< Back to all posts

New Media from Sony: the SxS PRO+ and Mirroring Memory Sticks

Posted by Brad Spinsby on February 15, 2013

Matching media, cameras, crews, and codecs can feel like a game of Guess Who? “Do you have a Sony camera that can shoot on SxS cards and record 2K?” GUESS WHO?

In a perfect world, we would only need one media to record everything. But this isn’t a perfect world. In the last couple years a plethora of new cameras, codecs and different types of recording media have been released. Sony has recently expanded their 4K presence and now has upgraded their SxS cards with the new SxS PRO+ cards. The PRO+ cards can write up to 1.5/Gbps and read up to 1.6/Gbps. They are designed to support the massive amount of information required in the capture of 2K and 4K footage. A 128GB Pro+ is available and will hold 240 minutes of MPEG 422 footage at 30P or 20 minutes of XAVC Intra 422 footage at 60P. These PRO+ cards also feature a “power failure management” function that can recreate clips in case of sudden power loss or accident card ejection. Now when lightning strikes, you will be able to save your footage.

media cards Along with upgrading their SxS cards, Sony has a new Memory Stick, the Memory Stick PX, for their NXCAM line of cameras. The Memory Stick PX is a mirroring memory that allows for duplicate recording by creating two partitions within the card. A 64GB Memory Stick PX is available and with the mirror memory feature it has 32GB capacity. On the 64GB card you can record 340 minutes of AVCHD(FX) codec or 170 minutes with mirroring. The PX card also offers additional functionality and the ability to increase write speed by minimizing the capacity of the card. On a 64GB card you could double the speed from the card by making it a 32GB card. Different shooting situations call for different techniques, and now with Sony SxS PRO+ you can get the higher resolution and with Memory Stick PX you can create onsite redundancy backup while shooting.

An interesting feature to note is Sony’s PVM-X300 4k monitor has an optional SxS player in the monitor. This would allow you to pull the SxS card out of the camera and stick it straight into the monitor to review dailies.