Anyone that has attended one of my roadshow or masterclass events will know that I have always maintained that Sony have been working to reduce the cost of SxS cards. Indeed since purchasing my first 8Gb SxS Pro card almost 2 years ago the price has dropped by around 60%. Even so SxS cards are still been expensive items, so Sony looked at what they could do and this is what they have come up with. A new SxS MLC card and on top of that an adapter that allows you to use consumer Sony Memory Sticks.

MEAD-MS01 (bottom) and SxS MLC (top)

MEAD-MS01 (bottom) and SxS MLC (top)

First lets look at the MEAD-MS01. This is the same size as an SxS card and at first glance looks similar. The difference however is that it has a slot at the outer end to take a Memory Stick, above which is a small green LED. The memory stick sits inside the card, nothing sticks out. To release the memory stick you push it in and then it pops out. The card is similar in appearance to some of the 3rd party adapters that have been made to make the use of SD cards possible. However the build quality of this card is very good and I believe Sony have used higher grade plastics than some of the other adapters I have used. To use it in an original EX1 or EX3 you will need to upgrade the cameras firmware. Users will be able to do this themselves (at own risk) and I assume this also means that from next year other firmware updates will be available directly to end users of EX1 and EX3′s. I think the firmware update is needed to allow the camera to ensure that any previous files are closed before a new recording starts. This can be a problem with 3rd party SD card solutions that can lead to file corruption. As this is a Sony product, designed to work with the EX you can be sure that it will operate correctly. However Sony are keen to point out that you will be using consumer grade memory and they do not guarantee the reliability of the recording media, i.e. the memory sticks. A further restriction is that due to the lower card speed you cannot use the adapter for overcranking and non-standard frame rates. The recommended media is the Sony MS-HX range of memory sticks. I only used the card with the supplied MS-HX08 and this worked fine. I did not have any alternative cards to try. The lack of overcrank is less of a problem than it used to be as the new EX1R and PMW-350 have the ability to copy all the clips on one card to another card in one go. So you could shoot your overcrank footage on an SxS card and then copy the clips over to the adapter to free up space on the SxS card. You can do this with an original EX, but only one clip at a time which can be a pain with lots of clips. One thing to note is that this adapter won’t work with the SBAC-US10 USB SxS reader. It will however work with the PHX-MS240. The tentative suggested price for the Meade MS01 is 100 Euros, available December.

Low Cost SxS.

The new orange coloured low cost SxS-1 cards use MLC memory cells as opposed to the SLC cells used in the original blue SxS Pro cards. So what’s the difference? Well Sony have managed to keep the speed the same and the general day to day reliability should be the same, but MLC doesn’t last as long as SLC, so the new cards will have a limited lifespan. Typically MLC cells last for between 3,000 and  10,000 cycles while SLC lasts over 100,000 cycles (figures found online, not Sony’s). As a result of this Sony will be giving the new SxS-1 cards a limited life span, they estimate that a heavy user using the cards just about every day would take 5 years to use up the cards cycle life. The PMW-350 and EX1R will actually tell you home much of the cards life you have used. I don’t know what happens at the end of this period, whether the card will stop working in an EX or whether it’s simply a case that Sony won’t provide any warranty or backup service for cards that have “expired”. Either way I think this is a reasonable compromise. A card that lasts at least 5 years, probably a lot more for most users, for a fraction of the cost of a regular card is most welcome. If your using your cards enough to use up all your cycles then you should be making enough money to be able to replace them! That is of course assuming were still using SxS in 5 years time.

If you still don’t have enough cards you will soon be able to get the Sony PXU-MS240. This is a portable offload box designed for copying footage from SxS cards to an internal, removable eSata drive unit. Simply pop your full SxS card into the unit and the footage gets copied at around 8 times real time, freeing up the card for you to continue shooting. The eSata drive cartridge can be removed from the unit for long term storage or simply to give you more capacity by using multiple cartridges.

With so many storage options from both Sony and 3rd Parties the XDCAM EX workflow just goes from strength to strength. Give it another year or so and the cost of Memory Sticks will come down to the point where for many shoots you could use them like tapes, ie. only once.