If you are like us and have a HD camera that shoots at 35mbps on a 1/2″ sensor and you are aware that many broadcaster minimum requirements for HD footage is 50mbps with a 1/2″ sensor. So you think that your current camera falls short of these requirements and you may have to spend a considerable amount of money in upgrading to a bigger unit, well this just isn’t true.
We shoot with a Sony EX1, which captures to SXS cards at 35mbps. The camera captures to the cards as a mpeg2 compression. It is possible to bypass the internal Sony compression and capture 10bit full raster HD footage at rates from 50mbps up to 160mbps. This is done by capturing direct from the sensor through the HD SDI (Serial Digital Interface) connector. There are several devices available today that allow you to capture direct from the sensor on to compact flash cards or hard drives. Compared to the cost you would incur when purchasing a new HD camera that captured at 50mbps they are a very affordable solution.
AJA have just brought out the Ki Pro http://www.aja.com/products/ki-pro which is a tripod mountable tapeless video recording device that records in Pro Res 422. Pro Res 422 is a codec and does compress your video somewhat but the quality is so high that unless you are doing very high end graphics and composition you will not see any difference.
Convergence design also have a couple of devices available such as the Nano Flash http://www.convergent-design.com/CD_Products_nanoFlash.htm and the Flash XDR http://www.convergent-design.com/CD_Products_FlashXDR.htm, both of them allow you to record 10bit Full raster HD.