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Why Sony Adopted Professional Disc™ Technology: An explanation of the advantages of

new media choices for broadcast

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Professional Disc media: the new generation media without compromise

What broadcasters and professional users value above all else is

the content they produce, rather than the technology that creates

it. They have to get the right content, at the right time and the

right price, without compromise.

Sony has made a rigorous analysis of all the new and emerging

technologies available for professional production and the

Professional Disc technology stands out above all others for

offering the economic and production benefits video

professionals are asking for.

This document sets out the facts on why the Professional Disc

media is the ideal new professional media. Like tape, it is low

cost, robust and has a high recording capacity, but it is also

nonlinear, exceptionally flexible and offers significant new

workflow benefits.

Nonlinear mediaIn creating the Professional Disc media, Sony considered

a number of potential nonlinear options, but only theProfessional Disc media meets the primary demands ofprofessional users for a high capacity, robust, low costmedia that is easily portable and works across the entireproduction chain.

One media: one costThe Professional Disc media is designed to work

throughout the production chain from acquisition toediting, playout and storage.

DVD was rejected as being toolimited for professional use. It hasa top capacity of only 5GB,transfer speeds at just 11Mbpsand isn’t rigorous enough to copewith professional demands.

Beyond a few specialistapplications, hard disk has issueswith its size and weight, and thelimitations it poses throughoutthe production chain. It needs anadditional device for archivingand can be very expensive forlarge-scale implementations.

Solid state has a very high unitcost, low capacity, limitations ofduration for recording HD signalsand workflow restrictions – thereis no flexibility for shooting orarchiving. It is also projected tobe many years before it has thecapacity to handle meaningfulamounts of picture information,let alone at a practical unit cost.

Professional Disc media extendsthe benefits of nonlinear acrossthe production chain toacquisition, transforming theentire workflow. AV proxy contentand metadata can halve transferand editing times, while theability to operate in at least twoformats (MPEG IMX® andDVCAM™ ) doubles the productionflexibility: for example, shootdrama today, news tomorrow.

The magic of the ProfessionalDisc media is that it finally bringsto life the dream of nonlinearrecording with the flexibility of alow cost, robust, high capacitymedia and without the high costand very low capacity problemsof other nonlinear devices suchas hard disk drives or solid statedevices.

Solid state or hard disk deviceshave capacity and cost issues thatcurrently make it hard to regardthem as practical media forprofessional video production: theyare, at best, buffering units. After afew minutes recording with a solidstate device, the picture materialhas to be transferred to a seconddevice to free up space to continuerecording. The second unit has tobe either a computer hard disk, forexample on a laptop editingsystem, or a videotape machine –therefore all the benefits of non-linear are lost. The very high cost ofa solid state card makes it difficultto have more than a few at any onetime. The alternative is to buffer toProfessional Disc media. But whyduplicate hardware costs withdifferent devices for acquisition andarchiving?

Professional Disc media is ideal foracquisition. Because of its highcapacity, a camera person canrecord for up to 85 minutes atDVCAM format quality on a singledisc. And the small size and thelow unit cost means a largenumber of individual discs can betaken on a job, with potentiallymany hours of capacity instantlyavailable. After all, this is one of thereasons tape has been sosuccessful – and Professional Discmedia maintains this benefit.

In the editing environment,Professional Disc media comesinto its own. Transfer rates areextremely high and there isvirtually no risk of data loss. Andproxy AV files and the MXF formatallows editing to begin instantly,even before the content hasfinished being transferred.

There are numerous networkbenefits with using ProfessionalDisc media, including advancedmetadata capabilities and the useof open standard industry files.These benefits extend to broadcastplayout, where Professional Discmedia combines the flexibility oftape with nonlinear accessibility,content protection and file-basedtransfers.

For storage, Professional Discmedia is the only practicaltapeless archiving media, offeringan extremely long shelf life withlow unit cost, space savings andnetwork capability for easy access.

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Media flexibilityProfessional media has to be flexible for operators in the field. Consumers are more

willing to compromise on quality if they need more capacity – or if they run out of capaci-ty, they can simply stop shooting: professionals cannot compromise.

For example, a professionalvideographer shooting a weddingis paid to capture all the bestmoments of a unique day. Thatincludes the father of the bride’sspeech in its entirety. The shooterneeds enough capacity to shooteverything he needs and withoutcompromising on quality.

This means he needs enoughmedia to last the day. Three discswill give him over four hours ofDVCAM material. Each discrecords 85 minutes continuously,so the videographer is notchanging media in the middle ofthe speech. And the discs arereusable a minimum of 1,000read/write/erase cycles underspecified conditions. Incomparison, three solid statecards of 4 GB each would givemuch less recording time, whilecosting thousands of dollars.Also, does the shooter knowprecisely how many cards will beneeded for the day?

