Broadcast Technical Operator TV
Sony’s latest
XDCAM HD family member, the
PMW-500, achieves exactly what I think a tapeless, shoulder-mount 2/3in. camcorder must deliver in 2010 at the brink of the large-sensor era: an integration of low weight and power consumption with high-performance sensors and long record times.
In fact the PMW-500 is a mash-up of an XDCAM Professional Disc series
PDW-700/
F800 front end (
my PDW-F800 review here) and an XDCAM EX
PMW-350 rear end (
PMW-350 review here). It essentially outfits the short-bodied PMW-350—the 2/3-in. 3-CMOS XDCAM EX camcorder Sony introduced a year ago—with top-shelf, 1920×1080 progressive Power HAD FX CCD sensors and high-end compression from the Professional Disc format.
In other words, 50Mbps 4:2:2 MPEG-2
recorded to SxS cards for the first time.
As in case of the Professional Disc format, the PMW-500 uses MXF wrappers for clips captured to 50Mbps 4:2:2 MPEG-2 and 35Mbps 4:2:0 MPEG-2.
Alternatively, as in the case of EX camcorders like the
PMW-EX1 and
EX3, the PMW-500 also uses MP4 wrappers for clips captured to 35Mbps 4:2:0 MPEG-2 and HDV-equivalent 25Mbps 4:2:0.
Optional is MXF-wrapped SD video in the form of IMX 50Mbps 4:2:2 MPEG-2 and DVCAM, as well as MP4-wrapped DVCAM.
Like I said, a mash-up.
By eye, a PMW-500 is indistinguishable from a PMW-350. Body only (sans lens, viewfinder, mic, battery) weighs 7lbs. 15oz., hardly half a pound more than the lightweight PMW-350. While the PMW-500’s 29W power consumption (body only) exceeds the PMW-350’s 18W, it nevertheless marks a practical advance over the 40-watt average of the PDW-700/F800 series. Any way you slice it, impressive for a Full HD 3-CCD 2/3in. camcorder.
The PMW-500 incorporates all recent Sony pro camcorder capabilities, including standard 1080p and 720p frame rates, undercranking and overcranking, 15-second cache recording, time-lapse, slow shutter and frame accumulation, 2X focus magnification while shooting, Automatic Lens Aberration Compensation, glass ND filters with electronic CC filters for white balance, and the four HyperGamma curves common to all Sony CineAlta camcorders. Four channels of uncompressed 24-bit, 48kHz audio are provided.
The PMW-500’s dual SxS slots accept Sony’s just-introduced new generation of SxS-1 cards, featuring a 64GB card (SBS-64G1A, $900 list) that can capture 2 hours of 50Mbps HD422 MXF or 4 hours in 25Mbps mode. There’s also a new 32GB SxS-1 card (SBS-32G1A, $600).
Both new SxS-1 cards boast a 50-percent-faster 1.2Gbps maximum transfer speed compared to the 800Mbps of the blue SxS PRO and original SxS-1 cards. This may hasten on-location backups (other factors are involved, your mileage may vary).
They share the orange color of the earlier SxS-1 design but bear a distinctive red stripe on both their label and protective box. Note that with the exception of the recent
PMW-320, earlier XDCAM EX camcorders will require firmware updates to use the new SxS-1 cards.
A compatibility chart can be found here.
Sony’s XDCAM HD422 PMW-500 is a racehorse disguised as a durable workhorse. Its base price of $27,900 (even B&H; I checked) is not the pocket change of an HDSLR, but its seasoned underlying technologies won’t be different a year from now either.
Video Editing Systems HP Six-core Z400
Those users considering an
HP workstation now have four units to choose from: the top-of-the-line dual-processor
Z800 and
Z600, which both sport the fancy new case that HP introduced last year, and the less-expensive
Z400 and
Z200, both single-CPU computers that feature updated innards, but the legacy case from the older xw workstation line. The Z400 starts at $999 for a dual-core model, while the very small-form-factor Z200 starts at $699. In contrast, the Z600 starts at $1,829 and the Z800 at $2,109—both for single-processor systems—and scale much, much higher.
Because of disk requirements, for most serious producers, the purchase decision will come down to a comparison between the Z400 and either the Z600 or Z800. Last March and April, I reviewed the 3.33GHz dual-CPU 12/24-core version of the
HP Z800. In this review, I'll compare a 3.33GHz single-CPU six/12-core Z400 to that system.
By six/12, I mean a system equipped with a 3.33GHz
Intel Xeon W3680 CPU and six individual cores, each with Intel's
Hyper-threading Technology (HTT), which adds much of the functionality of an extra core. When a multi-processor-aware program goes to work, it can use virtually all the power in those cores, as you can see in Figure 1, recorded during the Sorenson Squeeze testing that I detail below.
