I was under the impression that SDHC cards had peaked and SDXC cards were the next generation of faster cards till now, Transcend have just announced a 16G card thats 4x faster than its pervious Class 10 card making it a must for HD video work.

As we await the new Panasonic AG-HPX250 P2 camcorder I thought it would be a good time to compare the two dominant solid state professional formats.

As you can see there is nothing in it these days price wise between P2 and SxS but if Panasonic wanted to seriously dent the sales of Sony’s XDCAM they need to get the price of their media down again.

For all it’s reliability both cards are excessively priced compared to SDHC or SDXC cards which are a fraction of the cost and are pushing many price conscious professionals away from both P2 and SxS.

We are living in hard times and clients are cutting budgets back all the time, cameramen/women are less likely to upgrade to a system that comes with the burden of having to buy £1000 upwards of media when the alternative SDHC is not a million miles away in quality.

There are a growing number of SSD recorders coming onto the market like the Ninja using relatively cheaper solid state memory e.g. 128GB SSD is only £135 that’s four times the capacity of your P2/SxS 32G card and at 4:2:2.

Panasonic and Sony have to re-think the cost of this media, Sony have already bowed to the cheaper SxS adapter by bringing their own version out so I think Panasonic should consider doing the same or slash the price of P2 to a more affordable price.

When I heard of the HyperDeck Shuttle (HDS) at the price point of £263 it was a no brainer when I was asked to review one. To explain the HyperDeck Shuttle gives you the quality of uncompressed recording direct to common SSDs (Solid State Drive) in the smallest possible size! HyperDeck Shuttle bypasses your camera’s compression and records from SDI and HDMI direct into the highest quality uncompressed video.

Although the unit has a mini USB 2 socket you have to format your SSD drive in a SATA dock not supplied and it must be erased as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) if you don’t use a Mac you will have to buy software for the PC like MacDrive which will set you back $49.

On paper or should I say screen the Shuttle looks quite small but in reality it’s a lot bigger and as yet has nothing to mount it on a camera, though as you read on I think Black Magic have good reasons for this.

This in my opinion is a specialised piece of kit and it’s not a coincedence that “It feels like a VTR” …although it has a 1 hour built in battery this unit is more suited to studio work.

The data rate alone at 10Gb per minute is astounding and if I tell you my first shot lasted 40 seconds and that equated to 6 Gbs on my hard drive. The 240Gb Vortex SSD that came with the Shuttle (Optional) would only last for 24 minutes, one point is that due to the lack of a screen the HDS gives you no indication on how much space you have filled.

What about the results, there is no doubt that at 10bit uncompressed 4:2:2 you are getting every ounce from your Sony FS100 via it’s HDMI socket (8bit).

So just who is this relativly inexpensive SSD deck aimed at, well I have had a lot of soul searching as firstly with a 1 hour inbuilt battery you are not going to get far out in the field with the HDS, there is a 12V input on the side but it’s not the standard 4 pin canon power connector.

The second and strangest decision in my opinion was to put non standard SDI sockets on the shuttle, these are seemingly standard on computer boards but in my opinion this is not aimed at that marketplace and should have had BNC connectors. Black Magic tell me that they are now selling a lead which converts from the smaller SDI to a standard BNC SDI.

There is a “Display” button but no one could tell me what it was for as there is no display on the unit itself unless it’s for a future re designed unit. The other thing that is missing is the ability to start and stop the Shuttle from your camera, competitors units give you 422 or Lanc control.

If you are using the Sony FS100 you will need the up to date firmware which is 1.01 otherwise like my HDS it would not work till I updated the FW.

As far as who this unit is aimed at well firstly if you are doing green screen work this unit is right down your street, anything that needs 10bit uncompressed 4:2:2 fantastic picture quality and at a price that won’t break the bank but remember SSD drives are averaging about £1 per Gb and even at 600Gbs this only gives you one hour of footage.

My honest opinion is that the HyperDeck Shuttle is a great bit of kit as long as you can justify the need for uncompressed footage, one hour = 600Gb of space. A word of warning if you take this into Final Cut Pro under ProRes 422 you won’t see any difference in picture quality.

Q. Would I buy one…Certainly if I was doing green/blue screen work and my camera did not record 4:2:2 but I see the unit as a small recorder sat near by your camera so you can switch it on and off then transferring the footage is as simple as drag and drop , once again from the SATA dock (Not supplied).

LIKES :

1. The price…at £263 this is a must for anyone producing HI-End video productions, mainly in a studio e.g.. Green/Blue screen work.

2. The picture quality is the best I have seen and I thought my Sony FS100 was fantastic till I saw the uncompressed pictures from the HD Shuttle.

