XDCAM

XDCAM is Sony's new Disk based recording system. It use a special type of disk called a Blu-Ray disk, simillar to a DVD disk but with much higher capacity, a whopping 27Gb on a single disk! By recording and storing your footage on a disk there can be significant time savings when it comes to editing as you have instant access to any shot on the disk, there is no need to digitise or spool through hours of rushes to get to the shot you are looking for. In addition you can call up a number of thumbnail pictures of all the scenes on the disk helping you find that elusive shot. In addition with the right disk drive (or deck) you can export low resolution proxy clips to a laptop or other non-linear edit system very quickly using a standard networking interface and cable. You can use the proxy clips to edit you item, before then letting the system digitise just the footage you have used in your edit. This is a great timesaver for loaction edits such as TV news.

The pictures are recorded on the disks using two different compression systems, either DVCAM or MPEG2 (IMX). This means that a user that already has a lot of money invested in DVCAM equipment can retain a very good range of interoperability. The cameras are widescreen switchable and have some of the latest CCD's producing stunning looking pictures.

The PDW-510P is a DVCAM only camcorder and the PDW-530P (pictured below) is a switchable DVCAM/MPEG2 camcorder.