OT: New video camera for the blog

[EEVblog]

The Canon XA series cameras are great.  We have the XA10 at work for backup and small shoots that don't require taking out our Sony production cameras.

The XA10 is identical to my HF G10, just without the XLR inputs.

The biggest plus to the the XA series are the dedicated XLR audio inputs and phantom power.  This will give you better selection of mics to use, manual control of the audio levels, and better sound as the use higher quality preamps.

I don't really need a better mic system. The quality from the internal mics is great, and for external the Rode VideoMic Pro and Senheiser G3 wireless mics with 3.5mm phono jacks are more than adequate performance for my needs.

[mariush]

Have you considered the sony HDR-CX900/B?:
it's also super-new as it was unveiled in CES 2014

Juts had a quick look.
A 1" sensor is enormous.
I like that it's new. The others just seem a bit long in the tooth.
But I hate manuals that don't show you what the on-screen indicators are. i.e. does it have a true usable audio level dB bargraph?
They are still pushing memory stick? 
BTW, I do have an E-Mount macro lens for my Sony NEX-5T photo camera, so in theory the NEX-VG30 is possible, but the price is insane, and changes lens is 10 times in a shoot is not nice on the camera.

It's the same internals, same sensor, same everything as that 4k camera Sony FDR-AX100.

Same specs, same everything, except they added night vision mode. But they dropped 4k recording and they disabled XAVC-S and it uses only the plain standard AVCHD (xavc-s would retain more quality from that sensor at same bitrate) and some audio modes are gone.
And it comes with the ligher NP-FV50 battery which typically lasts for 1h - 1 1/2h of recording time.

$500 cheaper though.

[EEVblog]

Advice to dave : Go on ebay and buy a few used HDD based camcorders. shoot from different angles. simply plug in usb and copy files over.

Thanks, but that's not a good idea because
1) I'd be buying ancient camcorders, almost certainly with limited functionality for my needs. I'd be taking step backwards.
2) The hard drives might add noticeable noise to the audio
3) Taking out an SD card and popping it in my machine is easier and more flexible than bringing the camera to the PC and sticking in a USB cable.

SD cards are unreliable. I have a camcorder with Sd card. bump it while filing and you have corrupted files. the problem is the edge wiping contact of SD cards.

I've done about 700 videos with SD cards without a single such issue, barring this bug which is not related to the contact.
I've also done a ton of videos with waterproof HD camcorders in harsh physical conditions without a single issue either.
How about those millions of GoPros?

I know you love hard drives because you design them for a living, but really, for basic camcorder internal use they should relegated to the history bin.
They still have a niche for external recording boxes for massive amounts of data of course. But other than that SD cards killed them long ago and rightly so.

[Carrington]

Gee! One inch. it can collect more light.
And its price is not extortionate. Great!

[EEVblog]

It's the same internals, same sensor, same everything as that 4k camera Sony FDR-AX100.

They seem to share the same manual too.

And it comes with the ligher NP-FV50 battery which typically lasts for 1h - 1 1/2h of recording time.

I need huge battery life.
That's one of the benefits of my Canon, my battery lasts a good 4-5 hours.
The Panasonic 920 is pretty horrible in this regard, barely 1 hour recording, or double with the extended battery pack. No wonder they need a fan, it draws 9W while recording.

[EEVblog]

Scratch the Sony HDR-CX900
http://youtu.be/vG8bI7BJ0ko?t=1m59s

That audio level meter is a consumer level joke. I need a proper professional dB level meter like my Canon has.
The canon can also mix internal and external audio which has proven invaluable.
Slow autofocus too it seems.
Add in the proprietary shoe mount and multi-USB connector and it's not very appealing.

[mariush]

My CX410VE came with the NP-FV50 as well, I can record about 90-110 minutes on battery, with lcd screen on. A bit less if I'm moving around a lot (the balanced optical stabilisation with servos and all that uses a bit of "juice".  But that big ass sensor on the new cameras probably uses more power.

There's a NP-FV70 battery which lasts about 2 and a half - 3 hours and a NP-FV100 that can do up to 5-6 hours.   The NP-FV100 battery is about $90-100 on Sony's website.

[Legit-Design]

The G30/XA25 looks really good.
Some new feature I don't have that would be very useful
- MP4 recording (also simultaneous) which allows faster direct upload for non-edited stuff

One thing to note about MP4 vs AVCHD, while they are using same codec they are not most likely using the same settings
http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/general-hd-720-1080-acquisition/515640-mp4-avchd.html

This is certainly NOT true, logically or in fact. The AVC h.264 compression comes in lots of variants - these include whether lossless CABAC encoding is used, the number of reference frames, the bitrate etc. Even within the different 'profiles' (baseline, main, etc.) there are variants. For example, on one Panasonic camera, the AVCHD at 60p uses 28Mbps, and 'high profile' and CABAC. The 30p MP4 uses 'main profile' and no CABAC at 20Mbps. It is not obvious which is better, but they sure are different.

