Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

My first AX100 4K Video post....

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

OK, just to double check, it's the AVM1 Multi to A/V... then an A/V to 2.5mm... then the LANC w/2.5mm? Reason for asking is that the original "adapters" from 2.5mm to A/V have an added trigger resistor in the mix, and I'm trying to figure out what additional trigger mechanism is being used by the VPR remotes so that the signal get through to the RX's - I'm pretty sure the VPR tripods work with the AX100... and they work with the RX's (and other Cybershots with MULTI)... the mystery is why the AVM1 adapter isn't working between the AV2 (native A/V plug on the old LANC Sony used to make) and the RX's....

I'll post if I figure this one out, since I've got several AV2's, as I'm sure most of us do, and would like to use 'em - they are small and handy, unlike the VPR's!

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

The reason is that the AX100 needs to be treated and used as a motion picture camera. That's true even at 30p. So shutter speeds of 1/50th or 1/60th and almost NEVER EVER higher. That means constant use of an ND filter to keep the aperture from going higher than f/8 or f/11.

Apply all the cinema rules on shutter-speed (180 rule), keeping the aperture as constant as possible shot to shot (likely f/5.6), use shallow DOF to cover RS and motion judder, pan with a moving subject, don't shoot subjects moving the through the frame at any more than a walking speed, pan at the correct rate for the amount of zoom, and avoid zooms while shooting. And, of course, lock exposure and focus for every shot. In low-light add illumination not gain. Lastly, keep medium focal lengths to avoid CA.

It does look like a tripod will be needed for most shots -- which is a pain.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Thanks. You have to log in to Vimeo to access the original, non re-compressed UHD file that I uploaded, and you can download it if you log in (289 people have downloaded it). If you are not a Vimeo member, joining is free.

Many shots in tele, and only Standard OIS was used. To achieve best stability, you need to use Active mode for tele. The jury is still out on whether there is a visible reduction in video quality in that mode.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

as a Vimeo member ..... you will see this:

http://666kb.com/i/cmz6rrd34eaonf5nq.jpg

Hans

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Steve, you need to be a Vimeo member to access Mark's 4K version. It is there.

Oops, see this was posted already.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Does data code work for the 4K files? It is something that does not yet work on my AX1 so would be interested to find out if it worked on the AX100.

Ron Evans

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

"Data code" meaning meaning shot settings display?

If that is what you mean than yes, the AX100 will display "gain", "shutter speed" and "iris" values on playback as well as recording. (something the Handycam CX760 and NXCAM NX30 dont do)

After a full day now with this camera and lot's of nerdy "pixel peeping", I'm starting to respect this low bitrate codec allot more than I originally did.

Despite it's very low numbers, it still seems to hold up remarkably well in the shadows. I cant say that it's as tough as the FS100's CODEC. The FS100 can survive pretty high amounts of grading and gamma curving, bending and stretching. If you push the AX100 beyond "light" grading, artifacts can start popping out of the woodwork. I do think it's "reasonable" though.

There seems to be an odd "grain" to the shadows in detailed patterns....even at 0db. There can also be some very very light "flecks" on some edges. This is all very slight and something you really need to look hard to see.

But this is really nothing when you consider that its only 60Mbp/s recorded onto common SD cards. It seems that Sony really did a great job with that AX100 encoder circuit. I never thought this was possible at 60Mbp/s.

I'm now starting to get a little bit "attached" to my AX100. So far so good. The only "ugly" cripple is that HDMI shut off trick. The thing records 4k,...sends a scaled image to monitor, sends a scaled image over WiFi but refuses to rout that same (already processed) video to the HDMI when the record button is pressed. I'm sorry Sony,...this trick is a real dirty one.

That crippling stunt aside,....I'm starting to love this camera!

Oh,..on rolling shutter:

30p with 1/60 and faster shutter = No "real" Jell-O to speak of.
30p with 1/30 shutter = Only "slight" amounts of Jell-O but easily manageable.
24p with 1/24 shutter = Potentially heavy Jell-O but can be managed if very careful.

I strongly suspect that Sony put allot of extra design hours into the camera. It certainly "feels" like it. It doesn't feel like the usual "crippled" Handycam at all. (HDMI shut off stunt aside)

I think we could all agree that for $2,000, Sony is giving us allot of camera.

Now,....If Sony would release firmware that would unlock the HDMI and add RX10 style, simple "contrast" and "saturation" +/- tweaks....Sony would then have a "perfect" camera to fight the GH4.


