Overcoming the cost of SxS media (Chapter 2)
Re-Introducing XxS.
(Created 27 November 2008: Updated 20 Oct 2009)
 By Guy Barwood - Glass Eye View
www.xdcamexinfo.com

FAQ  (frequently asked questions)

Latest News:

20 Oct 09: Its been a while since an update.  Sony have just announced a new EX1R and PMW350 which go a long way to address many of the shortcommings of the current options.  On face value they appear great moves, although who at Sony thought we want to use memorystick?  For the love of everything holy, memorystick?  oh boy...
17 Jun 09: Efilms have just announced a pre-manufactured ExpressCard range for using external drives.  More info here.
14 Jun 09: I noticed a thread on the Cow that claims this site is "apparently misinterpreting information coming from other forums".  Unfortunately for Cow readers, and Craig Seeman, Craig is quite wrong and misguiding their readers.  This site has the most accurate information on using SD as SxS, much more than any forum and unlike sites like DVInfo & Creative Cow, we do not sensor information here based on sponsorship.  The problem is that not all people bother to read all the information.  It is quite clear on this site that there are multiple versions of the Delkin reader, some work and some don't, its even explained why, there is even a section titled "the demise of DxS".  The info on the redesign of this adaptor came to me directly from Delkin to me in a personal email, appeared on this site first and not from some forum rehash, and then was reproduced on other forums.  If you are going to comment on this site in forums, please get your own facts right in the first place unlike Craig Seeman (who is simply a victim of his own syndrome).  If I learn of something from a 3rd party or source, I do not word it as my own information.
Archived News:
 

Purpose of this page:  I wrote this page because while the few web forums discussing this matter contain a lot of information, they:

  1. are too long to read and fully follow the storey

  2. contain outdated and incorrect information based on initial testing.  If you don't read the complete thread (some of them have over 1000 posts) you are more likely to get wrong information than good information, I just saw this happen in the last day again costing a member financially.

  3. At least one well known forum is heavily censored to limit information on that site (including all references to this site).  Their 'summary' is also simplistic at best and already well out of date.  At times this page can be updated multiple times daily.

If you want to post to a forum I can and do post to, please go to this one: DVXUSER XDCAM EX FORUM and check out the FAST SDHC Memory for the EX1 & the new DxS based thread.  At least one other forum is being massively censored to remove references to this page (and who knows what other information) so I recommend you avoid that forum and stick to the one above, you simply can't trust what you read elsewhere is complete.

DISCLAIMER:  While every attempt is made to provide you with accurate information, no liability is accepted in any way for your use of the information on this page.  This is a clear cut case of use at own risk.  The page is based on information from a wide range of unverified sources and should not be taken as gospel.  Test everything for yourself to your own satisfaction prior to use in production.

Introduction (click here to jump to the good stuff)

Click here to jump to the compatibility test list

Click here to view the archive of the final version of the original Chapter 1 of this article.

If you aren't up to date on the background to this page, please take the time to read the previous version here.  This was the start of this site and was sufficient while there was only one compatible adaptor on the market.

Background

When the Sony EX1 and SxS media was announced there was a lot of interest generated over this new breed of Sony production video cameras.  The camera itself seemed impressive as the first ever compact handycam format camera with a 1/2" type sensor block, however, at the time, of just as much interest was Sony's foray into a completely solid state media camera.  Panasonic have had their products based on P2 around for some time now however most avoided these products due to the extremely high cost for the media.  On face value this wasn't going to be the case with SxS, which promised to use the open specification Express Card 34 flash memory card.  Sony even claimed the formats benefits as it would allow cheap flash based media to be used as it was based on an open industry standard (Express Card 34).