3. The first manufacturer to give us both HDMI (full size) and SDI (non standard) though a cable is now avaliable from Black Magic Design.

4. Using off the shelf SSD drives gives you a choice rather than a dedicated unit.

5. Build quality, the buttons feel very positive, the unit is simple in design.

DISLIKES :

1. No LCD screen, not being able to tell how much drive space you have used is very limiting.

2. The non standard SDI sockets

3. Not being able to format the SSD drive via the HD Shuttle is a pain.

4. One hour internal battery is very limiting though there is a 12v input that a 3rd party manufacturer could utilise.

5. Does not accept 1080 50p output from a Sony FS100 or a Sony NX70.

Here are two independent stories the only link is the cards they are using…

Vince using a Sony NX5… “Had A wee problem tonight while filming a local dance show. Using two NX5s to film,one on a wide shot plus one NX5 for close ups etc.

Without warning mid way through the first half, the close up Camera LCD screen went blank,a warning came up saying something about corupt media etc, then the camera shutdown by itself and then re-booted,another warning came up saying that recording or playback can not take place until the software has checked the card out for faults etc. I pressed enter to check the card for faults and within a few seconds was able to resume recording.

Unfortunately 20 odd minutes of footage was lost,7 dances to be exact,everything filmed up to the crash point was gone from the Transcend Card,the remaining dances up to the end of the first half were ok.Card was on its 3rd use with no problems before.

Fortunately the wide camera captured everything on a static wide shot so all is not lost but i must admit i am stuned to have lost the footage i did.Thank God it wasnt a wedding.
Have you heard anything like this from other camera operaters!!. This is the first time i have had any hicups with the NX5 using the Transcend Cards-Class 10, 16 GIG type.”

Today I get this Email…

Chris using a Sony MC50… “Had a major glitch last night while shooting a recce of “Bad Girls” for Saturday. Following your reports of problems with early shots, as at Jan’s party, I always shoot four short shots after formatting a memory card. They played back fine, as usual. Started recording the show and after about twenty minutes a data warning appeared on screen for a couple of seconds, then the whole camera shut down and restarted. I got going again and the problem did not recur, but ALL data recorded before the fault was missing – including those four test shots!

I managed to ingest the footage recorded after the fault and then decided to attempt a data recovery of the missing scenes by invoking the option to “Repair Image Database Files”. This reported no error, so I mounted the SD card on my Mac and used a utility to display hidden files…

You can see the clip info demonstrates that ten scenes were present – recorded AFTER the fault – but there are no .MTS files visible. Worse still, the footage no longer plays in the camcorder, yet the data is still there because the card registers as full.

I conclude the following, which, if you concur, you may wish to put out as a warning to other users:

1. If you encounter any recording fault, ingest all recorded footage prior to running any tests or search.
2. Unless ICONS are missing from your data display, do not run the ‘Repair Image Database’ utility.
3. Do not use a utility such as Cocktail in an attempt to retrieve lost data as this may further corrupt your files.

I still wonder whether this fault is memory card-related since the faults you experienced at Jan’s party and last night’s shoot were using the same (Transcend 16GB Class 10) card. I’ve not had any trouble with my other (Transcend 16GB Class 6) cards. That said, the suspect card was recently used to record a music concert and behaved perfectly. Have you ever had a problem recording to the internal memory?”

So you see these accounts are at least 3 months apart using different Sony camcorders the interesting factor that seems to run between them is the use of Transend Class 10 cards which would in my opinion be the number one suspect. To put it in perspective hundreds of people all over the world are using solid state day in day out with little to no problems. I myself on the whole use Transend SDHC class 10 cards and have also suffered lost footage twice but twice out of hours of successful filming with class 10 Transend SDHC cards leads me to one simple conclusion…

If you are filming an event like a wedding ceremony or a dance show where you are liable to have prolonged read/write sessions it would be prudent to use cards like SanDisk which are guaranteed to give you 30MB/s rather than depend on Transend cards that may be class 10 but only sustain 20MB/s and remember that speed is variable.

The one major problem with solid state is it’s unforgiving, if you are filming and for any reason the simplest being your battery runs out…you loose everything from the point you pressed the record button and that may be the whole of someones wedding ceremony and your reputation down the spout.

It is always advisable to loose 2-3 minutes of someones wedding in order to stop recording and power down your camcorder to change batteries than chance loosing everything and one other good bit of timley advice is do not span footage from one card to another, once again stop the recording and change card slots, spanning causes more misery than you can imagine.

