PXW-X70 FIRMWARE V3.0 Early next year.

[Donald McPherson]

PXW-X70 Firmware V3.0

Upgrade is free of charge and available in 1Q of FY 2016 (TBC)

New Features & Improvements:
● Support for 100 Mbps QFHD recording with XAVC format*

PXW-X70 V3.0 firmware will be downloadable here in 1Q of FY 2016.

(*)PXW-X70 will need to be 4K capable, which requires a paid upgrade with CBKZ-X70FX, in order to record in 100Mbps QFHD XAVC.

[Peter Wright]

Excellent - look forward to seeing how much the picture improves!

[Paul Anderegg]

Yay, 100Mbps! :-D

Maybe the new codec will not hard clip at 100IRE in FCPX like the 60Mbps one. :-|

Paul

[Noa Put]

Originally Posted by Peter Wright

Excellent - look forward to seeing how much the picture improves!

I don't see any difference between the 60 and 100mb codec on my ax100, unless I"m shooting a scene with small details and with motion which is normal as it stresses the codec more.

[Paul Anderegg]

I tend to have access to live flames a lot, and they tend to pixelate quite badly on the 60Mbps codec. I also shoot 30-33db a lot, and with the black gamma stretch the 60Mbps codec macro blocks badly as well in dark areas. :)

Paul

[Noa Put]

That's what I meant with scenes that stress the codec and that's where you should see an improvement but in most cases you really have to pixel peep to see any difference at all.

[Jack Zhang]

Much needed to make it up to par with the consumer model.

Now to wait for fast enough ASICs for a low power draw XAVC-S 4K 60p encoding.

[Craig Seeman]

I've heard there are some under the hood things about Sony's in camera encoder that separate it from the "consumer" equivalent at the same data. One is that the x70 (and other pro cameras) are doing a two pass encode which improves quality. Two pass "live" encoding means that the buffered shot is being gone through twice to better allocate the bits.

I think some users have noted a very short delay between stopping the camera and the 4K recording finishing the write to card. If that's the case it may be due to the second pass.

BTW that could explain why the AX100 had 100mbps and the X70 60mbps at 4k. The x70 is doing a second pass. This also would make it harder to push the higher data rate. This might also explain why 4k was not ready at the time the x70 was released.

[Jack Zhang]

I've had conflicting thoughts whether they based the FS5 off of the X70 or the A7SII's encoder chips. The menu looks like the X70, but other people believe it's the A7SII's encoder modules.

[Bruce Dempsey]

Originally Posted by Jack Zhang

Much needed to make it up to par with the consumer model.

Now to wait for fast enough ASICs for a low power draw XAVC-S 4K 60p encoding.

application-specific integrated circuit - that's hardware right?

[Jack Zhang]

Yes. The more specific term for encoder and decoder chips.

Current ones that have high efficiency (The only ones that work in cameras without the need for fan cooling) do not have enough power to encode 4K 60p.

[Bruce Dempsey]

so its nothing to look forward to with my ax100

[Christopher Young]

Originally Posted by Jack Zhang

The menu looks like the X70, but other people believe it's the A7SII's encoder modules.

Spent a day with the FS5 today and would go as far as to say it's like a big X70 but with colorimetry almost identical to the FS700, far more so than the A7S models we have worked on. In fact side by side the FS700 and FS5 were very hard to tell apart.

After running the FS5 up on the charts and scopes we ended up getting the best "in camera look" out of PP4 with the knee set to 85 and the slope to -3. This gave us the best looking highlight roll off. If you don't push peak white exposures above 90IRE it will look quite natural on the way up to just over 102IRE. Much prefer the manual knee adjustment because if you watch the behaviour of the auto knee in rapidly changing lighting conditions such as stage strobe or rapid pulse lighting you can actually observe the auto knee pumping trying to compensate and keep up.

Also dropped the color depth on red to +3 (the adjustment is counter intuitive.) Then finally adjusted color phase to -3. These last two adjustments are totally subjective but for my eyes tone down the rather reddish magenta hues in skin tones that some of the Sony cameras tend to exhibit.

One observation a couple of us made was that the center crop mode is a definitely a little noisier and softer. Overall though quite impressed with the package so far.

Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney

[Paul Anderegg]

Chis, would you say that 85% -3 knee would work well for pushing out 100IRE direct to air clips, without requiring bringing highlights down 8% in post? I am thinking that anything over 102% with your settings would appear rather blown out, and that an on air clip at 100% would not even be a noticeable change to a viewer.

Also, I have a new REC709 PP4 color correction calibration. I have been having the damndest time getting the red as perfect as possible. With an almost 99% subject matter having high intensity red LED and halogen lights, I am still seeing scenes where one red will be orange, while the one next to it is magenta! I would like to message you the settings if you could side-by-side them with my old settings and whatever you are happy with, and maybe provide some feedback or modifications, especially pertaining to color depths.

As for the 4K encoding, my X70 continues to REC for at least a full second after I hit stop. It became noticeable when in post every clip ended with a second of video of the camera swinging away from the shot. And I think Sony did a very good job with the processing in the camera, compared to other models. The simple fact that i can spit out ANY HDMI/HD-SDI resolution despite the recording format is something no other Sony camera i know of can do. This means dedicated processing to accomplish this, which is strange because more ENG specific models don't even have this, much less 4K.

Paul

[Cliff Totten]

Originally Posted by Craig Seeman

I've heard there are some under the hood things about Sony's in camera encoder that separate it from the "consumer" equivalent at the same data. One is that the x70 (and other pro cameras) are doing a two pass encode which improves quality. Two pass "live" encoding means that the buffered shot is being gone through twice to better allocate the bits.

I think some users have noted a very short delay between stopping the camera and the 4K recording finishing the write to card. If that's the case it may be due to the second pass.

BTW that could explain why the AX100 had 100mbps and the X70 60mbps at 4k. The x70 is doing a second pass. This also would make it harder to push the higher data rate. This might also explain why 4k was not ready at the time the x70 was released.

Although I can't say for sure, I strongly suspect that two pass encoding is a feature that Sony has in all its XAVC flavors, consumer and pro models. The A7s-II also keeps writing to its SD card after you hit stop. It's the same amount of time as the X70 does.

I was told at NAB that the .mxf wrapper creates a little more overhead to pack and unpack versus the .mp4 wrapper. I don't know about this myself but I suppose it's possible.

For me, .mp4 XAVC (long GOP 100 or 60) does playback and edit smoother than .mxf does on my laptop and desk PC.

THANK YOU SONY FOR BRINGING THE X70 UP TO THE CODEC STANDARDS OF THE REST OF YOUR PRODUCT FLEET!!!

Bravo!!!