Could the Convergent Design Flash XDR fill the BBC HD Channel’s small HD camcorder gap?

The current BBC HD guidelines effectively mean that no ‘traditional’ camcorder manufacturer has yet created a small HD camcorder that meets the minimum criteria for HD programming within the BBC!

Let’s look at the contenders

The Sony PMW-EX1 and PMW-EX3 both satisfy the front end requirements with full 1920×1080 1/2″ native HD CMOS sensor however to date the recording bit rate at only 35mb/s falls short of their minimum requirement of 50 mb/s.

Panasonic on the other hand do not satisfy the minimum 1920×1080 native resolution since the new AG-HPX171E and the AG-HPX201E both have a native chip resolution of 1280×720 and achieves the 1920×1080 (AKA full Raster) by something called ’spatial offsetting’ or sometimes known as ‘pixel offsetting/pixel shifting’. While the recording format DVCPRO 100 is accepted - that is 100mb/s (or 100 mega bits per second)

Enter the Convergent design Flash XDR

This was launched at NAB in 2008 and like any new product has taken a little while to come to market, however the team at Convergent Design have been working night and day to get it ready and it is now presenting itself as a real contender to plug the CODEC and bit rate gap. This device records full HD at 50mb/s and above and records on to low cost Compact Flash cards.

Here’s a video I’ve made that shows the unit.

Convergent Design Flash XDR overview

-Den