A family of tapeless digital camcorders from Sony. Introduced in 2003, video is recorded on 120mm rewritable, optical "Professional Discs" (PFDs) or solid state SxS (S by S) cards using the ExpressCard/34 format. XDCAM camcorders tend to be high-end professional cameras.
XDCAM camcorders support a variety of modes, including standard and high definition (SD and HD) and selectable bit rates from 18 to 50 Mbps. It can use DVCAM, MPEG IMX, MPEG HD and MPEG HD422 video compression at various resolutions, frame rates and bit rates. Audio compression is PCM.
XDCAM also records a "Proxy AV" preview mode for quick editing with 240 or 288 lines of resolution, using MPEG-4 video and A-Law audio.
XDCAM and XDCAM HD
XDCAM supports standard-definition (SD) DVCAM encoding and MPEG IMX (MPEG-2). XDCAM HD records 1280x720p, 1440x1080i, 1440x1080p, 1920x1080i and 1920x1080p HD resolutions.
XDCAM HD422
HD422 camcorders support HD formats at the highest bit rate of 50 Mbps.
SOLID STATE XDCAM EX
XDCAM EX camcorders record high definition on SxS cards and also on Memory Stick and SD Cards with the use of adapters. Bit rates are limited to 25 and 35 Mbps. See
HDCAM,
DVCAM,
Digital Betacam and
HD formats.