When comparing same codec and using more advanced (more computing intensive) features like CABAC, it can squeeze better picture quality from smaller bitrates. CABAC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context-adaptive_binary_arithmetic_coding
I'm not saying this is the case, but it most likely will be. Would have to do a comparison what canon cameras use. Like everyone knows MP4 is just the wrapper.

[free_electron]

Advice to dave : Go on ebay and buy a few used HDD based camcorders. shoot from different angles. simply plug in usb and copy files over.

Thanks, but that's not a good idea because
1) I'd be buying ancient camcorders, almost certainly with limited functionality for my needs. I'd be taking step backwards.

not necessarily. A hdr xv550 is barely two years old. Uses h264 compression and delivers excellent video.

2) The hard drives might add noticeable noise to the audio

no they don't. These drives uses a special data layout (they behave like fat to the outside world) .

3) Taking out an SD card and popping it in my machine is easier and more flexible than bringing the camera to the PC and sticking in a USB cable.

True. Professional shooters use a drive recorder plugged in to the camera. When done , unplug the box and take it to the computer.


[/quote]SD cards are unreliable. I have a camcorder with Sd card. bump it while filing and you have corrupted files. the problem is the edge wiping contact of SD cards.
[/quote]

I've done about 700 videos with SD cards without a single such issue, barring this bug which is not related to the contact.
I've also done a ton of videos with waterproof HD camcorders in harsh physical conditions without a single issue either.
How about those millions of GoPros?[/quote] i have a sony actioncam (the latest and greatest that records in micro sd). Nothing but trouble. When mounted on the car and hitting a pothole the image file is sometimes corrupted. If the card is not exactly the right speed you get buffer overruns .
Nothing beats a factory installed memory as it will always be the correct speed and format. I had to try at least 3 different cards to get one that could mainatain 1920x1080 at fastest rate for longer than 5 minutes. Most of them would overrun. And then there is fragmentation of the flash.

I don't like those things. Nothing but trouble. Far less hassle to have a turnkey system with the correct memory factory installed.

[EEVblog]

A hdr xv550 is barely two years old. Uses h264 compression and delivers excellent video.

What's the advantage of that? It's got built in flash, so does my current one.
I thought you were talking about hard drives?

i have a sony actioncam (the latest and greatest that records in micro sd). Nothing but trouble.

Then I'd wager that's a problem with the Sony actioncam.
Also, Micro SD != SD
I can't see how you can say SD cards are inherently unreliable based on this one example?

Nothing beats a factory installed memory as it will always be the correct speed and format. I had to try at least 3 different cards to get one that could maintain 1920x1080 at fastest rate for longer than 5 minutes. Most of them would overrun. And then there is fragmentation of the flash.

I've had zero issues with any SD cards I've ever used. The odd one has failed, but that's it.

I don't like those things. Nothing but trouble. Far less hassle to have a turnkey system with the correct memory factory installed.

But it's not as flexible. I know. My current HF G10 has 32GB of inbuilt flash memory but I hardly ever use it, why? Because it's not as convenient or as flexible as removable SD cards.

[Legit-Design]

i have a sony actioncam (the latest and greatest that records in micro sd). Nothing but trouble.

Then I'd wager that's a problem with the Sony actioncam.
Also, Micro SD != SD
I can't see how you can say SD cards are inherently unreliable based on this one example?

Highly recommend watching this. Same guys that designed and brought that open source arm fpga laptop. (https://www.crowdsupply.com/kosagi/novena-open-laptop)

All "managed FLASH" devices, such as SD, microSD, and SSD, contain an embedded controller to assist with the complex tasks necessary to create an abstraction of reliable, contiguous storage out of FLASH silicon that is fundamentally unreliable and unpredictably fragmented.

Funny how he says it "You're not really storing your data. You are storing a probabilistic approximation of your data."

[EEVblog]

All "managed FLASH" devices, such as SD, microSD, and SSD, contain an embedded controller to assist with the complex tasks necessary to create an abstraction of reliable, contiguous storage out of FLASH silicon that is fundamentally unreliable and unpredictably fragmented.

Technically true, but way over-exaggerated risk.
Funny how few of the hundreds of millions who rely on SD cards daily relatively few issues.
BTW, the camera built in ones probably have the same system, as they appear as drives when plugged in, so likely easier to implement as an actual SD card controller with USB reader effectively?

