I know that a lot of you are video editing enthusiasts. And probably many of you have your very own video cam with which you record your favorite moments for later video editing. But have you ever wondered (I have) what the professionals use? If you have, keep on reading because Sony has recently released its latest professional XDCAM HD422 series camcorder and deck.

Both the PDW-F800 CineAlta camcorder and PDW-F1600 deck offer frame rates of 23.98 natively in 1080 mode, as well as multi-format recording and HD/SD conversion and cross-conversion during playback. The dual-layer 50GB version of Sony's optical Professional Disc allows HD content to be recorded by users but single-layer PFD-23A discs are also an option.

The PDW-F800 has variable frame rates for quick motion capture, as well as slow moving shots, and uses three new 2.3-inch CCDs from Sony's Power HAD FX line in order to produce real 1920 x 1080 quality images and four-channel 24-bit audio recording.

Users can record proxy data to USB removable storage media for quick transfer between the camera and the PC, have a variety of gamma settings available, and a plenitude of other capabilities such as 2x digital zoom, picture cache recording, interval recording, slow shutter, but also a 3.5-inch LCD. The user can seamlessly switch between “live” and “playback” modes.

The PDW-F1600 XDCAM HD422 recording deck is used for both studio and field recording, and has a Gigabyte Ethernet data drive that writes any flash memory file format onto optical discs. File preview is possible via a web browser. It can also be used as a recorder in a linear editing system thanks to its insert/assemble editing capability.

Pretty interesting, huh? Now, for the downside: since these are professional devices, they have huge prices - about 41.990 USD for the PDW-F800 and 27.990 USD for the PDW-F1600. But think about it this way: now you know what the professionals use.


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