Well time passed and we all know by now what the reality held, in many respects reality was far from the anticipated theory.  While much of what the EX1 promised to offer was provided, two important variations proved amazingly difficult to swallow.  First and foremost, the expectation of low cost high capacity flash media vanished.  Sony branded SxS media was announced as the only media compatible with the EX1 and prices were (and are at this time of writing) essentially equivalent to the same capacity Panasonic P2.  The only saving grace for the EX1 was the effective recording time with these cards was up to 3 times that of the recording time of DVCPro HD to P2.  The other major malfunction with the XDCAM EX cameras (continues with the EX3) is the total lack of any SD recording ability.  In a clear time of early adoption of HD by the market this camera would appeal to, SD is still a seriously mainstream requirement for producers.  These cameras forces producers to either edit in HD for SD only projects, or find their own way to down convert before editing started.

Fortunately Sony updated their free 'Clip Browser' software and the new version includes a export to SD AVI feature.  This greatly simplifies the process of working in SD with these HD only cameras, but they simply should have a SD ability from day one...

Back to SxS media and the cost.  Since the EX1 announcement there have been very few alternative Express Card flash memory products on the market.  One well know one is the Lexar 4/8/16GB cards however these cards have not been an option for 2 reasons:

  1. Express Cards have 2 internal interfaces that a card can use.  They can either use USB or PCI Express.  Most Express Cards tend to use the USB internal interface while Sony use the PCI Express interface.  The PCI Express interface has significant speed capability advantages over USB but it is more difficult and expensive to use over USB.  Its a legitimate reason why SxS costs more than generic cards, but 10x factor by a long shot...  On release, only the PCI Express interface appears to be enabled by the EX1.

  2. Speed:  Sony's SxS cards are fast, period.  Lexar's cards are slow, period...  Another reason why SxS is expensive, but once again, not a factor of 10x the cost.  Intel has recently announced a line of solid state hard drives with speeds which well and truly trump SxS and they are much much cheaper than SxS per GB.  The game is up Sony, your cards are a rip off even as fast as they are.....

What Happened Next?

OK, so at NAB 08 Sony release their 60GB hard drive with SxS connector.  At a price only half as economic as SxS flash media, this device has to mount externally, be powered separately and doesn't support recording of over cranking frame rates (where the data rate climbs well above the standard recording frame rates (up to around 2.5 times)).  Unconfirmed, but it seems like this HDD uses an USB internal connection (not PCI Express) so Sony had to update the EX1 to support this unit (the EX3 shipped supporting it).  For the EX1 this was achieved with the release of firmware 1.11: torrent.  Most countries will update customers EX1 to 1.11 for free however the US want to charge over US$100 to do this, even though it fixes bugs (so Sony are now charging to fix cameras under warranty?)  Sony did release this EX1 firmware onto their public web server for a short period of time, but that was long enough to allow it to propagate amongst EX1 users who could easily install it themselves (OK, so some find it easier than others...).  We have put together a basic video showing an EX1 going through the firmware upgrade process, you can watch it here.  It is silent for about the first minute.


Watch upgrading the Sony EX1 to Firmware 1.11 in HD here.

So not long ago someone tried to test the Lexar cards again.  Low and behold, with the EX3 (from day 1) and EX1 with firmware 1.11 the cameras suddenly recognise the media.  This seemed pretty amazing as these cards are really low cost compared to SxS.  Unfortunately their write performance did prove to be their undoing.  While they work most of the time in SP (25Mbps), in HQ (35Mbps) they don't fair too well with media errors happening from a few sec to a few minutes of recording :-(

Discovery of KxS

So then the quest for other options continued.  People started testing Express Card card readers.  CF cards are actually wider than Express Cards so that was never going to work well (CF cards would be hanging out), so other card reader were tried.  I tried the Sandisk Express card reader without success (unrecognised media) however others found an one obscure card to be showing promise.  This card was the Kensington 7 in 1 Express Card reader (credit goes to Alister Chapman for first testing this adaptor, not me!).  At the time, no other reader had been found to either work, or work as well as this one.  This includes Sony's ironically named EX1 Express Card reader, the already mentioned SanDisk Express Card reader, the AFT branded reader (which works ok for a while then it seems heat causes errors to occur).