Low Cost Alternative to SxS Memory Cards

Do you love your new Sony camcorder, but not the prices for SxS memory cards? We’ve got an alternative—Sonnet’s SDHC Adapter for SxS Camera Slot. This Sonnet adapter is designed expressly for use in Sony XDCAM camcorders which record to SxS memory media, and enables you to use lower cost SDHC memory cards in their place⁽¹⁾. When used with Class 10 or faster SDHC cards, the Sonnet SDHC Adapter for SxS Camera Slot duplicates SxS Pro memory cards’ functionality, including support for overcrank and undercrank modes.

Sonnet’s SDHC Adapter for SxS Camera Slot is the same size as an SxS memory card, and, unlike standard memory card adapters, allows the SDHC card to fit flush inside its shell. This critical feature makes the Sonnet adapter interchangeable with SxS cards, and ensures your camcorder’s memory card slot door closes completely with the adapter inserted. Using the SDHC Adapter for SxS Camera Slot is easy. Just insert your SDHC card into the Sonnet adapter, and then insert the Sonnet adapter into your camcorder and format the card—you’re ready to record.

After recording is complete, remove the SDHC Adapter for SxS Camera Slot from the camcorder and swap out SDHC cards using the integrated push-to-eject mechanism. Because SxS cards share the same form factor and interface as ExpressCard/34 adapters, you can insert the Sonnet adapter directly into your notebook computer’s ExpressCard slot to offload the files from the SDHC card.

If your computer lacks an ExpressCard slot, you can remove the SDHC card from the Sonnet adapter and use it with any SDHC-compatible card reader.

For the price of one SxS memory card, you can purchase Sonnet’s adapter and several equivalent-capacity SDHC cards to increase your recording capacity and lower your recording costs. You’ll get hours of extra shooting time without the need to stop, offload the footage and reformat the card to use it again!

It still amazes me how many professional people buy video equipment today without a clear understanding of how it works and will tell all in sundry their camcorder is either duff or the memory is bad stock. Recently as of today I received that very sad tail but it came on the back of a misunderstanding of the medium being used.

Never and I mean NEVER… run a solid state camcorder continuously, example…a wedding ceremony. Some people have it in their head that by pausing their camcorder they will miss an important part of the ceremony well that might be true but if you loose power to the camcorder while recording you will loose everything from the last time you pressed record till the moment you loose power and in some cases that might just be the complete ceremony ! Pause where and when you can during any live event even if it means you have to re-sync your two camcorders during the edit.

There is at least two reasons for power failure during a recording, the mains power goes faulty or even a simple RCD can trip the power off or your battery is low to start with as you forget to swap a fresh battery at the start of the event. Todays L-ion batteries are so good I would always advocate a fresh battery before any major live event…do not rely on mains power.

What happens if you loose the power is quite simple you loose the table of contents or TOC and the footage is unreadable by normal means there is software that can possibly recover this but it’s far from perfect. Sony have a data recovery service but like all these services it’s not cheap.

Sony “Data is the most important part of any business and preserving it is essential. You need to make sure your data is secure, that you are using it efficiently and have effective plans in place to recover information should the unthinkable happen. As a Sony storage media customer, you can now take advantage of the added value services in data recovery, data conversion and data duplicationthrough our partnership with world-leading data management company Ontrack. With over twenty years experience in data recovery and undisputed technological expertise, Ontrack offers fast, high quality and cost effective services for businesses of all sizes looking to recover, convert or duplicate data. Best of all, these services are available for all brands of media and for all storage tape formats including AIT, S-AIT, LTO-Ultrium, DLT and DDS/DAT.”

Understand your equipment and how solid state is not infallible…always use fresh batteries before a live event and never “hot swap” a battery during a recording, this might just blow a fuse within your camcorder and will certainly loose all your data recorded onto your memory card at that moment in time.

Once again Beta v VHS has raised it’s ugly head …this time it’s solid state…P2 v SxS. HD is now catching on in broadcast land and the BBC are specifying more programmes must be shot in HD now that’s fine, the BBC as usual are playing catch up with the independent producers like myself who have been producing HD programmes for over two years now.

The main criteria for all broadcast HD work is 4:2:2 50Mbs minimum spec. camcorders like the new Canon XF305. Canon have caught many other manufacturers snoozing with their astute marketing plan, these camcorders are game changers and the BBC are in the process of buying well over fifty of these Canon camcorders alone.

The Canon’s will be good for fly on the wall, inserts into children’s programmes etc. but most serious DPs are not going to give this camcorder a second glance…so whats the options ?

