Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Noa, the little travel chargers BC TRV and BC TRX work very well charging my V series batteries and also the batteries for my cameras and AS30 Actioncam. The BC TRX also has a USB port for USB charging too. Not sure what batteries the RX10 uses.

Ron Evans

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

The rx10 uses yet another formfactor battery, I get about 45 minutes out of a battery. Only 1 hour out of a NP-F970 on the FDR-AX1? Ouch.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Ron, it's interesting, I thought I had read that Edius 7 does export in XAVC-S, but I see no setting for that. Even exporting to just plain vanilla mp4 brings up the red flag.

Mark, nice job on that video.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

I use the Sony AC-VQV10 dual battery charger, definitely recommend it. It charges two batteries fairly quick, even my large FV100 batteries which are all I use and it gives stats on how much battery life is left and what % charged they are on the small display which is neat.


I'm curious as well. My vg900 lasts a long time on the FV100 batteries that I use and that's with it powering much more stuff including the microphone, so I think it'll be ok on the AX100.

Oh yeah just fyi for those that have ordered from Amazon, they just emailed me and listed March 26 as the estimated arrival date for mine, and I had pre-ordered it on January 14.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

I'm curious how import 4k clips in Avid Media Composer

Ugo

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

You can get Edius Pro7 to export to h264/AVC etc just fine just not XAVC or XAVC-S. A 1 min export of XAVC-S to h264/AVC at 50Mbps takes over 14 mins on my i7 3770 running in turbo boost at 4.2Mhz. The same clip in Vegas 12 exporting to XAVC-S takes 8 mins. So encoding 4K takes a lot of CPU power and that has to be done in realtime in the camcorder. For the FDR-AX1 60P at 150Mbps the processor gets hot and needs a fan to keep it cool all using battery power. That is why I am interested in how the FDR-AX100 uses battery. Of course the encoders do not have to be the same at all either.

Ron Evans

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Last year I worked with JVC 4K wiih MC -- must now go back and work-out how to do with XAVC.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

The question is assuming one can export XAVC can one load it on an SD card? If one can, then one can carry one's AX100 to a location with a 4K tv and play it back.

On an other list someone mentioned that there was a software xavc encoder available.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

One can. The newer UHD TVs that support 4K content via USB will play back XAVC-S with no problem (again realizing it's just a variation of AVCHD/MP4).

My LG set plays back all the AX100 clips raw from either a USB drive or HDD. Some of the first gen models from Sony, Samsang, LG don't support 4K through USB so you'd have to check the manufacturer.

So one can mosey on down to their favorite electronics boutique loaded with 4K content and view it till their hearts content.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Hi Ron -

It's great fun keeping track of which chargers and batteries are which...

The TRV charges FP, FH, and FV series, and there are several dual bay (VQH and VQV) that charge 'em in pairs... since the AX100 uses those, guess they will be kept "in inventory" - at least they can be reused if you own an SR/CX/PJ Handycam!

The TRX doesn't charge handycam batteries, but DOES charge almost every Cybershot battery ever produced (except, wait for it.... the FW series used in the RX10!!). It covers the BX used in many of the current Sony cams, as well a G, N, D, T, R and K... but not the "V", just to clarify.

There's yet another new one (BC-QM1) that charges V, H, P, W (RX10), and M series (but NOT F series, or any of the Cybershot line).

I have this crazy hope that I can cut some of the chargers (and batteries!) out of the inventory, but they keep introducing cameras with a crazy assortment of "power sources"! I'm hoping to at least be able to reduce the size of the "stock", but just had to add those FW's for the RX10!!

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

FWIW Noa, the Wasabi wall charger and batteries are cheap and charge quickly for the RX10.
There's also a much better users guide available for the RX10 now.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

@ Mark -

Dang, I think some water actually splashed onto my desk... and that was just at 1080 resolution...

My reservations about 30p are looking like less of a concern...

Now I'm just hoping the RX10 and RX100M2 will intercut well and not look "soft"... poop, those two just made all my OTHER cams look "soft"...

At least I'll have lots of stuff to sell off to afford an AX100! Now to figure out the computer upgrade needed to deal with 4K... bigger, faster, sharper... sigh. Worst part is my eyes aren't even that sharp anymore!