With this Kensington card reader and a quality high speed SD (SDHC actually) card, the EX1/3 would recognise the inserted media (subsequently I have seen one report of the SxS EX30 desk also working with KxS).  More testing pursued and it was found a unique combination of reader and card would give as reliable recording with standard shooting modes as SxS Pro.  It was also more reliable than the SxS 60GB HDD.  Tests included rapid switching between slots while recording, continuous recording and tests to find the limit of over cranking (40fps in 24p mode seems the upper safe limit although some get up to 50fps).  Steven Thomas first tried the Sandisk Extreme III 30Mbps card, which prompted me to suggest their Ultra II 15Mbps card for economy and apparent near identical card performance (comparing Steven's benchmark of the Extreme III vs my benchmark of the Ultra II).  Steven got his Ultra II in before I received my Kensington reader so got to test this combo first and reported what I had suspected, it worked as well as the Extreme III.

KxS was subsequently born and has been adopted to a point of extinsion of the reader in many cases.  K represents Kensington and S represents Sandisk, the manufacturer of the Ultra II card which quickly because the card most recommended, the x is the bond that glues them together.

Introducing XxSSDHC + Express Card Reader as XDCDAM EX media???

With the Kensington adaptor often proving difficult to purchase some other variations of this type of combinations were found to work for some, although some of these have their qwerks users were happy to work with them to gain the cost savings.  Picking up on the naming trend of KxS, some of these variations generated KxT (Kensington with Transcend 16GB Class 6 Card) and IxS or IxT (the I-Dot branded reader with the same Sandisk or Transcend cards).  XxS represents a generic term for all these combinations, when X represents any reader and S represents any SDHC card.

The demise of KxS

One of the biggest problems of KxS was the availability of the Kensington card reader (as previously noted).  In Australia, 2 months after this started, the only approved supplier of this card still hasn't had anything to ship.  At this time there are a large number of mixed reports of Kensington cancelling orders and discontinuing this card reader.  After multiple failed attempts to contact their product manager, no one really knows what is going on.  It seems it depends who you talk to at Kensington determines as to what answer you get on the status of these readers/writers.  Sufficed to say B&H have now discontinued sales of this card.

The Birth of DxS

With the unknown status and complete lack of availability of the Kensington card, others obviously continued the hunt for a replacement.  On the morning of Wednesday 26/11 I received an email from Van Styles telling me of a reader he had come across which was working for him and allowed the SD card to mount flush.  My ears pick up, I made some enquiries, found a local supplier, purchased one and started testing.  After more testing than I put into the Kensington card I have yet to have a single problem with this reader.  Indeed this reader/writer allows the SD card to mount flush allowing the EX1s door to close.  This does introduce a handling requirement for inserting the combo but more on that later.

So which one is it?  OK, here you go, this is the one.  However, buyer beware, over time we have found that there were two different versions of this eFilms adaptor meaning some will work and some won't.  Also, this card, like the Kensington is superseded and so next to impossible to source.


Delkin ExpressCard 34 6 In 1 with Sandisk Ultra II 16GB loaded.


Front and back of packaging (note you can see the eFilm logo on the card through the front window)

Unfortunately there have been a few dead on arrival problems with some eFilm adaptors, not what anyone hoped for. In some cases it appears the spring loaded push/eject mount is not as robust as the push/pull types once they are used in real production environments.

Please note:  There is an NEWER version of the Delkin Express Card reader which does not work properly.  It can be identified in two ways.:

The NEW card (do NOT get this one):

The OLD card (the one you should get if looking for an eFilms)


OLD Delkin, get THIS one

The demise of DxS

One of the biggest problems of Delkin is similar to the Kensington's, they are a discontinues model that are very difficult to source.  Add to this there are two identical looking units of which only one works, it makes it very difficult to source the appropriate adaptor. 
Note:  The image of the card on their web site without the eFilm or big DD logo does not exist as an actual product marking (its a generic image),

The birth of the MxR Adaptor (MxS = MxR adaptor with SDHC)

MxR Adaptor

Once again the market was almost dry of compatible adaptors, so along come another Aussie who has been working quietly in the background on having an adaptor made to work with the camera and allow the EX1's door to close.  Ross (the Aussie) has dubbed his adaptor the MxR adaptor and it is available directly from his web site http://www.e-films.com.au.  Don't confuse the eFilms in his web site with the eFilms on Delkins card, that is purely coincidence.