If a news camera person hasalready recorded some vitalfootage for a news item, whathappens if, when travelling backto the edit room, an unexpectedevent occurs that has to berecorded as well? Or if asked toshoot some additional shots, isthe original footage recorded overdue to the limited recordingcapacity of a solid state device?Or does the shooter simply inserta disc from their pocket?

If a documentary maker has toshoot an interview, how muchmedia capacity should be taken?Buffering units such as hard diskdrives or solid state are restrictedby the high cost and lowcapacity. Even if a back-updevice was available, does theinterview stop just as it is gettinginteresting so as to download therecording from the solid statecamcorder? With ProfessionalDisc media, the shooter hasmuch more recording time on asingle disc than solid state. Andthey can afford to bring a numberof discs and swap them overalmost instantly without breakingthe flow of the interview.

And what if an operator is onassignment overseas? How muchmedia should be taken? Withsolid state, cost could be arestriction. With Professional Discmedia, the low unit cost allowsthe operator to be generous withthe allocation. And what if a discis lost, stolen or confiscated?With a solid state card, this couldbe catastrophic and veryexpensive to replace. WithProfessional Disc media, the lowunit cost makes it easier to bearthe cost of replacement and alsoto have replacements at hand.

All professional users value theircontent above all else. Thetechnology is merely the tool theyuse to capture and protect thecontent. Professional Disc mediais the ideal nonlinear recordingmedia that gives professionalsthe flexibility they need and havealways expected from linearmedia. They should not have tocompromise if the unexpectedoccurs.

Price / PerformancePrice/performance is the most critical element for any

mainstream professional tool.

The first generation Professional Disc media already has 23.3GBcapacity, giving 85 minutes running time at DVCAM quality or 45minutes at the Digital Betacam format equivalent MPEG IMX quality.

Hard drive and solid state devices are only applicable for very limitedapplications because the content always has to be transferred to acentral server after a few minutes of shooting and the capacity remainsextremely limited.

Currently hard drive and solid state storage cost hundreds of times theprice of Professional Disc media per GB of capacity. Even as the priceof all these technologies falls, the cost differential is not going to getsignificantly smaller for many years.

Professional Disc media with 23.3 GB capacity costs approximately $30.

Migration to HDAs the world leader in HD production technology, Sony has a clearmigration path for taking Professional Disc to HD.

Shoot 16:9 SD today with the confidence that Sony is planning to offeran easy, efficient upconversion path to HD.

Robust designSony has designed the XDCAM product range to the same rigorous standards it has

always applied to its professional tape based products, from DVCAM to the industry leading standard, Digital Betacam format. XDCAM products have been tested in the mostextreme conditions, from the freezing cold of a New Zealand mountain winter to the chokingheat, dust and jarring terrain of the Australian desert outback.

XDCAM products are designed tofunction normally in temperatureextremes and have been testedwith success in lows of –22˚F tohighs of 131˚F. (Refer to theOperators Manual forrecommended operatingconditions).

The disc is protected in a ruggedplastic cartridge that gives itexceptional resistance to externalconstraints, such as physicalshocks, vibration, extremes oftemperature, magnetic fields andx-rays.

Tests in the field have subjectedXDCAM camcorders to continuousvibration for many hours whilerecording, for example in 4x4vehicles driving over ruggedterrain, with no adverse affects onthe pictures. (Footage of XDCAMproduct trials can be viewed onthe Internet atwww.sony.com/xdcam)

Key to the rugged design is a newgeneration of professional bluelaser optical recording technology,which eliminates wear to the disc'ssurface. With the laser working attemperatures of over 1110˚F, thereis no adverse effect from outsidetemperatures. The robust designalso allows individual disc units tobe recorded well over 1000 timesand to be replayed over onemillion times based on Sonytesting done under idealconditions (73˚F, 50% relativehumidity). Because there is nocontact between the recordinglaser head and the disc, XDCAMproducts work normally in humidityup to 99 per cent. (Refer to theOperators Manual forrecommended operatingconditions.) This is all far morereliable than professional tape.

The professional blue laser opticalrecording is a completely newimplementation of technology,bearing little comparison to theconsumer Blu-Ray DiscTM

technology – rejected forprofessional use because of itslower transfer speed and limitedrobustness. The blue lasertechnology features much fastertransfer speeds – up to144 Mbpsfor writing and up to 170Mbps forreading – and a much more robustdesign.

The protective cartridge of the disc,combined with the XDCAM'sproducts tried and tested loadingmechanism, virtually eliminates thepossibility of damage wheninserting the media in thecamcorder or recording device. Incomparison, devices that use PINconnections can be damaged fromcontinual use and such damagecould mean a cost of manythousands of dollars to repair.