Just my $.02

CT

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

That is good to know but I should tell you both my CX700 and NX30U show full data code on playback by pressing data code button on the remote. Exposure control, white balance, gain, shutter speed, iris as well as date, time and GPS location. I assume you were referring to showing info during recording.

The data code button is on the AX1 but currently does nothing for playback but does show all info during recording just like the NX5U I have too !!! The promised update this summer is supposed to make these work as well as include AVCHD 2.0. We shall see !!!

Ron Evans

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Yup,...during recording. I was always pissed that the CX760 didn't show "gain" during shooting. They gave it to you on playback but not when it was most important...during shooting. (I can imagine those engineers laughing with each other at the design meetings for those cameras) Who thought of that cripple? That was really an "outside the box" stunt.

I would LOVE to see a side by side, AX1 and AX100 low light shootout. What a great A/B test that would be!

Hmmm,...what will Sony add to this possible AX100 "pro" NXCAM model?

CT

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

I'm a member, but didn't notice I wasn't logged in.

Uploading original XAVC was brilliant!

The flowing water to my memory looked much better on Vimeo than it did at 4k on youtube. Did you notice that?

Folks shooing 4k on the Red feel that this is the best way to shoot FHD because the supersampling increases quality so much. David Taylor at Cineform confirms that 4k 420 can "become" 2k 422. No details yet.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

I think the fact that by scaling to 2K the 4K 4:2:0 will have 4 times more colour information than a 2K 4:2:0 recording. There is of course 4 times more luminance too to scale to the 2K image and in my scaling from my AX1 it does produce a noticeably better image than shooting 2k. This shows up in face details of people who are small in the image. The noise too gets smaller so more acceptable. This is the same sort of response I got scaling HDV to SD years ago.

Using the Neat filter and then scaling produces a beautifully clean image. Downside is I think I need to upgrade to a supercomputer to do all this for anything more than a few seconds!!!


Ron Evans

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

I too would like to see that test. Did you compare to your NX30U that at least would give a guide. I know that in the theatre last week the AX1 and the CX700 were at the same settings for the dark scenes but with some light the CX700 was still about a stop faster than the AX1. NX30U should be about the same. The NX5U is more sensitive but noisier.

Ron Evans

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Has anyone seen this video of the AX100's rolling shutter? Wow, it looks bad. It's only one video, and we have no idea what the settings were, but what do you think? Can any owners do some test shots to check on the skew?

Sony AX100 4K video camera – how much rolling shutter is too much? | EOSHD.com



This video may have already been posted, but I'm not scouring 47 pages to look for it.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Yes it was really bad, but good luck finding any other video that looked that bad. I guess if you have a rapidly moving train a few feet from your camera, or pan so quickly you'll nauseate your audience with or without RS, then for that person it may be an issue. That's why these guys that shake their cameras violently to detect RS, always amuse me. Who shoots like that??

So, since virtually every other video doesn't show this problem, certainly not to this extent, it's not a big issue IMO.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

I saw that video too and I was very concerned by it at the time. Now that I own an AX100? Rolling shutter is nothing for me to worry about any longer. Im a serious pixel peeping nerd...the stuff I have shot myself is perfectly fine. Whew! No more fear of that.

Now...24p at 1/24 shutter?....you need to be careful with that. Its the only combination that will really roll on you. All other higher speeds are fine. 30p at 1/30 shutter is not bad and any faster shutter will not be an issue at all.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

What do you use to increase the colours of a 4k video like film? Many people use Neatvideo but I don't like to use it. Some suggestions?

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

There is a Cinematone setting in the camera to do just that (more vivid colors, different gamma, more red for a film look). Here is a video comparing that mode to the regular one in a low-light setting. More comparisons are needed:

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Speaking of the GH4, does Sony turn off the overlay displays after 10 seconds on the AX100 like the GH3 and maybe the GH4?

Seriously, adjusting the color is needed when matching up to other cameras. Are there no controls on the color? If not, it sounds like the VG cameras all over again.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

This is a consumer camcorder. Surely you would adjust to match other cameras in editing. I think if you want the fine paint controls then the FDR-AX1 or PXW-Z100 are the choices though I do not bother and match in editing for fine controls anyway clip to clip. In my use in the theatre with LED lighting ( which can vary color temperature ) the match can change based on set changes and where the camera is pointing rendering camera setup useless. I now set all my cameras to preset indoor when in the theatre and change in editing as needed. That way I can match colour balance and saturation with fine control and monitors.

Ron Evans

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Les, why would you not do this in post? If you have multiple cameras, regardless of how you have them white balanced, I would think you'd want to tweak this in the editing process anyway.

