I don't know how to get inside the viewfinder to remove the dust, but once you get it cleaned, you might want to protect it further with a diopter lens. It is possible to screw in a simple diopter lens (I forget the diameter) between your eye and the viewfinder. This not only protects the viewfinder from dirt, but magnifies your view just a bit.

As far as tripod heads, you might want to look at my recent posts in the Support Your Local Camera>Tripod Sticks and Heads section of this forum

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/tripod-sticks-heads/520095-deeper-question-ringing-fluid-head.html

The problem is one that I have had with several Manfrotto heads.

FYI After much trial and error youll find that no aftermarket batteries work with the pmw-300 you have to use sony batteries. Also that means no dtap. I cant go into much detail but I have made one after market battery company aware of this and they are working with me to solve the issue.

Also I noticed that you have to have the shoulder pad always extended if you want to keep a tripod plate on as it covers the tripod plate release, ( may be im doing it wrong)

THANKS SONY

I know Sony want to sell their batteries, but why do they do this. Eventually someone will crack the handshake codes or everyone that needs cheaper batts will go back to the pigtail solution used with the EX's. It just seems a waste of everyones time just to sell a few more batteries.

All you do is regulate the pigtail to 12V instead of taking the direct voltage. A Dolgin EX-V-LH plate should be able to do that without giving the high voltage warning on the 300.

Temporary solution is the Dolgin plate, and it looks like they will have to make a PMW-300 specific version either by regulating the pigtail or tricking the camera.

I know Sony want to sell their batteries, but why do they do this. Eventually someone will crack the handshake codes or everyone that needs cheaper batts will go back to the pigtail solution used with the EX's. It just seems a waste of everyones time just to sell a few more batteries.

I guess I can explain some of that. Sony's overall business operation can barely keep a balance between incomes and expenses. In other words, the quarterly net profit is quite close to zero. Facing a super high pressure in the cell phone market from Apple and Samsung (which yet has a big portion of market but still suffer from net losses sometimes), every department becomes desperate collecting revenue in order to make up the black hole of other departments. That however, is usually proved to be useless.

All the Japanese companies tend to make all of their products only compatible to native accessories of *the current generation*. This is even more severe than Korean companies. This is mainly because of a psychologic demanding from consumers (especially native Japanese) to the brand, which is hijacked by the company. For example, PS4 has just been launched for days. However, all of the controllers, cameras and games are using completely new standards of hardware and encoding, making them not compatible with PS3 at all. If you want to play well and have fun, paying up for more accessories is essential, which is actually against most of customers' will.

Meanwhile, their vision is also quite narrow. Whatever they do to Japanese native customers, they want to render it to the entire world. That being said, their skills of science and engineering is not quite outstanding at all. Almost any professional guy graduated engineering or science departments can easily decrypt their 'new standard' back to original shape, it usually turns out that their so called 'new standard' is just some simple alterations of wire crossings and interface shapes. For example, The chip wiring order of PS Vita game cards is just a complete inverse of standard SD cards. You make your custom inverted wiring and put a skin on it, then boom, the games are readable into your computer, then you can pry it open and see whatever inside. Same clumsy trick also applies for video cameras, a simple alteration of wiring can remove all the limitations, then Sony loses revenue again.

In Japan due to the ancient culture, the society often emphasizes the absolute devotion to lords, brands and superiors. Strong superiors bind their subordinates' lives under total control. Yet Japanese auto vehicle companies (like Toyota) still restrict their staffs to drive only their own brand of cars to work, or they will be immediately fired. I am not surprised if Sony will do the same to their staffs using iPhones at work, since it must be Xperia series made by their own. Steve Ballmer tried to wreck his staff's iPhone, and what good did he got? Nothing.

The companies realize that they can't limit the wisdom of users trying to crack their stuff, so they bring it to legislation using political funding strategies, and hence make Japanese users illegal to alter any key part of the product. Doing so will lead to a criminal prosecution of patent/copyright infringement, even if the product belongs to the end users. While that only happens in Japan, we are not limited to it. Once we buy something, it belongs to us, not Sony anymore. We can do whatever to the product without any problem from any other parties.

