Sony’s legacy of creating industry leading content creation tools took the next step today with the announcement of an HDCAM SR camcorder platform and upgrade roadmap that raises the price / performance standard for broadcast and Digital Cinema production. The new platform will exist in both 2/3” and 35mm formats and will work in seamless concert with both tape and memory based media for “full cycle” workflow and archival capability.

The first iteration of the new platform is the recently introduced SRW-9000, which is now available. This 2/3” triple CCD camera writes to a built-in HDCAM SR recorder for a combination of high performance and operational portability. Some key features of the SRW-9000 are 1080/60P “overcrank” recording in 4:4:4; and 14-bit A/D conversion, which translates to a dynamic range of over 12 stops.

…continue reading Sony Details SRW-9000 Future Proof Roadmap

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We first saw the SRW-9000 back in April at NAB. It made a real impression in our booth and had us all excited about a shoulder mounted HDCAM SR camcorder. Sony promised the camera would be out in December ‘09, and they delivered. Abel will have the SRW-9000 available for both sale and rental within days. There are a number of reasons to be excited about this camera. It has the same proven chipset as the F23, and it records to the visually lossless HDCAM SR format. It shoots in 720p at up to 60 FPS, and 1080P at up to 60FPS as well. It records in 4:2:2: and 4:4:4 modes, offering the ultimate in quality for broadcast and Digital Cinema – and all of these features come in a shoulder-mounted form factor.

The big news today, though, is that Sony has upped the ante on the SRW-9000. They have announced that the SRW-9000 can be upgraded in the future. The 2/3″ block can be switched with a 35mm size sensor, the same as found in the F35. Sony will perform the upgrades to switch the sensor and add a PL mount. This is a serious option for owner-operators and rental houses everywhere. Additionally, they will offer an option to switch out the HDCAM SR tape-record mechanism for an SR Memory recorder. The memory recorder will record in HDCAM SR compression (Mpeg4 Simple Studio Profile) to extremely high-speed and large capacity memory cards. This technology is still in the works but promises to be the recording media of future Sony cameras. Lastly, they have announced a new deck, the SRW-5800/2, and an upgrade to their SRW-5800 deck, which will enable MXF file download in the Simple Studio Profile (SStP). This means that HDCAM SR video can be downloaded off a tape as data files. These are the first steps in making HDCAM SR a full data format. Needless to say this is a serious announcement that lays out Sony’s longer term vision.

Lucky for us, Jesse and I got our hands on the SRW-9000 and did some testing. We spent an afternoon with it, shot some charts and walked out to the water to get some footage. Here is a quick overview of what we found.

…continue reading Hands On With the SRW-9000