The typical color level, sharpness and contrast controls that were on some previous Sonys were pretty crude and certainly not how you'd want to 'balance' multiple cameras.

If all I'm doing is using the camera controls to get as close as I can to two cameras like a handicam, I'd just use manual white balance and then worry about it during editing.

As for the info display, no, it does not turn off unless you want it to. Your choice.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Interesting, rolling shutter is normally more pronounced at faster shutter speeds. At lower speeds the motion blur tends to mask the skew, the faster the shutter the crisper the motion so the skew becomes more obvious.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

There are several "anomalies" that I'm noticing with this camera that I cant exactly put my finger on:

30p "harshness" - Tested footage mostly shot in 30p using a 1/30 and 1/60 shutter. (did others too) Slow pans and large amounts of moving objects seem to move with a certain "harshness". I don't believe it's the frame rate itself. I shoot 29.97p on my EX1r and FS100 and I love it. However, the AX100 doesn't look that "smooth" at the same frame rate and shutter speeds.

Could it be the 60Mbp/s codec struggling? This codec doesn't seem to "block up" or get "jagged" when it breaks. Instead, it seems to protest motion by getting "soft". For instance, bark on a palm tree was tremendously sharp at 1/60 shutter with the camera dead on a tripod. Then,...with an ever so slight and slow camera movement, the bark texture "softens" and when stopped, returns to razor sharp again.

A "dumb" way to put it would be: The image is 4K when still and 2k when there is motion. lol It's funny to say it that way and yes, all camera's can say the same thing to a certain extent. Yes, even faster shutter speeds exhibited the same thing too.

I don't think this it's the shutter speed. I think it's the Long GOP CODEC itself that is stressing under the rate of pixel changes.

Does anybody else see this? I'm not seeing it so much when a fast moving object goes across an otherwise static scene, I'm seeing it mostly on very slow pans where EVERY pixel in the image is moving left, right, up or down. It just looks a bit "harsh" and slightly "soft" no matter what shutter speed is used.

Agian,..I have always loved 30p for years,..so it's not that.

Is it just me that sees this??

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Yeah,...running at 24p with at 1/24 shutter, if you really whip pan fast to the left or right, you could actually take a sharp, straight up and down line and skew it to a very blurry 45 degree angle!l lol

It's not "that" bad. If you know it's there, it's easy to shoot carefully around it. I don't see it causing any significant problems for me.

Alister,...have you signed ant Sony NDA's lately? ;-)

CT

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Cliff, I can't say I see this more than in other cameras I've shot with when shooting at that frame rate. I always expect a loss of detail when panning. Just as when I swivel my own head, detail is not as sharp as if I'm looking at something in a static manner.

However let me propose another theory. IMO this camera is sharper than almost any 4K camera I've seen. From the clips thus far presented of the GH4, it's significantly sharper and more resolved than that camera...at least from what we've seen thus far.

Even some very pricey 4K cameras don't seem to have this level of detail. Sooo, perhaps it's that you're starting off with so much detail and sharpness, that when the camera begins to pan, the loss of detail is more obvious because you're starting off so much sharper.

Not sure if that makes any sense, but in my contorted mind, it does.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Ken,

I agree with you. This AX100 is ridiculously sharp. You could also be right about the sharpness and the motion softness too. Maybe with 1080, the resolution difference in motion is not as dramatic because we aren't starting with that sharp of an image to begin with.

Imagine a resolution chart with 2,000 lines on it. If the chart start was moving in front of a camera even slowly, the first lines to get smeared would be the highest frequency lines. Then, the faster the cart is moved, the further down the "blur" would move. So,...it would take more motion to blur the 600 or 700 line mark than it does to blur the 1500 line mark? (shutter speed dependent...but we tend not to really like shutter speeds that are above 1/90 or something like that)

Right? Maybe? Alister, you have been shooting 4K for a while now. Is this accurate or completely off?

I'm still getting used to 4K! Love it.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

I've been theorizing that the higher resolution "masks" the motion issues from the 30p - with scenes with motion, the stuff that's not moving remains quite sharp, and the motion blur seems unoffensive enough. I'm sure 60p would be "sharper" on individual frozen frames, but I'm not so sure whether that would appear "more" natural... or less?! All I know is so far the 4K samples look "pleasing" (well maybe not that fly, that was a bit scary!).

There may well be some things going on with how we "see" naturally, vs. a captured image. I know I'm noticing that these 4K videos on my screen (even at 1080) are sharper than my "corrected" vision! it's almost as though the captured images are resolving detail that our brains would generally "toss out", and we may have to readjust "how" we see, if that makes any sense.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

The HC1 and FX7 I had would record HDV to tape and simultaneously down-convert and output DV thru firewire to a dvd disc recorder and I did thousands of hours like that.
.