Years ago in Germany, Sony raided a PS3 hacker's home and seized all his computers and other electronic devices, with the aid of local police force. I bet that Sony never dares to do the same thing in the States even with 10 times of guts borrowed, due to the fear of self-defence rights. Really, don't do it in the States, or the people would have a very bad day. The aftermath of the German was, that they forgot to take away a small pamphlet taking note of all the technical details, so the enraged hacker walked out of razed home into a cyber cafe, started a new blog, and published everything written there online.

Yet I still admit that in the area of professional video production, the meticulousness of Japanese people makes quite a lot of their success and hence gains reputation as craftsmen. However, their business strategies are no match of open minded western companies. Cooperation and openness is the key to global success, which is sadly not in their scope of recognition. Frogs under wells. Really.

FYI After much trial and error youll find that no aftermarket batteries work with the pmw-300 you have to use sony batteries. Also that means no dtap. I cant go into much detail but I have made one after market battery company aware of this and they are working with me to solve the issue.

I just tried the newest SWIT battery at a local dealer in the 300 and it just works. (The SWIT has D-tap and 1A DC5V USB) Same would go I assume for the DSM-U84 84Wh batteries you reviewed, Alister.

I was trying Switronix EX-L96UD (updated version that works with pmw-100/200) They dont work by themself, what battery are you using ?

I have only tryed thew SWIT Battery because of my need for a DTAP, which it appears the DSM battery dont have. Correct me if im wrong plzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

The DSM doesn't have the D-tap because the battery cell manufacturer had safety concerns over the use of D-tap.

The NEWEST SWIT S-8U63 will work in a PMW-300. It may not have the capacity of the Switronix, but it does have D-tap.

Jack have you tried it with a pmw-300 ?

Like I said, I was just at the local dealer that had a PMW-300 and the latest SWIT worked on the machine. It showed a fully charged SWIT battery at 300mins in the battery remaining indicator.

Sorry I wasnt clear which battery you had tested


thanks for the info

OK here comes another question. I am trying to copy the XDCAM 422 MXF files into the hard drive and progress it using Final Cut Pro X, but it does not support it natively. Installing the sony xdcam codec plugin doesn't help either, looks like they did not update it to the latest XDCAM 422 version. The filenames are always gray in the browser.

So I did it another way. I used iSkysoft Video Converter trying to convert it to Apple Prores 422, the pictures are fine but the audio turns to be silent after some certain time, and keeps silent afterward. Apparently there are some problems converting the audio. It is hard to pick one from all 8 audio channels listed in the Video Converter, I haven't tried everything yet but don't have a big hope to convert the entire piece in a whole.

So anyone have any nice tools that can support this mxf file natively or convert it flawlessly to Prores? Thanks. By the way, I am using Mac, so Sony Vegas is not really an option there. Quicktime doesn't have the codec for it and can't play it, but VLC player can.

Ok after a long time of searching I got something useful. Basically, the plugin on pro.sony.com doesn't work as it was not up to date. The one should be downloaded is here:

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/download/software_for_sony_equipment#xdcam?keycode=731500

It's the 3rd item. The steps are quite easy. Install and restart FCPX, then it's all done. When the SxS or XQD card is plugged onto the computer, it will automatically recognize this card as a camera and display all the files in the folder named Clips. All the files become readable and playable, though the speed of USB 3 may not be able to catch up the playing bit rate.

It sounds intelligent, and looks like really is, but this aggressive behaviour can cause a lot of problems. Most of video editors tend to use external drives as scratch disks. So as the playback on card sometimes lags, I copied one of the MXF files onto my other scratch disk, in the root directory. After I have restarted FCPX, the plugin immediately recognized that file and also my scratch disk as a camera, and hence restricted all the other accesses on the disk. All the events and projects are not operable at all. Events and projects which have links to movies on this disk all showed as "Source Missing" and is not relinkable. When I tried to shut down FCPX, it crashed and said "FCPX crashed due to malfunction of Flamingo XDCAM RAD plugin", which I have found later in the system ProApps folder. By checking back the scratch disk for MXF files I have found that there's a folder named XDROOT which was automatically built, and a copy of that MXF file is located inside. Deleting the folder and MXF files solved the problem, and FCPX does not pop any weird stuff after restarting, but it should be advised to be cautious for this aggressive bug. Do not copy any MXF files on the scratch disk by your own, I guess.