[bwat]

All "managed FLASH" devices, such as SD, microSD, and SSD, contain an embedded controller to assist with the complex tasks necessary to create an abstraction of reliable, contiguous storage out of FLASH silicon that is fundamentally unreliable and unpredictably fragmented.

Don't, or didn't (I'm not up to date with these things), harddisks work on the same principle. You send stuff to the controller, it writes it when it sees fit and handles bad sectors in the process. IIRC some of the bad sector handling is quite involved using remapping algorithms and the like.

[EEVblog]

Don't, or didn't (I'm not up to date with these things), harddisks work on the same principle. You send stuff to the controller, it writes it when it sees fit and handles bad sectors in the process. IIRC some of the bad sector handling is quite involved using remapping algorithms and the like.

Cue Free_Electron!
He designs hard drives controllers and has posted on how involved this is before.

[Legit-Design]

Don't, or didn't (I'm not up to date with these things), harddisks work on the same principle. You send stuff to the controller, it writes it when it sees fit and handles bad sectors in the process. IIRC some of the bad sector handling is quite involved using remapping algorithms and the like.

I haven't heard about harddisks having 80% of them marked faulty and only using the remaining 20%. If the manufacturer got something like that I think they would just throw the whole thing in the bin. Hard disks have just different kind of failures all together than sd cards.

[bwat]

Don't, or didn't (I'm not up to date with these things), harddisks work on the same principle. You send stuff to the controller, it writes it when it sees fit and handles bad sectors in the process. IIRC some of the bad sector handling is quite involved using remapping algorithms and the like.

I haven't heard about harddisks having 80% of them marked faulty and only using the remaining 20%. If the manufacturer got something like that I think they would just throw the whole thing in the bin. Hard disks have just different kind of failures all together than sd cards.

I'm sorry but I think you may have to work on your reading comprehension. My comments were in reaction to the quotation which you gave:

All "managed FLASH" devices, such as SD, microSD, and SSD, contain an embedded controller to assist with the complex tasks necessary to create an abstraction of reliable, contiguous storage out of FLASH silicon that is fundamentally unreliable and unpredictably fragmented.

The gist of my comment was that I believed harddisks worked on the same principle, i.e. there is a microcontroller which assists with "complex tasks necessary to create an abstraction of reliable" storage from a "unreliable and unpredictably fragmented" medium. Your reply doesn't address my tentative claim.

[miguelvp]

SSDs (Solid State Drives) instead of HDDs (Hard Disk Drives)?

SD cards are awful!

[German_EE]

Anything but Sony, poor technical support, poor customer service and they might not be around in a few years.

[Lightages]

Dave:

I think you need to look a bit more into my suggestion. My suggested workflow is no more complicated than, not that much anyway, than what you do now. The difference is you pull out an SSD instead of an SD and put it into your computer drive dock. The Black Magic Hyperdrive starts and stops automatically with the camera and gives yu a much faster workflow right from the beginning. It can also be mounted directly on the tripod or another plate with the camera.

OK, I do understand that right now you fire up a small handheld camcorder and that is it. The added size and weight of what I am talking about sounds like it is not to your liking. I also understand that. I am just trying to propose a higher end setup that gives you the best of both worlds. Connect the Hyperdrive when you can't  be let down, or don't connect it when you want a light hand held setup.

Yes the price of all of the higher end equipment is a bit of a slap in the face, but that's the cost of stepping up to the next level. My kit probably cost me in the neighborhood of $20,000USD and more but you don't need to spend that. A really major step up in work flow speed and reliability will cost you around $5K, I think. If you just want a camera without bugs then good luck, especially with Canon. They really seem to give no care to what they fix or don't fix.

[IanJ]

Ok, still looking sideways here's some more food for thought:-

Mobidaptor:- SD card interface to USB to anything! So I guess you could connect a USB interfaced SSD directly to the SD card interface of your cam. 32gb max.

http://packetgods.com/mobidapter/
http://www.pcx.com.au/ProductDetail.aspx?ProductId=2280

The demo pic shows it plugged into a phone SD interface and a USB pen drive into it. NB. Appears to be a 2009 product.



Ian.

[richms]

Hi,

Thinking sideways a little.....it appears EYEFI sd cards compatible with certain camcorders.

Hopeless in my testing with them. Long time before files start to come thru, seems to only be able to transmit the file once it has stopped recording and the speed it gets over 2.4GHz wifi in an urban environment is hopeless like all 2.4GHz wifi is.

Once they push one out that does wide channel 5GHz 802.11ac and can transmit as it is recording the file, might be onto something.