Just to round out the testbed description, as with the Z800, the system was running 64-bit Windows 7 with 24GB of RAM, plus the same
Nvidia Quadro FX 4800 as the Z800. In a hot but not excessive configuration, expect the Z400 to cost between $4,500 and $5,000. To compute this, I configured 12GB of RAM and substituted the
Nvidia Quadro FX 3800, which should suffice for efficient operation. I used 24GB and the FX 3800 to match the Z800's configuration, not because I thought this was necessary for optimum performance.
In terms of agenda, in this segment, I'll describe the Z400 a bit, briefly discuss the multiple CPU performance conundrum, and then share some Z400 and Z800 comparisons in the streaming encoding space. Next time out, I'll focus on the much more difficult issue of comparing editing and rendering performance in Adobe CS5, and present comparative stats from Rhozet Carbon Coder. Let's start with a look at the Z400.
Under the hood
If you or I were the Z400, we'd have a serious case of sibling envy, since mom and daddy HP spent all the big bucks making the Z600/Z800 look fabulous, and nothing on us. All this beauty is on the inside stuff can only go so far. As HP explains, using the legacy case for the Z400 was a cost consideration; to meet the price points, the company had to sacrifice the new design. So there's no convenient handles for moving the unit, no cool baffles on the inside, no case that snaps shut like a Mercedes sedan, no fine Corinthian leather. Just kidding on the last part—Z800 doesn't have it either, and I seriously date myself.
All that said, however, the unit is still quite serviceable. The side cover snaps off, exposing the bare-bones inner chassis that lets you swap out PC cards and hard drives without a screwdriver. Better run for your Phillips head if your power supply fails, though, since it doesn't slide out, unlike that of the Z600/Z800. Of course, how often does that happen?
Actually, while you get a sense of tactile satisfaction with the Z600/Z800 when swapping graphics cards, memory, and the like, getting to components in the Z400 is faster and simpler. Take of the side cover, and you have immediate access to most components, with only a simple cowling to remove to access memory.
The only significant day-to-day functional difference is that the Z400 is louder than the Z800, which uses the sophisticated inner cowling to cool more efficiently. It's not loud enough to be distracting, but if you're looking for a quiet computer for noise-sensitive applications, the Z400 isn't it.
The multiple-CPU performance conundrum
The Z800 has 12/24 3.33GHz cores, and the Z400 has six/12 3.33GHz cores, so the Z800 should be twice as fast, right? Well, that depends on the efficiency of the software program itself, and how you're using it. For example, in this issue, we're looking at streaming encoders, including the Windows debut of
Telestream Episode Engine 6.
By way of background, with version 6,
Episode ($495),
Episode Pro ($995) and
Episode Engine ($3,995) all have a unified interface. Among other differences, Episode can only encode files serially, while Episode Pro can encode two files simultaneously. Episode Engine, which I tested, can encode up to 24 jobs simultaneously, as you can see in Figure 3. Obviously, on a multiple-core computer, Episode Engine will be the most efficient if you're encoding multiple files, or a single file to multiple outputs
Episode Engine also features Split and Stitch technology, which allows the encoder to break a single file into multiple pieces, encode the pieces, then stitch them back into a single file. This control is shown in Figure 4. If you're encoding a long file that Episode Engine can split into multiple components, multiple cores also helps.
Let's see how these various capabilities translate into performance results, with Table 1 telling the tale. The first trial is a 6-minute DV file encoded into
On2 Technologies' VP6 codec. With Split and Stitch technology enabled, the Z400 was 59 percent slower than the Z800. Without Split and Stitch, the difference dropped to less than 10 percent. If you're encoding single files and own Episode or Episode Pro, spending a lot more on the Z800 for large single-file encodes doesn't seem like a good investment.
Ditto for multiple-file encodes. Line three shows the comparative performance encoding 16 files to three formats each, for a total of 48 files. The Z400 was only 34 percent slower than the Z800, making the Z400 a very cost-effective encoding workstation if you have Episode Engine. With Episode and Episode Pro, you would expect the difference between the two systems to go way down, because Episode can only encode a single file at a time and Episode Pro two at a time. If you're buying a workstation to run either of these products, you might be better off with a much more affordable dual-core or quad-core solution.
If you do buy Episode Engine, or are considering it, rest assured that it will efficiently consume all the processor cores that you throw its way. You can see this in Figure 5, which shows Episode Engine flatlining all 24 cores of the HP Z800, which is very impressive. It may not be twice as fast as the Z400, but it's sufficiently faster that high-volume shops should consider Engine and a dual-CPU, 12/24-core system like the Z800.