To your earlier point about VLC, it has never been able to play XDCAM 422 audio without it skipping like a CD and eventually silencing itself. It's a weird thing with 30p drop-frame video that VLC hates. No problems on 24p.

The converter likely is having the same problem VLC had, in which the audio skipped a ton and then silenced itself.

Plus, I have written this bug report to their website, and after all of this lengthy description and suggestion, what comes out after I click submit button is a 404 error --- the web page doesn't exist. I tried multiple times and got the same results. I take it as that they are too hesitate to take any suggestions or accept any bug requests. The products are real, but the customer services looks like pure scum.

Converters are basically a skin on top of the FFmpeg backend. FFmpeg can't handle professional codecs well, but there is a professional codec driven of FFmpeg called FFmbc.

https://code.google.com/p/ffmbc/

It actually is amazing what FFmpeg can do, but it can't do everything.

At least I can directly read those files in with that sometimes malfunctioning plugin now. Though I have not tried it yet, previously I used Sony Content Browser to convert one to mov and imported it in, it appears to have 8 audio tracks, all mono, with the 5th-8th silent. I currently saw no use of them, but they do exist. Maybe they are for some better cameras, I presume.

So ... is anyone with a PMW300 game to start answering our myriad of questions? Even just your thoughts on how this camera performs in real world usage will be of help.

Andrew

sure make a list, Ill do the best I can to answer.

Thanks.

Firstly, when playing back a video clip that you have shot with the camera, does it output thorough the SDI connection? This doesn't happen on the EX3 which appears to only have a live SDI connection when it is in 'camera' mode.

Andrew

That doesn't seem right. The EX3 should be able to do that with the i.link output off. Make sure your i.link output is off in order to use the SDI.

All cameras require the i.link output to be disabled to use HDMI or SDI.

Could well be the case. Admittedly, it was a borrowed camera (the EX3 is not my usual cam) and it was an unexpected need at the time. Seemed weird that it would not output through the SDI.

Many thanks.

Andrew

So, it looks like BH has someone who's collecting the serial numbers of PMW-300's they have sold out to customers to fulfill their *reseller's rebate* to prevent their potential loss. Anyone who has received it other than me?

Well I have to point out that the guy who's in charge of this has kind of a mechanical mind... He forwarded several of other users' emails to my email address trying to let me understand where the serial number is... Brent Kaplan is among them.

It appears that someone else also thinks that the rebate is for *himself*... and happily submitted the number with that consent. lol.

yes I got that email and a phone messgae fromm a Isaac DAvis

So what happens if you choose not to supply them with the serial number?

Andrew

So what happens if you choose not to supply them with the serial number?

Andrew

Could be that they lose Sony's rebate, which could be around 5% or 10% of the price per item. That's why this guy is constantly bugging people with machines everyday. If he can't get enough response, he will be fired. That's the way New Yorkers do it.

What makes me a bit of passive to the response is that I also have asked something else. I have mentioned before that when I have received mine I have a small dust in the VF lens, which I want to contact them to seek easy ways to repair or exchange this part. So I talked to this guy by the way, but he did not respond it at all. He just let me contact their Customer Services. Well, You want something from me and you don't provide any courtesy to your customers? I should have jacked them with the serial number for the part, but I did not. I contacted Customer Services instead yesterday, but got no response so far.

I'm in the process of finishing off my review of the PMW-300 and I have tested my DSM U83 on it. I have no issues it appears to work correctly without the need for fly leads or anything else.

Looking forward to the review, Alister. I really got a lot out of your review of the PMW-200, even watching it a few times.

Are you able to check for IR bleed issues? (The sort of thing where black fabric looks warm/brownish because the infra-red isn't being filtered out properly.)

Thanks for all that you do.

Andrew

Thats great about the DSM batteries but what about a battery with a DTAP that works.

Thats great about the DSM batteries but what about a battery with a DTAP that works.

ONLY one is the SWIT S-8U63. That's it.