Surprisingly, there seems to be a two horse race between Sony and Panasonic, both vying for the coveted broadcast market. We have two formats in the running…Panasonic P2 or Sony SxS. Once again Sony have been sleeping and have lost a lot of ground to Panasonic recently with Sky adopting P2 as their main solid state ingest for filming and editing. Taggert made by Scottish Television has recently moved over to P2 leaving the BBC with no clear road other than the new Canon camcorders.

Is it good to pin yourself to one format…good question and one as an independent producer I have already taken, SxS is my preferred option for one main reason…it’s far more flexible. I do not want a format that solely relies on P2 cards nor do I rely on SxS cards because Sony unwittingly allowed an independent producer of card adapters to produce the MxM card adapter (Now the MxR card) that takes easy to source SDHC cards.

You can always source SDHC cards but try getting P2 or SxS cards in the middle of Africa…not only that but SDHC cards are now so cheap you can use them as archive…everything you film on P2 has to be archived onto a server simply because you need the cards back in the pool for the next days shoot.

So why has Panasonic scored so big with Sky Television, Sky had to make a choice and to be fair Panasonic had a ready made 2/3″ solution with the now dated HPX500 camcorders and P2 players, Sony put a lot of time and effort into the optical disc which was not as popular as solid state.

Sony once again have come to the starting line with a product to knock your socks off the PMW-500 but it’s a few month too late, the 4:2:2 50Mbs SxS camcorder has all the right broadcast qualifications but the price is prohibitive at £20K plus lens and viewfinder. I have no doubt that if Sony had the PMW-500 twelve months ago Sky may not have gone P2.

During IBC 2010 in Amsterdam Panasonic announced the HPX3100 2/3″ P2 camcorder which is a tad less than Sony’s £20K and also less spec than the PMW-500 but it’s down to brass tacks these days and in the broadcast world every penny counts.

How does this help the independent producer who has HD programming to produce next year let alone the DPs who have to kit themselves out…well take a tip from me, wait a couple of months…Sony have come to the race late but I think we shall see some aggressive marketing and if I were Sony I would reduce the price of the 500 down to £16K with a viewfinder…let the DPs determine the future of solid state, if enough DPs buy into one format people like the BBC will have no option but to adopt the favoured independent HD format.

Speaking to a few DPs over the last two days we all came to the definitive answer and that is for the edit houses to make sure they can accommodate all card inputs from CF, SDHC to SxS and P2, one company supplies a unit that takes the most common cards used today including P2 and SxS…that’s the Qio MR from Sonnet.

Key Features

Replaces Multiple Card Readers—Comprehensive card compatibility with support for Sony® SxS™, CompactFlash®, Panasonic® P2, and SDXC™ cards (with included adapter)
Fast—Uses PCI Express® bus interface to deliver far superior performance over ordinary internal card readers with USB interface; aggregate bandwidth of 200 MB/sec.
Versatile—Supports a wide variety of ExpressCard®/34 and CardBus adapter cards, including Gigabit Ethernet, WiFi, USB, FireWire®, and more
Built-In SATA Connections—Integrated, fast SATA host controller based on Tempo™ SATA E4P with four eSATA ports supports SATA drive enclosures with up to 20 drives total

Sonnett Technologies has announced SDXC card support for its Multimedia Memory Card Reader & Writer ExpressCard/34 adapter, enabling users with MacBook Pro and Windows laptop computers equipped with an ExpressCard slot to use these extended-capacity cards designed for the latest high-megapixel digital cameras and digital video camcorders. The new format SDXC cards (starting at 64GB) surpass previous-generation SDHC cards 32GB maximum capacity.

Sonnet’s Multimedia Memory Card Reader & Writer ExpressCard/34 quickly moves files from memory cards to a notebook computer’s hard drive, with no cables required. This handy device inserts flush inside a MacBook Pro or Windows notebook’s ExpressCard slot so it can be carried inside the computer slot even when not in use. The Sonnet multimedia reader supports the most popular memory card formats used in digital cameras, cell phones, and other electronic devices, including Memory Stick, MMC (Multimedia Card), SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity), XD-Picture Card, and all their variations. This card works in ExpressCard/34 and ExpressCard/54 slots, and supports SDXC in Mac OS v10.6.4, Windows 7, Windows Vista SP1, and Windows XP (with Microsoft file system driver update).

Users can add SDXC card support by visiting the support area on the Sonnet web site.

Sonnet’s Multimedia Memory Card Reader & Writer ExpressCard/34 (part number MMRW-E34) is available now for the suggested retail price of $29.95.

More information on the Multimedia Memory Card Reader & Writer ExpressCard/34 is available at here. More information on Sonnet and its products is available at www.sonnettech.com.