These adaptors are NOT ones I have had any real personal experience with, a number of people have received them and report them working however there are also a few little problems with them.  All the problems are associated with the size of the adaptor though, not its reliability (excluding one DOA).  Apparently some adaptors are a bit tight getting in and out of some camera slots and also some SDHC cards can get a bit stuck in the adaptor due to the tight fit.

Edit: 11 Jan 08:  I handled a MxR adaptor very quickly tonight and confirmed a few small issues with them.  First, and most trivially the Ultra II SD card was quite 'sticky' when ejecting, I can easily see how a card might get stuck in one and not eject properly.  More importantly I found it was pretty easy to eject the SD card from the MxR adaptor by pushing the combo into the camera without care for this issue (ie treating it like SxS or KxS).  It did this the first time I inserted it and the SD card ejected.  This has the potential to stop recording on the other slot, the same as could happen with the Delkin eFilm adaptor.  You have to ensure you don't allow your finger to push too hard around the edge of the combo as this will push the SD card in, which then ejects the SD card when you take your finger away. If the SD card was to eject after the combo recognised the media, and it was recording on the other slot to anything but SxS, the camera is likely to stop recording.

The birth of the MxM Adaptor (MxS also = MxM adaptor with SDHC)

A few months after the MxR adaptor hits the market it is revealed there was another person (Marek) in the background with Ross who had done much of the development of the MxR adaptor.  In Feb 09, there appears there has was a falling out of the relationship between Ross and Marek causing their split.  Marek is now selling these adaptors independent to Ross at his new site http://mxmexpress.com under the MxM label.  No need to worry about all this other than it appearing to create competition in a market that otherwise had no competition. 

If you are interested in a MxR or MxM adaptor I suggest you simply purchase the one that is cheapest as they are the same card and it seems that both Ross and Marek have worked hard for these solutions so either way you are supporting this work.  I still wish they weren't a spring loaded eject mount though.

The birth of SxSxSDHC

April 2009 & Hoodman announce what has to be one of the worst named products ever (seriously, SxSxSDHC?  that's going in my "What were they thinking?" page, sounds like one of those crazy long car models).  Anyhoo, there is scant details of this adaptor at the moment as Hoodman seem to publish only a picture of the adaptor and a price, no other details including even the basics like its card retention mechanism & if the SDHC card sits flush...

Along with the SxSxSDHC (I don't think so, lets call it HxS) they are promoting their 'RAW' SDHC cards.  In fact they are only specifying compatibility with their own SDHC cards.  These Hoodman SDHC cards cost a small fortune, far exceeding any other card on the market.  This includes other lifetime warranty cards manufactured by the worlds leading flash memory manufacturers, used world wide by professional photographers everywhere such as Sandisk & Lexar.  Hoodman offer no technical data about their cards (read speeds) as they are simply labelled as Class 6 so you may well end up spending nearly 4x the cost in media only too take 2-3x longer too offload.  Its no wonder we've never seen, or even heard of these cards down under.  Maybe if Hoodman guaranteed to fund a re-shoot of your work if their card fails and you loose your data would it be worth it, otherwise their guarantee doesn't mean much as replacing the card will be the last thing on your mind if you've lost your data in a worst case scenario...

I can't see any real reason to pay this premium for HxS.  Either you are looking for a quality & cost balanced solution or you are looking for a premium product.  For the latter, cost is not the issue and you shoot Sony SxS, however if the former is where you land, then MxM/MxR with Sandisk Ultra II 16GB (or even the Transcend Class 6 16GB) cards are where you should currently land.  Both these adaptors are shipped internationally directly to you and picking up genuine Sandisk media is as easy as finding out where you closest authorised Sandisk reseller is.  I would advise against buying the HxS adaptor to use with anything but their expensive RAW SDHC cards as they claim no guaranteed compatibility with any other SDHC media.