I've been enjoying all the 4K discussions the last few days and weeks on DVinfo (AX100, GH4, Z100 etc….) but they have not changed my focus on what my immediate business needs are, and specifically those over the next 12-18-24 months for my main corporate clients. After that, who knows!

Anyway, after 5 and a half years of fantastic, rock solid performance with the lovely XDCAM workflow my much beloved EX3 is being retired (actually already sold). Today I ordered my PMW-300 :-)

It'll complement my Canon C100 well for my particular needs, just as the EX3 has.

My thanks to Alister Chapman and one or two others around the world for providing recent written and/or video reviews of the PMW-300 which helped me cement my decision, initially formulated back in June of 2013 immediately after the Sony press release on the PMW-300 (see my post #31 in this thread).

I get it on Tuesday - can't wait! I will be shooting my first commercial job with it starting next Friday (for a global medical name - on a film that will be used in Africa at the end of this month). I'm sure it'll be pretty familiar in menu and general operation/set-up - so no worries. No doubt I'll just need to rapidly re-learn some critical button positions!

Note to Chris and/or Mods: Now that the PMW-300 is shipping I guess discussions on it would be best incorporated into a 'Sony XDCAM or PMW' section - rather than in this 'News' section of the forum???

I've been enjoying all the 4K discussions the last few days and weeks on DVinfo (AX100, GH4, Z100 etc….) but they have not changed my focus on what my immediate business needs are, and specifically those over the next 12-18-24 months for my main corporate clients. After that, who knows!

Anyway, after 5 and a half years of fantastic, rock solid performance with the lovely XDCAM workflow my much beloved EX3 is being retired (actually already sold). Today I ordered my PMW-300 :-)

It'll complement my Canon C100 well for my particular needs, just as the EX3 has.

My thanks to Alister Chapman and one or two others around the world for providing recent written and/or video reviews of the PMW-300 which helped me cement my decision, initially formulated back in June of 2013 immediately after the Sony press release on the PMW-300 (see my post #31 in this thread).

I get it on Tuesday - can't wait! I will be shooting my first commercial job with it starting next Friday (for a global medical name - on a film that will be used in Africa at the end of this month). I'm sure it'll be pretty familiar in menu and general operation/set-up - so no worries. No doubt I'll just need to rapidly re-learn some critical button positions!

Note to Chris and/or Mods: Now that the PMW-300 is shipping I guess discussions on it would be best incorporated into a 'Sony XDCAM or PMW' section - rather than in this 'News' section of the forum???


Congrats on the new camera. I really like the specs. If I didn't need two, I would probably get one.

I'm sure you'll like it Andy. If you liked the EX3 I think you'll really like the 300. It's much better put together and a great viewfinder.

and most awesome rotating grip from the EX1r.

Just got a Fujinon XS17x5.5BRM and attached it on my unit. It's totally different from the stock lens regarding the pic quality, a direct 1 level above. I am very happy with it and expect to take it somewhere soon to have some landscape tests, though it's been totally desolate in Vancouver with wind and rain nowadays.

I also have noticed that 4K talks on the forum and other places are significantly more than before recently. But I guess I won't have my next move until maybe PXW-Z700 comes out or maybe I can afford an F55 some day. Although there are also a lot of 4K monitors rolling out this year, which makes me a bit of thirsty to have some 4K shooting kits, but it seems not happening anytime soon. It's simple way too expensive... man.

That being said, still I want to ask, that does this HD lens support up to 4K resolution, or will there be there any specific 4K lenses coming out later? DSLR lenses can be a simpler option but may not permanently.

Meng, what is the complete manufacturer part number for your Fujinon XS17x5.5BRM lens? I am confused by a variety of digits tacked onto the end of the part numbers. Thanks.

I also have noticed that 4K talks on the forum and other places are significantly more than before recently. But I guess I won't have my next move until maybe PXW-Z700 comes out or maybe I can afford an F55 some day. Although there are also a lot of 4K monitors rolling out this year, which makes me a bit of thirsty to have some 4K shooting kits, but it seems not happening anytime soon. It's simple way too expensive... man.

I'm sure the AX100 will get a pro model. It happened with the HDR-HC1 and the HVR-A1U. Would make a good B-cam.

