The Sony PMW-EX1 is a remarkable camcorder, but the solid state SxS cards are very expensive if you need to shoot hours of material. One solution that's gained huge popularity is to use SDHC cards in adaptors made by manufacturers such as Kensington. Hence KxS rather than SxS. This presentation leads you through the solution and explains some of the pitfalls as well as outlining the obvious advantages.

1. Matt Davis
www.mdma.tv/cb
Learning to
love the
EX1:

2. Things every owner should know:
Learn how to check and reset back Audio level adjustment is slow to
focus respond, riding levels is difficult
Experiment with Picture Profiles - find Low frequencies can cause audio ‘tinkle’
one you like, use variation of that to
switch colour temperature quickly Shoot progressive or face 25% drop in
rez
Accept that auto focus is rubbish, shot
transition is rubbish, auto white is 720p feels almost as fast as DV to edit
dangerous, drive it in manual! Fast pans: slow shutter or stutter.
Remember that Macro only works in Deal with it.
autofocus mode Own or rent enough storage to offload
once a day

3. SDHC cards
in PCI-Express adaptors
four hours at
high quality
for £300

4. Sitting on the shoulders of giants:
http://www.dvinfo.com

5. How it works:
Kensington 7:1 PCIexpress adaptor
SanDisk Extreme III 16 GB card
Works as if it’s an SxS card
Download is half speed of SxS
Other variations have been tested

6. The economics:
7 hour conference SxS Ingest SD Ingest Tape
1 camera shoot (7 hrs) 1 hr 10 mins 2 hr 20 mins 7 hours
2 camera shoot (14 hrs) 2 hr 20 mins 4 hr 40 mins 14 hours
Investment required £5,880 £1,050 £28 or £91

7. Remember this:
Not all SD cards work – in fact only a
few support HQ modes and none
support full 60fps
Not all adaptors work – suck it and see
approach, all hail the DVinfo posse
Almost all solutions are indoor
solutions because you can’t shut the
SxS door
But… if you want to do multicam of
long form video (presentations,
conferences, testimonials, court
evidence, et al) this solution works!

8. Waiting for WORMs:
Write Once Read Many
SD cards written once and fixed
(legally binding)
Started out at 128 MB, but video
capacities available through 2009
Significant price difference
between WORM and today’s SD
cards?
100 year life?

9. Until then – archiving:
Hard drives - two copies, because a file
does not exist until it exists in two places
spin disks up every three months
Copy BPAV of 8GB card to DVD-R DL
Blu-Ray BD-R: 25 GB for £5
reliable, cheap, laborious
XDCAM disks (PDW-U1) sometime,
probably a lot faster transfer than BluRay
but media more expensive

10. http://qurl.com/chmz2
matt@mdma.tv