By associate editor Elliot Smith:
News just in from Video Devices is that their Pix-E5 monitor/recorder is now shipping and should be available at resellers shortly.
Our technical editor Matt Allard had a look at this new range of monitor/recorders at this year’s NAB show and was impressed by what he saw. Sound Devices, Video Devices’ parent company, have long had a reputation for making solid equipment that really delivers, and the Pix-E5 looks like it will continue in that vein.
It’s an increasingly competitive market for small monitor/recorders, and Video Devices hope to stand out by offering ultra high quality ProRes 4444 XQ recording out of the box onto recording media they’re calling a SpeedDrive. These are mSATA solid-state drives that use a SATA connection to write data when connected to a Pix-E unit, and a USB interface to plug into your computer for file transfer. The drives are available as a 240GB complete unit or as bare caddies for you to add your own mSATA drive.
With drives available just over £100 inc VAT for 256GB this system has the potential to offer a more-budget friendly recording media than the competition. The only gotcha appears to be that the size of the case looks like it will foul on anything plugged into adjacent ports. Time to break out that extension cable…
There’s no anamorphic desqueeze at launch and 4K support is only over HDMI (so no 4K Raw recording from the Sony FS700); but the 5″ size and high resolution screen could make this a useful companion to, say, a gimbal-mounted a7S or GH4.
The Pix-E5 is showing a ship date of August 1 at B&H for $1,395.00; EU and UK buyers can expect to pay around that figure in Euro and GBP respectively.
UPDATE: Sound Devices have been in contact with us and said that LUT and custom LUT support will be added soon via a firmware update.
