range of non-linear editing systems and that the ability to capture and transfer streams using ExpressCard technology new PC Card interface standard, makes the EX the camcorder More reliable and flexible compact currently available for HD.
The new camera uses as a means of recording Sony's newly developed flash memory, the SxS PRO card. This card, which delivers up to 800 Mbps in high-speed data transfer, allows no capabilities linear, such as instant shortcut and operation based on records. The new camcorder, equipped with two slots for SxS memory cards, can record up to 100 minutes of high-quality HD streams at 35 Mbps, or 140 minutes at 25 Mbps with two SxS memory cards, 16 GB.
The training devices of Image used in the PMW-EX1 are three Exmor CMOS sensors newly developed, 1/2 inch, each with a number of effective pixels of 1920 x 1080. This sensor allows the camcorder provides extremely high sensitivity of F10, a signal-to-noise ratio of 54 dB and a horizontal resolution of 1000 television lines.
This image sensor captures images with greater depth of field than that of other handheld camcorders equipped with image sensors more Small. This gives the user more freedom of expression creative, said Eyzaguirre, who added that the Low light capabilities of the new sensor will be particular interest for users who need to capture sequences in limited lighting applications.
The PMW-EX1 is switchable between 1080p, 1080i and 720p, with multi-frame recording capability of 59.94i, 50i, 29.97P, 25P and 23.98P native. Offers a selection of bit rates of 35 Mb/s (high quality mode) or 25 Mb/s (standard playback mode), depending on the quality of desired image and recording time. HQ mode allows 1920 x 1080 and 1280 x 720 resolutions, while SP mode supports 1440 x 1080 resolution at 25 Mb/s, providing compatibility with HDV 1080i products. As a result, the sequences recorded in SP mode can be seamlessly integrated on HDV-compatible editing systems, by connecting the camcorder through a i.Link interface (Firewire). This camera it has slow and fast motion recording capability.
On the other hand, the PMW-EX1 camera comes with a Fujinon 14X high-definition and large zoom lens quality. The lens offers a wide viewing angle of 5.8 mm (equivalent to 31.4mm in a 35mm lens) and many features comfortable for various recording situations.
To increase interoperability with the new XDCAM EX technology, a series of manufacturers of non-linear editing systems are developing interfaces compatible, including Adobe, Apple, Dayang, Martos, MOG Solutions, Newauto Silicon Valley Video Technology, Sobey Digital Technology, Sony Creative Software and Thomson Grass Valley.
The PMW-EX1 will be available commercially since November.
