Sony will soon begin shipping the first units of its new NXCAM family camcorders. It is a line of products that promises to bring the functionality of XDCAM formats to the world of professional production with low-cost equipment that records AVCXHD material on SDHC or Sony Memory Stick memory cards, indistinctly.
As is traditional in Sony, initially a model for professional use will be marketed, the HXR-N5N camcorder, accompanied by a similar model for the consumer market, the HDR-AX2000. These are lightweight camcorders with a construction similar to that of the successful HVR-Z5. The format allows HD signals to be recorded in AVCHD/H.264 Long Gop format with data rates of up to 24Mbps with 1920x1080 resolution in interlaced or progressive mode, and eventually SD material can be recorded using the same MPEG-2 format of domestic camcorders.
The HXR-N5N camcorder has three 1/3" CMOS sensors, a 20X lens (the same as we find in the Z5), XLR audio inputs and has HD-SDI and HDMI outputs that allow to deliver 4:2:2 signals of 10 bits and without compression, which opens up interesting possibilities for use in studios or in fixed installations. Optionally, it can be equipped with the HXR-FMU128 recording system, which offers 128GB of solid-state memory and performance comparable to that of a conventional hard drive.
Two new details finish off this new offer from Sony. The first is the availability of a GPS receiver in the camera body, which constantly generates location information that can be embedded in the metadata of the recorded material. And the second is the possibility of having an external control unit that allows optical and colorimetry adjustments to be made with great ease.