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Low maintenanceXDCAM camcorders and decks have been

designed with almost no moving parts. Those partsthat do move have an extended life duration, somaintenance costs are reduced, typically by morethan 50 per cent based on parts costs alone whencompared to professional tape-based mechanisms.

Complete production chainSony understands that professionals need solutions that work across the

complete production chain, while optimizing the cost for the user. There is limitedbenefit from having one kind of capturing device in acquisition and another forediting and storage. Professional Disc media works from acquisition to editing toplayout to storage.

Sony has launched a line ofcamcorders and decks tosupport the professional discmedium. The 'XDCAM' productsare geared to a range ofproduction applications andincludes: PDW-530 camcorderthat records both DVCAM andMPEG IMX signals, the PDW-510camcorder that records DVCAMformat, the PDW-1500 compactdeck and the PDW-V1 mobiledeck.

Few customers can afford tohave terabytes of hard driveavailable for storage. So, solidstate or hard disc customerswould need to buy additionaldevices on tape or disc foradditional storage and archive.This means duplicatingequipment purchases, addingfurther to the high cost ofpurchasing solid state or harddisc equipment.

Professional Disc media is theonly practical nonlinear storagesolution because of its flexibleand low cost.

The high capacity of the discmeans entire programs can bestored on a single disc and evenlarge amounts of rushes caneasily be handled. The very lowunit cost – similar to tape –means this storage is also verycost effective.

Because of the multiple recordingcapabilities of Professional Discmedia – recording both DVCAMand MPEG IMX signals, in PAL orNTSC – fewer machines arerequired and the same recordingdeck can be used for editing andarchive. This significantly reducesthe overall cost of investment. AllXDCAM products arenetworkable, with simpleinterfaces, allowing the “pooling”of equipment in the productionenvironment: typically oneXDCAM deck can be shared withseveral nonlinear editing systemsover a network, as opposed tothe traditional requirement of oneVTR for each nonlinear editor.

Indeed the recommended replacement interval for the opticalblock is 6000 hours in the deck and 4000 hours in thecamcorder, compared to a typical 2000 hours for a tape-basedmechanism in a deck or a camcorder.

In any event, Sony gives a 7 year “Powertrain” warranty on allits optical drives, adding to the confidence users can have inthe system! (See actual warranty for details).

Faster start-up and transfer times

XDCAM camcorders have extremely fast start up times.Operators can start recording almost as soon as theyswitch through a cache function for the first three secondswhile the disc unit ramps up to speed. This means recording can start almost as soon as the operator inserts adisc and closes the cover.

XDCAM products have also beendesigned to have the fastesttransfer times practicallypossible. XDCAM dual laserdecks have a writing speed of144Mbps and a reading speed of170Mbps, representing up to fivetimes real-time transfers forDVCAM material to a computerand up to two and a half timesreal-time transfers for MPEG IMXmaterial. This is at the limit ofinternal data transfer rates formost computer drives availabletoday.

To further speed up the editingprocess, XDCAM productsfeature the latest proxy recordingsystem, ProxyAV. With ProxyAV, alow resolution copy of the videoand audio content is recorded onthe disc at the same time as thehigh resolution DVCAM orMPEG IMX content. Due to itslimited size, it can be used forfast browsing or for transferringonto computers at very highspeed for faster editing andcontent sharing, with up to 50times real-time transfers. Thisallows editing to begin as quicklyas possible without any loss ofthe nonlinear benefits ofProfessional Disc media.

Open industry standards

Professional Disc media is an open solution. Besides han-dling DVCAM and MPEG IMX material, the system uses standardised MXF files defined by the Pro-MPEG Forum.Professional Disc technology can also handle various meta-data standards, such as EDL, text, GPS, UMID and Script.

Each disc has allocated space for500MB of pure data storage intowhich users can put anyinformation they need (forexample Word® documents,Excel® files, etc).

Many companies, such as Avid,Pinnacle and Quantel, haveannounced their support for theXDCAM system and have alreadydemonstrated interoperability atNAB and IBC 2003 and 2004. Tomake compatibility easy, XDCAMproducts use SMPTE standardMXF files. The MXF file formathas already been adopted bymore than 20 companiesworldwide.

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Professional Disc Media:flexible, low cost mediaProfessional Disc is the perfect, flexible media. Because it is high capacity and low cost,

operators can take as much media storage on location as they require. If, by some misfortune,an individual disc gets lost, damaged or is confiscated, a replacement is cheap and easy toobtain. In comparison, if a solid state device is lost or damaged, the replacement cost isextremely high and few operators are able to afford more than one anyway.