In an interesting marketing quote, Hoodman say "$199.98 spent with Hoodman replaces the $750 16GB SxS Card".  Other than the fact it actually doesn't, as it has the same over cranking limitations as all other XxS solutions and so doesn't actually replace fully SxS, you can easily rephrase this quote to more accurately say "$90 spent on MxM & Sandisk replaced the $199.98 16GB SxSxSDHC Card".  You do the math...

So this is what you will need (see compatibility list for other potential options):

Here are some photos of what you might be buying:

  or MxM
MxM or MxR adaptor

There are a range of cards to buy however this one is seems the current best value.  With true 15MBps read and write speeds, this card works at about the same speed as the Extreme III 30MBps cards which appear to require special hardware to achieve the Extreme III's full speed capability.  The Ultra IIs are just shy of half the price of the Extreme IIIs.  Just make sure you buy from a reliable/reputable source and test each card well before you use it for production.


AU$70 16GB SDHC Card + US$40 Card Reader = AU$1100 16GB SxS card


This is how the card is inserted in the reader


This is how it looks with the card fully inserted with the Kensington.  Yes the SD card does stick out a few mm.  With the Delkin the card goes in flush with the readers edge.


In the EX1, the blue card is SxS, the black is KxS.


On the EX1, with KxS the SD card sticks out a few mm so the media door can't be closed, this is not a problem for DxS.  You can see above the door closed right up to the edge of the card in the rear slot (so nearly closed) with KxS. With the EX3, as the door has a different design to allow for the SxS HDD, its door can be closed with this KxS as well as DxS..


Above is the EX1 recording in HQ mode to the SD card combo.  This has proven to be as reliable as SxS.

Extras you might want:


US$20 Pelican SD Card holder, keep your SD cards safe and organised just like photographers do with their CF cards.		  

On the inside of the Pelican, pictured with 5 hours of HQ recording for 1/10th the price of SxS.

Offsite backup of SxS without laptop (& XxS):
Totally re-written 25 Nov 08 with additional info from Nexto
This unit is available for purchase from http://www.nextodiusa.com/

News:  Full review of this unit is in production, watch out for it coming soon.

So you want to be able to not only record to cheaper SD but also create an offsite backup as well?  You might want to do this as you are hyper concerned about your data or your shooting in the Amazon and even need to empty some XxS!  I am sure you will be most interested in the Nexto ND-2725 Video Storage portable data storage back up device.


Nexto ND-2725 Video Storage

So what makes this device special?  Well, the OTG port (a self contained USB host interface) has been upgraded to support direct connections to both the EX1 and the Sony SBAC-US10 SxS USB Card Reader.  That means you can back up Sony SxS cards to this device using only your camera or the USB card reader. 

No need for a laptop of any form.  Finally a real reason to pony up a massive US$250 on a USB card reader.  With this unit (the one with both the Sony power connector and the cigarette lighter connector) you can power both the ND-2725 and the SxS reader from that spare U30 battery that came with your EX1/3 but you really don't use much as the U60s are so much better.  The ND-2725 is simply powered using the included cigarette plug DC power supply.

If you are really concerned about your data you could use a 2.5" SSD in it rather than a 2.5" HDD so have no moving parts to fail.  With Intel's new 160GB X25-M SSDs it would be one of the fastest and simplest field backup units available.

This one has got some nice features though, including eSATA, SDHC (so great for backing up KxS if you need/want to) and pretty fast backup abilities (from 40sec per GB). Each time you do a card backup, it puts the backup in a unique folder so there would be no conflicts with each card containing a BPAV folder. This device also has lots of safety options to ensure successful backups including hardware based verify, second backup to another portable HDD via USB, media self test (tests the integrity of your memory card or HDD) and S.M.A.R.T. support to monitor the status of the internal HDD.  It also supports USB host connection to the Panasonic HVX200 as well, however as Panasonic do not have a P2 equivalent to the US10 the only option is too tie up your camera when backing up the cards.  With a CF slot (as well as SDHC) it can of course also back up images captured from RED and other CF based DSLRs.