Will the ax100 record 4k to memory card whilst out-putting 1080p via HDMI which would feed the switcher along with several other cams?

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Bruce, this has been asked & answered several times. When recording 4K to an internal memory card, the AX100 cannot output via HDMI. I'm theorizing this is due to the intensive processing requirements needed to do both simultaneously.

The workaround, as Mark R. demonstrated, is to output the signal via wifi to a tablet or smartphone which the camera can do while recording 4K. But you cannot feed several other cams.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

I shoot live switched sometimes with 4 cameras and the output of the switcher is recorded so the individual camera recording is not so important.
The gist of my question is " If the ax100 is set to record 4k but the record button is NOT pressed, what is the 1080p in-camera down-converted HDMI video like? Is it similar to what everyone is raving about sharper than straight shot 1080?

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Don't mean to harp, but the shutter should/must be 1/50th or 1/60th AT ALL TIMES.

At 1/24th the shutter is open for the entire frame time which should only be used for low light recording with NON MOVING subjects. Unless, of course, you are after a subjective drunk POV.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

This enables a visual check on the camera's capture, but won't support recording of a useable movie.

The AX100 is not like 5 -10 year old DV and HDV camcorders. It records very high-quality images at low-frame-rates. Recording is EITHER internal or to a device connected to the HDMI connector.

If one owns an HDMI switcher, one can do a live mix. If one has an HDMI recorder, one can record. For example, to ProRes.

If one needs HD-SDI, one can buy a converter.

I haven't seen answers to:

1) I assume the HDMI output is 8-bit.

2) Is it 420 or 422?

3) What is the output when shooting 30p? Some tvs don't accept 30p or 60p. At 1920x1080 they expect 60i.

4) What is the output when shooting 24p? Some tvs don't accept 24p (and add 3:2 pulldown) or 60p (with 3:2 pulldown added in the camera). At 1920x1080 they expect 60i with 3:2 pulldown.

5) Has anyone connected to a 4k tv?

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Steve if your camera is right there
Plug the hdmi into a 1080 screen and give the word

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

I've asked this before about using the tablet/phone app during 4k recording, but no one seemed to have had occasion to have tried it yet. Maybe someone has by now, so I'll ask again:

While recording 4k, if zebras are enabled in the AX100, will they appear on the tablet's/phone's screen?

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

In post. But, it's quite saturated already. Can't imagine you would need more saturation.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Not playing much with camera because -- having spent a month with the jvc 4k last year -- the hangups are in post. Want to sort these issues out first.

So far xavc s clips load into imovie, fcpx, and media composer. That's a good start.

But, imove plays at 1-2fps.

Media composer plays at may 3-5fps. One can transcode from ama to dnxhd, but the time required is about 30 minutes for each 5 minutes. One 64gb card would take 12 hours to transcode!

fcpx takes a fair amount of time to generate prores proxy. The problem is that fcpx automatically makes a one-quarter sized proxy. This works fine for FHD when the proxy is 640x480. But with UHD the proxy is 4X larger at FHD. Stupid design. Non-Apple plug-ins generally do not work because they don't use the GPU system so they are way too slow.

Bottom-line, no post solution yet found. So the camera may be of no value to me as I'm wedded to a lightweight laptop and apple seems focused on battery life not performance. :(

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

No. You get only the zoom rocker and start/stop button on screen (with the live picture); no zebras or focus peaking colors show.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

So, dump Apple: Vegas Pro, for example, has no trouble playing, editing or outputting XAVC on any Windows laptop. Almost all the troubles people have had with common video standards (e.g., AVCHD) and post to video forums have been people using Apple computers.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Thanks, Mark.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

And editing on a laptop may be a little iffy unless it's a fairly beefy configuration. I tried some 1080 multicam, and was close with a second generation i7 Ultrabook, going to try again with a 3rd Gen i7...

I understand the joys of a light portable machine, but asking it to do heavy lifting may be a little much - mobile processors and video subsystems aren't usually up to the hardcore computing tasks that editing involves, and too many places for bottlenecks in such a tightly "integrated" system.

I've been spec'ing for a new desktop to replace an aging i7 920, and I'm expecting even a "fast" machine to have a bit of fun with 4K editing - although I'm finding integrated graphics quoting 4K @30p capability, along with the Seiki 39" TV, thinking it might make a decent "budget" setup for a while anyway!