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Yes Dave, On my last ski trip last week I had my AS30V, HX30V and NX30U with me and the BC-TRX and BC-TRV between charged all the cameras, the remote for the AS30 and my Xperia Cell phone. Took the charger for my Asus Tablet as it has a special connector on it.

Ron Evans

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Steve there is a big difference between XAVC and XAVC-S and not sure if the FDR-AX100 will playback XAVC if you put it on a card. Must try on my FDR-AX1 though since the FDR-AX1 and PXW-Z100 are almost the same it may well playback XAVC. It is my understanding at the moment( will change sometime this summer ) XAVC is 10 bit 4:2:2 intra frame and XAVC-S is currently 8bit 4:2:0 inter frame( LongGOP ) at lower bit rates. Initially Vegas and Edius supported XAVC and this played back on both easily. Then later XAVC-S LongGOP was introduced with an update and this is the processing hog for both NLE's. Neither NLE will play back XAVC-S smoothly at realtime on my system, close but not quite there.

As I mentioned Vegas encode is about 8 times realtime for XAVC-S on my i7 3770 running at 4.2Mhz, 16G RAM reading from one hard drive and writing to another. Vegas will encode the same clip to XAVC in about 6 mins !!!

There is a software encoder its called Vegas 12 comes free with a lot of Sony cameras.

Ron Evans

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

A question for those who have their AX100's:

A while back, someone here or on another forum posted a link to an abbreviated manual. On page 21 it says: "While recording movies in XAVC S 4K format and [30p]/[25p] frame rate, video signals are not output to external media."

I am wondering whether this means it won't output to HDMI while recording 4K internal to the internal card. If so, that would mean you can't use an HDMI-connected field monitor while recording 4K. Am I interpreting this wrong? (I hope.)

If you can output to a field monitor via HDMI while recording 4k, what resolution would it output? I don't think my 1024x600 7" field monitor would know what to do with a 4K stream. The manual says it supports 1920x1080 coming in, which I know from experience that it does. But I suspect it won't accept 3820x2160 coming in. Is there an AX100 menu item to set the resolution sent out to the HDMI port, independent of the resolution being recorded?

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Looks to me like the whole sony video lineup will be 4k capable pretty soon
Sony Global - IMX147LQT

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Dale, it's my understanding the AX100 won't output via HDMI while recording internally. However it will output 4K via HDMI when not recording internally.

I have the AX100 but I don't have an external drive. I have seen the live output from my AX100 on a UHD TV where I bought it, so I have confirmed it does output 4K via HDMI.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

With the AX1, one can choose what the output is even when recording from 3840x2160, 1920x1080i or p and 720x480 . Composite video is always 720x480i.

Ron Evans

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Thanks, Ken. That is bad news. When I shoot elementary school stage events on a tripod, I use a field monitor to help set the manual exposure more accurately. It's hard to see little faces on the camcorder's screen when there are 30 of them on stage and I'm shooting wide angle. Each face is tiny on the screen. It's easy to over-expose faces without noticing it on the small LCD screen, even with zebras turned on. The larger field monitor helps greatly.

I would think this would be bad news for a lot of users who use field monitors.

I did see in one of the newer un-boxing videos on YouTube that there is a setting in the menu to set the resolution of the HDMI out, which was my second question. But if the HDMI out doesn't work while recording 4K then it doesn't matter what the HDMI out resolution is set to.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

@ Bruce -
Looks like that will be the "consumer" 1/3" (plus or minus, dang I hate that outdated fractional "measuring" system!!) sensor that will go in the basic Cybershots and Handycams, bringing the pricing for 4K down a few more notches!

Not a whole lot of room for more product announcements on the typical product announce/release schedule, but maybe there will be a few "surprises" coming soon?! If as your link indicates, this sensor is ready "now", you'd expect "consumer" product to announced to be on the 2014 "Christmas shelves"...


The rumour is a 4K Alpha of some sort is in the wings and announced soon, I'd not be shocked by a RX series with 4K in the near term (we KNOW they can... AX100 proves it).

Not sure about how well lower end lenses of the sort you'd have in sub $1K cameras will hold up for 4K sensors - the sensors now require the glass to be pretty high grade, or you'll just get huge numbers of mushy distorted pixels, I suspect!


But yes, looks like 4K should be the de facto "consumer" resolution in fairly short order, like under 12 months...

HD is dead... long live... oh, nevermind...

