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Solid-State DV Camcorder
melorama writes "The NAB convention passed 2 weeks ago, and I'm surprised nobody has pointed out the really neat Solid State Video Camcorder that was unveiled by Panasonic. It seems a bit kludgy right now (it records onto a series of PCMCIA cards), but it definitely beats the klunky Avid/Ikegami Camcutter (aka Editcam) from several years back, which records onto a self-contained harddisk. This is certainly a blow to Sony, which is working on a camera acquisition system that uses a blue-laser optical disc (read: moving parts) technology."
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I don't know how much a "blow" this will be to Sony, considering that the main reason for including moving parts (read: disks) is because of cost per unit of storage space, and not the cost of integration. I'm sure Sony could throw a solid state disk into their camera without much effort.
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
With any type of real market, these prices should come down very nicely.
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I know flash memory has dropped in price, but it's still not THAT cheap. The article doesn't say price, but the going rate for compactflash is about $250/GB, and it's as much a commodity as any other PC component so don't expect big volume discounts. That's 5 grand worth of flash memory to record 72 minutes of video. You could fit the same onto a $15 miniDV tape. I suppose there's a few early adopters and professionals like TV news crews willing to pay the price.
Nowhere does the article make any claims that this solution will be cheap. He states that the camera will originally be targeted at news outfits, that will appreciate the speed and usually are not cash strapped when it comes to buying equipment.
Hank! White!
I was a Sony fan for a long time. Their video/VCR gear was always solid, functional and of exceptional quality.
In the past few years however they've really dropped the ball.
Their consumer-level camcorders are suffering the same rampant "featuritus" that their VCRs do and they've sacrificed good, solid reliable functionality for an incredible array of bells and whistles that really fill out a sales brochure but which your average user finds as useful as tits on a bull.
A couple of months ago I wanted a new top-end consumer camcorder (3CCD) and did a fairly comprehensive analysis of what was on the market.
Sony's offering was the DCRTRV950 which would have done the job, but thanks to the fact that they've loaded it up with "fluff" like Bluetooth and a myriad of other gee-whiz "features", it is very pricey for the basic functionality it delivers.
By comparison, Panasonic's MX500 is a brilliant camera. It has 3CCDs and all the really important high-end consumer functionality such as manual focus, zebra stripes, 3megapixel stills, etc. Just about the only feature I won't be using is the direct to MPEG recording that allows you to create MPEG files directly onto the memory card (but I'm sure many others will find this handy)
Here in New Zealand, the Sony DCRTRV950 is priced at around NZ$6K and even Sony's single CCD DCTRV50 has a list price of NZ$4299.
By comparison, the 3CCD Panasonic MX500 cost me under $3K, which meant I could afford some nice accessories to go with it.
Picture quality wise, the Sony and Panasonic offerings are very close -- the Sony having slightly better low-light performance -- but the difference is nowhere near worth paying double the price for.
I'm extraordinarily happy with my Panansonic's attitude of providing good, solid, basic functions at an affordable price.
So long as Sony continue down the path of placing more emphasis on sizzle than steak they won't see me buying any of their products anytime soon.
I would prefer Sony's option, and on this Sony it has all the bells and whistles you'd want.
Sony's Cam from the mentioned link:
The new system offers familiar optical disc benefits, including split-second random access, no physical head contact during record/playback, and cost efficiency associated with the media. A single disc holds 90 minutes of DVCAM material or 45 minutes of MPEG IMX material recorded at 50 Mbps, 55 minutes at 40 Mbps, and 75 minutes at 30 Mbps.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
You can already record an hour or so of VHS/VCD quality video onto a memory stick with sound with the newer Sony digital cameras. This thing isn't being targeted to people wanting to film their kids, but rather professional cinematographers/TV people.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
It's really ignorant to equate 3 min clip on a digital camera to the superiority of true DV. That's like comparing a drive to Florida for 12 hours to a 2 hour plane ride. Sure, they both get you there, but it's a vastly different experience.
Even with a cheap-o MiniDV cam, it's lightyears ahead of any $2k digital camera can do, as far as moving pictures/sound quality goes.
I will admit that for some people, a digital camera is "good enough" for them, but don't bother to say it's good enough for everybody. This camcorder, for the professionals, is really a huge step forward. For the rest of us, hopefully this tech will trickle down in 5 years.
Or you could record as much as you want, then load it into iMovie and cut it down to a few minutes you want to keep and delete the rest. That way your 3 minutes don't run out in the middle of something you wanted to keep.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Who (even in the media field) wants to juggle five pcmcia cards? Obviously there's nothing too standard about them if they're made by panasonic for this and only this. Sure, the laptop reading capability is nice, but you could accomplish that with a larger solid state memory module that acted like a USB2/Firewire hard disk and probably accomplish faster datarates than pcmcia anyways without sacrificing the convenience of connectivity. Breaking up the video over cards sounds like a recipe for disaster since presumably they will have to be organized in order in and out of the camera.
I like the idea of a solid state data module, but five PCMCIA cards sounds like a horrible horrible mistake. Make it bigger and do the USB2/ieee1394 thing and have happier customers.
Brian