Meng, what is the complete manufacturer part number for your Fujinon XS17x5.5BRM lens? I am confused by a variety of digits tacked onto the end of the part numbers. Thanks.

To check model numbers, there are 2 pics here telling everything:
B4 ENG Lens model# decoder charts! (Canon/Fujinon) (http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?282982-B4-ENG-Lens-model-decoder-charts!-(Canon-Fujinon))

Thanks, Meng.

I contacted Fujinon. They said the suffix digits are a manufacturing code that can change during production. I am just not accustomed to seeing a manufacturing code so prominently labeled on the lens.

I'm sure you'll like it Andy. If you liked the EX3 I think you'll really like the 300. It's much better put together and a great viewfinder.

Spot on, as always Alister! Actually, you're slightly wrong, I love it!

Went to get it from H Preston in Malvern yesterday (who were a pleasure to deal with and who now have my treasured EX3 - in absolutely beautiful condition if anyone wants a second-hand one, BTW).

I have just set it up this morning - very easy and intuitive to set-up when you've used EX cams (shame about the rainy weather here though).

There are so many little (and some big) things that they have improved on and the sum total is a much bigger step up than I was expecting from just looking at specs on websites. One thing I did take note of though was the signal to noise quoted spec on the PMW-300 is now 60dB (was 54 on the EX3).

Build quality is really good (so good to have a metal body again, reminds me of the old trusty Sony PD150 I used a few years back).

The viewfinder is just blummin fantastic!!!

Not shot anything with it yet - but that will come soon enough.

So Yesterday finally the sun came out in my area, I went to shoot something in the park using the machine and lens, edited it overnight, then posted it online. For the original clip it really works well, however here on Youtube I don't know how they compress it, the sea turns to be splotchy and also affected other objects like boulders and beach. Those scenes look terrible on Youtube only.

Whytecliff Park, PMW-300 Test Footage - YouTube

Everyone is welcomed to comment. Considering that this is a 1-day project, please don't be that skeptical, I guess this clip really does indicate some attributes of the lens and camera, like when it's shooting the sun, the shaft and flare of the lens certainly are not as good as those production cameras, but it may add some different flavor to it.

Another question I want to ask is regarding that splotches of waves of sea. It's really disturbing to see it on Youtube. I changed various ways to upload for multiple times, but none of them seem to give me better quality than that. Meanwhile it hurts my fragile heart by looking at promotion videos for consumer level 4K cameras (FDR-AX1) having better quality than mine. :\ Any ideas of that?

Try uploading to Vimeo (Vimeo Plus gets you 2 pass encoding) - I've noticed YouTube is particularly bad at complex motion. Don't get me wrong - Vimeo is not faultless, and IMHO I think it's using 601 encoding on 709 material which puts your picture slightly out of line. But I digress.

(FWIW - Motion results X264 - torture test - YouTube , and https://vimeo.com/83166644)

Looks like you are right, it does look much better on Vimeo.

Whytecliff Park, PMW-300 Test Footage on Vimeo

Still, it's not perfect since there are 1-2 scenes still having those splotches, if looking in detail. But I guess that's just how it works.

Again, for those 4k videos, they have a much higher bit rate supported by those sites. Given the significant improvement of the quality, why can't they offer more bit rate for 1080P videos too? If the master file is played out on it lossless, it will be still much better than what's on Vimeo.

Thanks for offering the original file for download Vimeo . It's only 1 GByte . Judging video quality critically on YouTube or Vimeo doesn't make sense due to the additional and inadequate re-compression.

Thanks for offering the original file for download Vimeo . It's only 1 GByte . Judging video quality critically on YouTube or Vimeo doesn't make sense due to the additional and inadequate re-compression.

The original master file is 7G in total. I comment on the video quality since I know some pro directors who also uses Vimeo to post some of their scenes. Of course they are using RED machines so the original file looks way better than mine. But given the quality after their compression, I don't want to feel like that 'this is what I can get from online sites for others to see', with much better file in hand. So I wonder is there any other ways to maximize the quality of delivery?

De-noising to take the grain out of the finished file and give you better treatment from the Vimeo (or any other) encoder.

The battle for video encoding bits to be spent in the right places happens at all stages.

Andrew