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Went to buy Class 10 cards tonight. For the last year I've had my nose deep in RAW cameras that have SSDs -- which is great because I've learning a lot.

http://www.creativeplanetnetwork.com...vors-raw/65577

But, it seems these days there are now "speeds" associated with Classes. Who knew!

So I bought one Sandisk Class 10 Ultra 30MBps and one Sandisk Class 10 Extreme Plus 80MBps.

Which do I need?

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Hi

Thanks for the info.

Also Sony Vegas 10 will deal with the clips just fine, even though Sony offer a download update only for Vegas 12 to add support for XAVC. Of course XAVC is nothing new except for a trademark, and is really just a restriction placed on top H264 Level 5.1 or 5.2.

Support added to editing packages for XAVC-S will essentially just be adding an encoding template to set the right parameters, which is more restrictive and less efficient than most default MP4 encoding profiles, I'm guessing to keep things as easy as possible for this first generation of consumer 4K camcorders, so it is no bad thing to export without using the XAVC-S templates for less generational losses at the same bit-rate.

Of course what to playback on?

Things will improve for media players and TV playback, the key is to ensure when these arrive that they show support for H264 Level 5.2 and have HDMI 2.0 before purchase, this ensures the player will support 60fps at 4K which will soon become the norm.

4K just needs new silicon to arrive to support video frame-rates at 4K, currently the manufacturers are just over-clocking better yields of the same HD LSIs and can't go as high as 60fps in a consumer product yet, probably where the Sony CX900 comes in, using up the silicon that didn't make the grade for clock-rates required for 4K.

4K is really crying out for a new codec, something like H265, although the complexity and processing requirements probably means this will not arrive anytime soon for real-time capture and may not make for a good editing experience when it does. So H264 looks set to become a similar workhorse for 4K as MPEG2 has become with HD, as it's easier to increase the bit-rates of existing codecs.

H264 Level 5.2 will support 4K at 60fps at around 700Mbits/sec at 10bit, so plenty of life in the old H264 codec yet. I expect H265 will be used for delivery only for quite some time when it does arrive en mass.

Exciting times though and what better excuse for PC upgrades to the other half :)

Regards

Phil

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Have you tried Vegas 10? My Vegas 10 will not recognize XAVC-S or XAVC files. Says invalid format and refuses to put on the timeline.

Vegas 12 works fine as expected.


Ron Evans

EDIT: XAVC is an mxf wrapper and XAVC-S is mp4. Neither will work in Vegas 10 or Vegas 11 on my system.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Both will work just fine though the Extreme will transfer to the PC faster if you have a fast card reader.

Ron Evans

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Well I just picked one up from my local Best Buy. No time to shoot anything till this evening :(
A couple of things I noticed. The lens ramp starts on the early end. ND-filters has a switch on the back of the cam. Pretty cool location for this size. I read that Sony didn't include AC adapters with the units. Mine comes with one. LCD is awesome. Nicer then my FS700. Rolling Shutter on the long end of the lens is pretty rough. I'd say as rough as DSLR's with long lenses and no IS on them. I'm never that far on the zoom without being on a tripod or stabilizer. So it's easily manageable. 4K (XAVC-S) only works with SDXC UHS-1 cards. Will shoot a ton tonight and dropbox the files as that's what I was hoping someone would do by now. Great job with the cam Sony. It replaces my VG30 that I now need to sell :)

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Steve, I'm using a SanDisk Extreme Pro SDXC Class 10 with a speed class of 1. But it advertises a 95mb/s speed rate. Like you, my head spins with all these different classes & speeds.

But I can tell you it works flawlessly in my AX100. Have not had a single hiccup in 4K.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Just as an FYI, I downloaded the free Sony Movie Studio Platinum, and it works fine with XAVC-S as they have added those as presets.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Not sure if any of you have seen this edited video from an AX100 owner on his first day with the camera. It's very nicely done and shows the capabilities of this camera in the right hands:

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

In your opnion will WD Western Digital TV work with 4K files after updating its firmware?

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Hi

Not the current model no, it's strictly HD only.

Regards

Phil

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Yes you can see here that all but the standard $49 Movie Studio 13 will edit XAVC-S.

So did the FDR-AX100 come with Movie Studio Platinum or Vegas Pro12 ? Looks like only Vegas Pro 12 will support full 4K.