Conclusion

Sony, do you get what is happening here?  This solution is being jumped all over but we'd be just as happy to buy a slower & cheaper version of a formal SxS media (SxS Standard rather than SxS Pro).  16GB of reliable media for US$150-US$200 is about as high as it can go though, otherwise 16GB for <US$65 will still well and truly rule.  While 800Mbps read is fantastic, we don't always need that performance for offloading so why should we always have to pay for it?  Some have even suggested that with Ultra II prices, they can use the media as consumable write once medium term archive.  As the prices for these commodity SD cards continues to drop in line with typical flash price reductions this will be more viable for more and more users.

In a poll of some video producer colleagues, everyone who responded to the poll that said they either have not or would not purchase the EX1/EX3 was because of the cost of SxS, and the few who had purchased it only bought enough media to get them buy until they can offload in the field and are waiting for SxS price drops.  Well. now they probably won't buy any more SxS with such low cost and reliable options available.

EDIT: 20 Oct 09: In just over 12 months since the use of SD media began with the EX1, Sony have responded.  They have introduced two new options available soon.  1st is a new MLC version of SxS which halves the cost of the media, which along with the lowering cost of 32GB media actually makes for what might be a fair price for real SxS.  2nd, to directly compete with SD cards & adaptors though, they have also announced an adaptor of their own which allows the use of Sony MemoryStick cards.  OK, so while this is great as it means Sony is embracing adaptors and more economic media, do they really think we want to use MemoryStick when we have already been using SDHC cards for over a year?  Why not just finally give in on this last little thing and start using SDHC now and provide firmware support for SDXC & FATEX (& larger partitions than 84GB).  Sony, you have done so well, but you just haven't polished the edges...  I know..., SD is sort of a Panasonic thing, well get over it, you won with BluRay, be happy, let MemoryStick go, no one wants it but you...


Here it is visually, excluding over cranking, there are 4 times the capacity plus a wad full of cash = a single official product.

Notes on use of all XxS solutions:

1:  Do not bother over cranking.  While you can achieve approximately 40fps over cranking 24fps you will get media errors trying much faster. Under cranking is not a problem for XxS.  If you really need to use XxS to help you overcrank, try this work around.

2:  Do not remove the SD card from the reader if you have two XxS modules installed.  Eject the complete combination to change SDHC cards (the same as you do for SxS).  You can remove just the SD card and insert a new one if you have one SxS and one XxS module inserted.  If you remove a SD card when you have two XxS modules installed, the camera may stop recording and confuse which media is in which slot.  If this occurs, just eject both XxS cards and put them in again and you will be able to resume normal operations.

3: Like any solid state media, test the complete media recording before using it in production.  That will at least bring to your attention any piece of media which maybe faulty from the box.  While unlikely, it is possible.

4: Yes, recording with 2 XxS modules rolls over between cards just as well as with SxS

5:  When you stop recording, there is a moment while the camera closes the recording and possibly flush's a record cache.  With SxS media this process takes about one second less than with XxS.

Notes on use of KxS:

With the EX1 you will not be able to close the media door of the camera when you have KxS modules installed unless you used 'shaved' media.

Notes on use of DxS:

When you insert a DxS module DO NOT press on the SD card itself to push the combo in.  This MAY cause your camera to stop recording (during live switching).  You have two easy solutions to operating safely:

Notes on use of MxS & MxM:

When you insert a MxS/MxM module be careful not to press on the SD card itself to push the combo in.  This MAY eject the media and cause your camera to stop recording (during live switching).  You have two easy solutions to operating safely:

Compatibility List
The compatibility list has been moved to the new FAQ page here.

(c) 2009 Guy Barwood
Images or text may not be reproduced in part or whole without permission (email info@xdcamexinfo.com)