By site editor Dan Chung:
Sony have made the surprise announcement that they will offer Apple’s ProRes codec and also DNxHD as a future hardware upgrade for their F5 and F55. This is something I would never have expected to see from one of the major Japanese manufacturers – so far only Blackmagic Design (edit: and Arri) have put ProRes as an in-camera option. There is no indication at present what this upgrade will cost or what flavours of ProRes and DNxHD it will shoot. There is also no indication if slow-motion modes will work in ProRes and DNxHD, although think it must as this is a key selling point of the camera.
Whilst I assume this upgrade will fit in the camera’s main body there is also the possibility that it is in fact another bolt-on module, which would be less exciting and essentially just a Sony external recorder in a custom form factor.
There is no indication of when this upgrade will be available but we expect more news by NAB in Las Vegas next month.
This is what Sony had to say on their Community forum:
Sony has been at the forefront of, and has vast experience in developing advanced compression technologies that led to the visually lossless HDCAM SR, a standard in the production industry since 2001.
Based on our knowledge and experience in this area we then selected the highest Level and Profile of the H.264 standard as the core compression technology for the F5, and F55 cameras. Named XAVC, it offers exceptionally high quality, with the ability to scale from HD, 2K to 4K with very modest data rates, and with frame rates up to 180fps.
XAVC has proven robust, and is well accepted by “mission critical” genres such as Episodic Television, Documentary and feature film. The adoption of XAVC by commonly used platforms has been exceptionally fast, and as a result XAVC is supported by all major workflow applications in the fields of editing, grading, transcoding and media management.
Sony is firmly committed to the continued advancement of the XAVC codec with exciting developments planned for the future. Sony is also committed to our customers and with your feedback the need for diversity and flexibility to support codecs that have been used in our industry for some time.
Our mission is to continue developing the most feature rich cameras on the market. In so doing we are excited to announce support for ProRes and DNxHD codecs as a future hardware upgrade option for both the F5, and F55 cameras.