The SD Association announced today two new high-speed performance symbols for the fastest SDXC and SDHC devices and memory cards. The first symbol identifies products with businterface speeds up to 104 Megabytes per second for greater device performance. The second symbol identifies SD memory cards and products with a performance option allowing real-time video recording.

The sheer variety of high-performing, feature-rich devices has dictated the need for a wide variety of SD memory card speeds and capacities to maximize device performance and meet consumer expectations. With more than 2.5 billion SD memory cards in the market today, the new high-speed performance capabilities will co-exist with earlier SD memory cards still used by consumers, as those cards are still interoperable with the newest host devices.

New SD memory cards and devices bearing the following new performance symbols may now begin entering the marketplace:

The new Ultra High Speed (UHS) symbol can be found exclusively on SDXC and SDHC products. SDXC or SDHC products with the UHS-I symbol offer the fastest bus-interface speeds available today, capable of supporting data transfer speeds up to 104 Megabytes per second. UHS-I quadruples the existing maximum possible speed of 25 Megabytes per second. UHS bus interfaces are backwards compatible. SDXC UHS-I and SDHC UHS-I memory cards achieve greatest performance when paired with a UHS-I device and allow consumers to record HD resolution videos, plus perform other simultaneous recording functions.

The new UHS Speed Class symbol can be found exclusively on SDXC UHS-I and SDHC UHS-I products. UHS Speed Class 1 designates SD memory cards and products with a performance option designed to support real-time video recording. This symbol will be found on SDXC UHS-I or SDHC UHS-I memory cards. Consumers can realize the full potential of recording real-time broadcasts and capturing videos using a digital video camera by pairing their devices with UHS Speed Class 1 memory cards.
The existing Speed Class symbols for non-UHS SD, SDHC and SDXC products are Class 2, Class 4, Class 6 and Class 10. They refer to the minimum write speed performance of the memory card. The symbols may be found on memory cards and devices, including video and digital cameras. For greatest performance, users should pair their devices with the corresponding SD memory card. The Association has created two videos to show best uses for the variety of SD memory cards available today; to view, visit www.sdcard.org/videos. The Association also offers an online resource, www.sdcard.org/cardchoice, for users to explore the variety of SD memory cards types for new and existing devices.

“The world-leading SD memory card standard has increased the value, usefulness and longevity of consumer electronic products by allowing consumers to easily upgrade their devices to meet their needs and budgets,” said Paul Ritchie, executive director of the SD Association. “The new high-speed symbols are designed to make it easier for consumers to take advantage of the massive storage and incredible speeds offered in SDXC and SDHC products.”

HDW : Fantastic we now have two new symbols to confuse us and we are back at the number “one” after reaching class “ten” for video in todays cards. What the hell are they playing at who sits down and thinks of these stupid ideas…not someone who works with this media that’s for sure.

If it’s capable of recording HD then whats wrong with having the letters HD on the cards and as for the transfer rate use the number 104 then we know at a glance what the card is capable of…I can think of a few choice names for the meaning of the letters SD Association…the first one being STUPID…!

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced semiconductor technology solutions, today announced the industry’s first production of 20 nanometer (nm) class NAND chips for use in Secure Digital (SD) memory cards and embedded memory solutions. Based on this cutting-edge technology, the introduction of 32 gigabit (Gb) MLC NAND will expand the company’s memory card solutions for smart phones, high-end IT applications and high-performance memory cards.

Mr. Soo-In Cho, president, Memory Division, Samsung Electronics, said “In just one year after initiating 30nm-class NAND production, Samsung has made available the next generation node 20nm-class NAND, which exceeds most customers requirements for high-performance, high-density NAND-based solutions.” He added, “The new 20nm-class NAND is not only a significant step forward in process design, but we have incorporated advanced technologies into it to enable substantial performance innovation.”

Samsung’s 20nm-class MLC NAND has a 50 percent higher productivity level than 30nm-class MLC NAND. The write performance of a 20nm-class-based, eight gigabyte (GB) and higher density, SD card is 30 percent faster than the 30nm-class NAND and it delivers a speed-class rating of 10 (read speed of 20MB/s, write speed of 10MB/s). By applying cutting-edge process, design and controller technology, Samsung also has secured reliability levels comparable to 30nm-class NAND.

Samsung Electronics first began producing 32Gb NAND with 30nm-class process technology in March 2009. Now it is shipping SD card samples to customers that are built with 20nm-class 32Gb NAND and will expand production later this year.

Memory cards based in the 20nm-class will be available from 4GB through 64GB densities

Samsung’s timely introduction of its high-performance premium NAND will better support the growing memory requirements of high-density smartphones, high-end IT applications and high-performance memory cards.