Movie Studio 13 Product Comparisons

Ron Evans

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Ron, it came with a free download of Movie Studio Platinum. That does support 3840X2160 and 4096X2160

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

That's good. Specs do not always agree with what is in the product.

Ron Evans

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Saw one of these on display at the camera store and popped my SD card in and shot a couple slom mo clips. Vegas Pro 12 identified the AVCHD files as:
Video: 1440x1080x12 29.970 fps interlaced
Audio: 48,000 Hz, Stereo, Dolby AC-3
From the handout literature, it would appear to have a bit rate of 9Mbps in this mode.

There was definitely a time limit. There was a bar that turns green while shooting in high speed, like it's letting you see the buffer fill up. Not sure, just a guess. I should add that the menu system did not have English language option so that made for a little more challenge. The clerk and I fumbled through getting my card formatted and then getting the camera into high-speed mode.

Here's the weird part. I timed how long it would stay in RECORD mode and it was 12 seconds each time. Get home and open the clips in Vegas. They play back in slow motion but not for the expected 48 seconds, only 12 seconds. So, maybe it can only get 3 seconds of high-speed. (????)

Can someone with a camera check this please?


Mark

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Camera must have been in Golf Swing mode. The manual says Golf Swing is recorded in AVCHD and High Speed Record mode is done in XAVC S HD mode. Maybe it didn't go into this mode due to some issue with my SD card. I used a SanDisk Extreme Pro 95 MB/s class 10/UHS class 1 card.


Mark

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Same card as you and I get continuous "can't record XACX 4K" which is nuts! Flashing yellow light say no memory at all!

Formatting doesn't help. But it is a 16GB card which should offer 30 minutes,

Will try 32GB 30Mbps Class 10. Nope!

Only AVCHD is supported.


SOLUTION: format as EX-FAT Using OS X Disk Utility.

The in-camera format does not work! Must only do a FAT format.

Now I wonder if the 32GB Class 10 with a 30MBps rating is fast enough. So much cheaper!

60mbps -- let's assume is 80mbps with optional 3mbps mp4 is only 10MBps. Allowing a 2X margin is still under 30. Sony sells 45MBs cards and I think so does BB.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

The card needs to be first formatted exFat. 64GB SDXC cards come formatted exFat. For your cards, format exFat in the computer then format the card in the AX100.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

That's weird Steve. I bought the camera from Value Electronics and brought the sealed card with me. Robert and I cut it open, I popped it in the camera (no formatting) and have been recording ever since in 4K.

I wonder why you had issues? Was your card used before? Mine was fresh out of the packing.

Edit: Ah, Mark has the answer! Mine was a 64gig card and thus was pre-formatted properly for the AX100. Thanks Mark.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

for SD card class reflect the write speed, and the logo reflects the type of BUS.
a circle with a 10 inside is a logo for old bus, a 1 inside a U is for the new bus version 1, but speeds are the same.
C10 or U1 are same write speed, and you often see card with both logo on it.
We will see soon U1-II , this is cards with the new bus version version 2, that will probalby allow fast speeds (like U2 that would be equal to a C20).
The naming of the card (SD, SDHC, SDXC) are more related to the capacity of the card (SD goes up to 4gig, SDHC up to 32, SDXC up to 2TB) and the formatting (SD use FAT, SDHC use FAT32, SDXC use exFAT). You can reformat a card using another format scheme but you need to check if your device can accept it.

the fact is many card exceed write speed when reading them , so you can find another indication like 90mb/s that would be a read speed. If you get a very high read speed you can also expect a write speed exceeding the class advertised.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

It's been established that during recording of 4K to the internal card, no signal is sent out from the HDMI port, which means you can't use a field monitor connected via HDMI. I wonder whether the wi-fi capability might provide a means of monitoring on a tablet while recording 4K.

The 190 page pdf manual mentions using the PlayMemories Mobile app as a wireless Remote Commander with a smart phone or tablet. It wasn't clear whether the image being recorded is displayed on the tablet/phone's screen, or whether it just displays a virtual set of controls for zoom, record, stop, etc, (similar to the included wireless hardware remote), but not the actual image being recorded.

Has anyone here tried using the remote app on a tablet or phone? While recording 4K, does the AX100 output the actual image to the app like it does to its own LCD screen? If so, does it also show zebras on the tablet/phone's screen if they are enabled on the AX100?