[Rasz]

The gist of my comment was that I believed harddisks worked on the same principle, i.e. there is a microcontroller which assists with "complex tasks necessary to create an abstraction of reliable" storage from a "unreliable and unpredictably fragmented" medium. Your reply doesn't address my tentative claim.

Main difference is in persistence of mapping between physical spot in space/time continuum where your data is stored, and a virtual sector number.

Hard drives/ raw flash/ CompactFlash / SmartMedia / I think also xD - all of those map more or less 1:1, and let You, the user, choose physical spot on the medium. Hard drives over time gained ability to remap bad sectors, but they do it only when encountering unrecoverable error, and you can still get physical address from the Service Area (g-list, p-list).

Secure Digital / Memory Stick  / SSD - those ones keep virtual mapping that is dynamic and constantly changing, they also run housekeeping jobs in the background sorting/shuffling data around, erasing continuous regions to optimize write speed etc. Youm never know where your data is stored exactly (unless you know particular flash controller used and its mapping algorithm).


Back to Daves camera. SD card spec  does have CRC32, but vendors notoriously ignore it or simply dont implement in the first place. This can cause a situation where camera thinks its writing data when one of the 4 data pins is randomly glitched. Then you have bugs in fat implementations in embedded firmware, all camera vendors  want you to format card inside the camera, because firmware might not be able to deal with fragmentation, unusual filesystem layout etc.
Edit: they are also rather adamant about deleting files ONLY inside camera. Card that was inserted into a pc, files deleted there, and inserted back into camera is _NOT GUARANTEED TO WORK RELIABLY_ because of said filesystem handling bugs. This might be what Dave is experiencing.

Yes, this is stupid in 2014, 27 years into Fat lifecycle. But so is over 10000 global variables in Toyota car computer controlling fly-by-wire throttle.

[EEVblog]

I think you need to look a bit more into my suggestion. My suggested workflow is no more complicated than, not that much anyway, than what you do now. The difference is you pull out an SSD instead of an SD and put it into your computer drive dock. The Black Magic Hyperdrive starts and stops automatically with the camera and gives yu a much faster workflow right from the beginning. It can also be mounted directly on the tripod or another plate with the camera.

OK, I do understand that right now you fire up a small handheld camcorder and that is it. The added size and weight of what I am talking about sounds like it is not to your liking. I also understand that. I am just trying to propose a higher end setup that gives you the best of both worlds.

What does it gain me? Practically nothing.
The last thing I want is cables coming out my camcorder into some sort of external recording box that also needs it's own charging. Just one more device to go flat, and one stuff to snag on when moving the camera around. A self contained camcorder with SD cark works the best for what I do. No mess, no fuss.
If I'm going to have cables coming out the camera then I'm going to have something useful, like a bigger external monitor on the shoe mount. I'm thinking about getting one of these for my new bench shots, as it's hard to see the camcorder screen from two meters away.

Connect the Hyperdrive when you can't  be let down

If I want something that won't let me down them I'll use a dual SD card camcorder that write to both at once.
Apart from this big in this particular camera I have never lost any material.
The proper solution here is to simply get a camera that doesn't have this potential bug.

Yes the price of all of the higher end equipment is a bit of a slap in the face, but that's the cost of stepping up to the next level. My kit probably cost me in the neighborhood of $20,000USD and more but you don't need to spend that. A really major step up in work flow speed and reliability will cost you around $5K, I think.

How will this improve my workflow? I can't see how it can possibly do that. If anything it's just more stuff to get in my way.

[EEVblog]

Edit: they are also rather adamant about deleting files ONLY inside camera. Card that was inserted into a pc, files deleted there, and inserted back into camera is _NOT GUARANTEED TO WORK RELIABLY_ because of said filesystem handling bugs. This might be what Dave is experiencing.

Yeah, might have something to do with it. But in this case the card was formatted in the camera, I shot some stuff, took the card to the PC to check I had some things right (just read the card), put it back in and then it didn't record all the material after that point.
I usually format the card in camera before a shoot, but sometimes I forget and just record in addition to all the previous stuff on there.

[IanJ]

Edit: they are also rather adamant about deleting files ONLY inside camera. Card that was inserted into a pc, files deleted there, and inserted back into camera is _NOT GUARANTEED TO WORK RELIABLY_ because of said filesystem handling bugs. This might be what Dave is experiencing.

Yeah, might have something to do with it. But in this case the card was formatted in the camera, I shot some stuff, took the card to the PC to check I had some things right (just read the card), put it back in and then it didn't record all the material after that point.
I usually format the card in camera before a shoot, but sometimes I forget and just record in addition to all the previous stuff on there.

Yep, just smells sooooo much like buggy firmware.

Ian.