Professional Disc (PFD) is a

digital recording In digital recording, an audio or video signal is converted into a stream of discrete numbers representing the changes over time in air pressure for audio, or chroma and luminance values for video. This number stream is saved to a storage de ...

optical disc In computing and optical disc recording technologies, an optical disc (OD) is a flat, usually circular disc that encodes binary data (bits) in the form of pits and lands on a special material, often aluminum, on one of its flat surfaces. ...

format introduced by

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...

in 2003 primarily for

XDCAM XDCAM is a series of products for digital recording using random access solid-state memory media, introduced by Sony in 2003. Four different product lines the XDCAM SD, XDCAM HD, XDCAM EX and XDCAM HD422 differ in types of en ...

, its

tapeless camcorder A camcorder is a self-contained portable electronic device with video and recording as its primary function. It is typically equipped with an articulating screen mounted on the left side, a belt to facilitate holding on the right side, hot-swa ...

system. It was one of the first optical formats to utilize a

blue laser A blue laser is a laser that emits electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength between 360 and 480 nanometers, which the human eye sees as blue or violet. Blue beams are produced by helium-cadmium gas lasers at 441.6 nm, and argon-ion lase ...

, which allowed for a higher density of data to be stored on optical media compared to infrared laser technology used in the CD and red laser technology used in the

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...

format.

Technology

PFD uses a 405 nm wavelength and a

numerical aperture In optics, the numerical aperture (NA) of an optical system is a dimensionless number that characterizes the range of angles over which the system can accept or emit light. By incorporating index of refraction in its definition, NA has the proper ...

(NA) of 0.85 for the laser, allowing 23 GB of data to be stored on one 12 cm disc – the equivalent to nearly five single-layer DVDs, and a 1x speed data transfer rate of 88

Mbit/s In telecommunications, data-transfer rate is the average number of bits (bitrate), characters or symbols (baudrate), or data blocks per unit time passing through a communication link in a data-transmission system. Common data rate units are multi ...

for reading and 72 Mbit/s for writing. After the 23GB disc was released, a dual-layer 50 GB was developed and released. This format is sometimes confused with the

Blu-ray Disc The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a Digital media, digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and c ...

format, another optical disc format using blue-violet lasers and supported by Sony. Even the PFD's caddy and Blu-ray's prototype caddy (later dropped) looked very similar. Capabilities differ; single-layer PFD discs have a capacity of 23 GB whereas Blu-ray discs can store 25 GB. However, Blu-ray discs currently allow a 2x data transfer rate of 72 Mbit/s – lower than PFD. This is because PFD discs use much higher quality media and drives use higher quality components, making them prohibitively expensive for the consumer segment to which Blu-ray is aimed. PFD discs can have a capacity of up to 100 GB for rewritable discs, and 128 GB for write-once discs.

Disc Sizes

Applications/products

XDCAM video system

The PFD format is used as the recording medium in Sony's

professional video devices, both for standard definition and high definition applications.

Professional Disc for Data (PDD)

Professional Disc for DATA (PDD or ProDATA) was a general-use recording media variant of PFD, aimed primarily at small and medium-sized enterprise for data archival and

backup In information technology, a backup, or data backup is a copy of computer data taken and stored elsewhere so that it may be used to restore the original after a data loss event. The verb form, referring to the process of doing so, is "back up", w ...

. PDD drives and media became available in mid-2004. The BW-RS101 external

SCSI-3 Parallel SCSI (formally, SCSI Parallel Interface, or SPI) is the earliest of the interface implementations in the SCSI family. SPI is a parallel bus; there is one set of electrical connections stretching from one end of the SCSI bus to the oth ...

drive originally retailed in the UK at £2,344 (excl.

VAT A value-added tax (VAT), known in some countries as a goods and services tax (GST), is a type of tax that is assessed incrementally. It is levied on the price of a product or service at each stage of production, distribution, or sale to the en ...

) directly from Sony, and 23 GB write-once and re-writeable media retailed for £30 each. Two other drives – the BW-F101/A internal

SCSI Small Computer System Interface (SCSI, ) is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, electrical, optical and logical interface ...

drive and the BW-RU101 external

USB 2.0 Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad ...

drive also became available around the same time. On March 31, 2007, Professional Disc for DATA reached their " end of life".www.sony.net/Products/MO-Drive/ProDATA
PFD are still being manufactured and used in Sony XDCAM devices. Sony states that PDD and PFD media are not compatible, but does not specify the exact differences between products. Sony's PDW-U1 Professional Disc drive is an external drive that connects via USB 2.0 to Windows or Mac OS X computers using the included free software from Sony. In a firmware and software upgrade in late July 2009, Sony added the ability for computer users to store any computer files on the Professional Disc into the dedicated "User Data" folder.

References

External links

Sony Global - Professional Disc for DATASony Storage Solutions - ProDataSony b2b - Professional Disk
{{Optical storage media Audiovisual introductions in 2003 Optical computer storage media