It is often hard to be preciseabout how much recording willbe needed on a job. For example,interviews can run on long afterthey are expected to finish. WithProfessional Disc media, it is verycost effective to take extra discs.

The discs are small andlightweight – a disc plus cartridgemeasures a compact 55/32" x 1/32"and weighs just 3.1 ozs. – andother, even smaller, versions areplanned to be available in thefuture.

At the same time, ProfessionalDisc media is ideal as a longstorage and archive mediabecause of its high capacity andlow cost. The media’s life isprojected to be up to 50 years,based on Sony’s acceleratedtesting.

Professional Disc media is a lowcost, high capacity, nonlinearmedia that has been designed tomeet the practical needs of videoprofessionals today and in thefuture, where performance andcost are the two main drivers.

Why the XDCAMProfessional Discsystem?A summary

■ Low unit cost:Approx. $30 for 23.3GB

■ High capacity: 23.3GB allows 85 minutes atDVCAM quality

■ Available now:complete line-up from the start

■ Advanced blue lasertechnology:not Blu-Ray, very lowmaintenance

■ High transfer speeds:up to 144Mbps writing and170Mbps reading

■ Advanced workflow benefits:open standards, metadatahandling, networkable

■ HD capable:sufficient bit rate and capacity tohandle HD recordings

■ Robust:not affected by vibration orhumidity or extremes oftemperature

Some misconceptions aboutProfessional Disc technology1. XDCAM products have an operating temperature of 41 – 131˚F (5 – 55 DegreesCelsius) because of the heat recording mechanism of a phase change disc. (Refer tothe Operators Manual for recommended operating conditions).Wrong. Phase change recording is at between approximately 750 – 1110˚F. Therefore theexternal influence of low or high temperatures is negligible. Numerous customers whohave tested the XDCAM prototypes have confirmed this.

2. There is a recording delay at power up and discchange.Wrong. Loading time is shorter than tape and the XDCAMsystem’s cache memory function enables users to startrecording almost immediately.

3. XDCAM gear cannot withstand continuous vibrationsuch as in-car or helicopter shooting.Wrong. XDCAM gear has proven itself to be extremelyresistant to extreme shocks, G-force and continuousvibration. Various technologies are implemented in theproducts to allow that high level of performance. (Footage ofXDCAM product trials can be viewed on the Internet atwww.sony.com/xdcam)

4. XDCAM drives have only a 2000 hours lifetime.Wrong. The XDCAM camcorder has a projected drive lifetime of at least 4000 hoursand the recorders have a projected drive lifetime of 6000 hours. In addition, the drivereplacement cost is 50 per cent cheaper than tape drums based on parts replacementcosts alone. In any event, Sony offers a 7 year “Powertrain” warranty on its opticaldrives. (See actual warranty for details).

5. XDCAM technology is restricted to 12cm disc sizes.Wrong. Sony continues to study the best way to progress in terms of the size andcapacity of Professional Disc media and users can expect further announcements as newproducts are launched.

6. There is no clear migration to HD.Wrong. Due to its bit rate and high disc capacity, HD is possible on Professional Discmedia already and its implementation is under study.

PDW-530 Camcorder record testat -22˚F performed by WDR inGermany.

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Tape

Maintain tape’s basicbenefits

■ Reliability

■ Affordable to use same-media throughout entireproduction process

■ Editing, capture &archive capable

Workflow innovation

Nonlinear media benefit

Cost of ownership reduction

■ High speed editing

■ High speed browsing

■ Content management

■ Content sharing

■ Emergency broadcast

■ Content reference

■ Database management

■ Content sharing

■ Hardware cost reduction

■ Equipment control

■ Openess

■ File based acquisition■ High speed transfer■ Direct access■ Highly recyclable

Infrastructure costreduction

Media cost reduction

Single media able tocover ALL applications

No double cost foracquisition & archive

Network capabilityto share devices

Highly reusablemedia

Proxy creation

Metadata capabilities

Network accessibility

SNMP capability

Format independentmedia

The XDCAM systemdelivers all the benefitsof current tape media…

All these additional benefits, making theProfessional Disc system the clear newmedia choice for the future.

Printed in USA (7/04)V-2223V-2223

Sony Electronics Inc.1 Sony DrivePark Ridge, NJ 07656www.sony.com/xdcam

© 2004 Sony Electronics, Inc. All rights reserved.Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited.

Features, design and specifications are subject to change without notice.All non-metric weights and measurements are approximate.

XDCAM, Professional Disc, MPEG IMX, DVCAM, Blu-Ray Discand their respective logos are trademarks of Sony.

Word and Excel are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation, Inc.

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