Now that the firmware has arrived ...
 

... I found the auto cache function in the assignables section of the menu and I assigned PICTURE CACHE to one of the assignable buttons, turned it on and nothing.

Am I missing something?

Also, the front pot is still not working when assigned to a one of the rear inputs.

If you turned on picture cache, you should see the tally light in the VF illuminated green. This is your indicator that cache function is recording.

I went in and deleted some individual clips off the discs that I didn't need. That is so awesome to be able to reclaim recording space like that! BTW, it does not go back and re-number the clips so it works just like a digital camera would. You'll have a numbering gap on the disc.

Still can't get the additional essence marks to work. Sony folks seemed surprised when I told them it was showing the extra essence marks in the menu like the SD cameras have.

-gb-

You must be in an HD mode for the picture cache to work.

I missed the CACHE RECORD TIME in the SPECIAL EFFECTS menu and it was set to one second.

Are you saying that your reflexes are slower than one second? (grin)

Just kidding!

-gb-

Note also that the timecode should also go into free-run in cache mode (well, it does on the SD version anyway).

Glad that the new firmware is being well received. Brilliant that clips can now be randomly deleted (and individually write protected).

This is one thing that I love about the XDCAM system. I don't know of any other camera type that has had so many cool extra features added to it as time goes on. You can bet your bottom Dollar that they are working on future revisions that are even cooler too. They haven't dissapointed me yet.

Hey Simon, can you advise on how your SD camera lays down the other essence marks. I would think that audio limiter, gain change, wb, etc. would get recorded automatically as each event occurred during recording operations. I know there is a menu item for enabling Shotmark 1 and Shotmark 2 (which I have on BTW), but nothing about the others.

Any advice would be appreciated.

-gb-

Yes, audio limiter, and the other automatic essense markers get written automatically.

If you go over the audio limit for example on the SD cameras "EM" flashes in the viewfinder to tell you that an essence marker has been written.

Have you checked the downloaded Zip that contained the firmware? Mine contained a new manual for the camera that included descriptions of all the new firmware features.

I do have the new manual and was reading through it last week when I got the software update.

So I take it you finally got yours updated?

-gb-

Unfortunately I have only managed to update the AT (which should strictly be done first...)

Waiting to hear back from a few people though.

Just to add to this. Although you can select random clips to delete, they don't actually get deleted off the disc, otherwise it could become fragmented. Basically you are deleting clips so you can stay organized, but you do not create space on the disc by deleting random clips. Basically if you had filled a disc and then deleted 98% of the clips, you would still have no extra space to record onto.

Interesting. I had wondered about the fragmentation problem. In a way this is good because it means things can be kept organised, and I would expect those files can be recovered in some way?

Really annoying not being able to get this thing installed yet!

It's also confirmed by Sony that even if you protect the clips, they can still be deleted or the disc formatted in the basic black and white menu. This is why Sony America has not officially made the new firmware available as it has some final QC issues that are being looked into.

Also confirmed that the HD cameras do not yet support recording the additional essence marks even though they show up in the Essence Mark menu with the new firmware.

-gb-

Interesting Greg. Many thanks. I had been waiting to see if Sony US would release it onto their site. Now we know why they haven't.

Quite a reversal really! Sony US released all of the previous firmwares onto their site while the Sony Europe one has usually refrained from doing so because of the risks involved in upgrading.

I have to amend this. Got an email from Sony today saying the issue was showing up in an alpha version of the firmware update. The final version removed this bug....whew...that's a relief.

-gb-