Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

I did a soccer game at night and unfortunately the AX100 in 4K didn't pass the first 4 minutes of the pre-game practice. The AF was decent under a much better lighting of my first tests but the RS was making the shoot impossible. Who followed me during this week in this forum can tell that I did try, pretty much everything to shoot the AX100 in 4K! Switched to 1080 for the actual game and everything was perfect. This AX100 with the new firmware gives amazing 1080 actually, hands down the best Ive ever seen. A note about rendering: the XAVCS gives even more clarity than the original, it's fast. Again the best codec I've ever seen in action under vegas (better and faster than XDcam). There is a little problem with the size of the file rendered which is considerably large. A simple pass with handbrake and the size is reduced 4 times. Same quality but 4 times smaller. Hard to believe but it worked. If you post on youtube then handbrake is necessary (and fairly fast to be honest, so not a big of a deal after all).
For fast action the AX100 is the best 1080 today available (beside broadcast) but the RS makes it not fit for 4K . This concludes my week-long experience with the AX100 on the field.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Well my experience with the AX100 is that used appropriately the 4K is really impressive for a camera at this price point.

Yes, it does suffer from rolling shutter but the combination of a good 12x optical zoom, good codec and low noise sensor with reasonably good dynamic range means means it is capable of producing a really good image. Add to that the good LCD and rear EVF as well as excellent focus tools often only found on high end pro cameras and in the right hands the camera can produce beautiful 4K and HD images.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

my review was related to soccer games at night only. From my experience (covering soccer games for a decade now) the 4K of the AX100 in that scenario will only be good for portraits of the players but only if they stand still, don't run and the camera doesn't move. Basically for stills in motion but with not too much motion (better no motion at all). It is my duty to report: if I wanted to get the info from the marketing brochures then I'd go to the Sony store, not to dvinfo.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Youtube workflow example for AX100 in 1080:

in 1080 for a shoot of 50 minutes in continuous the AX100 writes one big file (17GB in XAVCS) . no more splits (finally! - no more copy /b in cmd)

if no edits are required then the file can be processed in handbrake directly from the card that will reduce the size tremendously. Pretty much the same quality.

One of the formats that I'll use in handbrake for youtube is to put down to 1280x720 , RF quality 23 , x264 preset to medium. This way I can upload 1 hour and 40min to youtube with a size of approx 1.7GB (youtube will not download files of more than 4GB).

(1920x1080 for 100minutes footage will be reduced in handbrake to approx 2.6GB). for comparison AVCS in Vegas will write the same 100minutes footage in a file of approx 8GB)

The results with both XAVCS and Handbrake are very good thanks to the stunning quality of the AX100 in 1080.

no more splits is a very welcome feature from Sony: that alone saves me the time to join the splits in DOS that usually takes an eternity. Since I have to deliver overnight Sony just saved me at least 20 minutes and possible errors typing the command in CMD resulting (often) in additional 20minutes.

I'm about to seriously appreciate this AX100 . Outstanding 1080 and breathtaking 4K (for static shoots) , all for a simple workflow in both Vegas and Handbrake (for Youtube).

I see that blu-ray is considering discs for 4K and that can be a serious change in distribution (that in my opinion is still in the hands of youtube or on-line services nowadays).

Anyway this is the best workflow I could come up with considering that I am still new with the camera: suggestions are welcome (for AX100 files)

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Alister, nice review of the AX100 on Youtube.

Pat

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Agreed.

I don't think that AX100 would be my first choice for 4K night sports shooting. The RS is not an issue in 4K when used in a more typical manner.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

I think I said from the get go that fast motion situations *might* not be "good" for this camera... just sort of went with the specs. I also said that the 1080/60p mode would likely cover that scenario... easy peasy.

Ultimately, I've shot some things with relatively fast motion and achieved results I think most people would be happy with... the trick is finding the right shutter speed to balance motion blur through the frame. RS is "bad", but not at all unexpected with the physics involved in reading the sensor with so many data points... and with wider framing, it's not a huge obstacle, you just want to avoid panning if at all possible <wink>!

I do want to do the upgrade but shoot some comparison video first to see what happens to the 1080 clips. Too many things, on too small a plate at the moment!! The multiple reports of improved 1080 certainly intrigue me, now to find the time!

Looks like uploads are fixed (thx Chris), so I'll find a couple minutes to post the shoe adapter shortly...

And I'd agree with Alister as well, this is an amazing camera for the price point... period. Build quality, features, controls, all probably the best video camera I've had in a long time - not "perfect", but quite good!

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Yes you did , but I had to try. And you know that I did, up to the last minute. The thing is that any camera shows some degradation the moment you start panning (with the exception of the FX1 maybe, CCD). But then again all the 1080 cameras in the prosumer segment can't match the AX100 in 4K (and in 1080 as well, actually). So, relatively speaking only the AX1 can be taken under consideration for a fair comparison. Still It looks like a little too much degradation for the AX100 panning (to me). About the 1080 of the AX100 with the 2.0 I can tell that's very good. It takes some time to render and you really should use the new XAVCs which will only ask to confirm the framerate and the size (no other setting beside that). It's for both HD1080 and 4K2160 (for the AX100)
Maybe 4K at that price came down too soon. it needs much faster computers to name one thing for example. It takes a long time to render on i7. Maybe we need some i77 instead?.
Yeah, 4K on AX100 for controlled shootings (I mean the people in front of the camera must be "controlled" LOL) and slowwwwww panning. After all the distribution of 4K is not yet ready in terms of equipment. Anyway for sports it could be a great tool for tactical , covering the entire field and don't move. At the world cup they used the F55 cameras with fujinon lens, hmmm F55 sounds like a fighter-jet instead of a camera :)

Oh almost forgot about the bracket: it's good, and helps to handle the camera better too! Tomorrow I'll drill it to attach a shoe for the shotgun (I'm going to get a rode, TSR good enough and maybe better than the audiotechnica 875r that I have now (XLR). The thing that I don't like about the rode is that it needs a battery... oh well...

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Much depends on your software. I'm using Edius Pro 7 and find the renders to be in the same ballpark as AVCHD. Not bad at all with an I7.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Maybe the 977 has been here all along but actually called the 970, 980 or 990 intel 6core chips
All 1st gen i7 computers are not equal. For instance an i7 980 will render a big fat file in under half the time it would take a i7 920 due to the hexcore (6) chip which provides 12 threads for the video inwhich to render as opposed to the 920's quad core of only 8 threads.
I myself am in the midst of that specific upgrade and using Edius7 expect no problems working with those 4k files from my yet to arrive fz1000. As well nvidia have produced "keplar" class video cards specifically for 4k and one of those is coming to my editing rig as well

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Same no issue 4K workflow using edius 7 here and that with a bitrate up to 100mbs on a i7 3770 cpu, Edius doesn't even require a fast gamers card, in fact you can even do without one, just the onboard gpu will do and it's that same gpu on the motherboard that accelerates the rendering a lot, about 2 times faster then realtime when I edit 4K on a 1080p timeline and render to a high quality h.264 mp4 file. 4K is more demanding on my pc and editng 4K in a multicam setup is not realtime but as long as only one stream of 4K is involved then there is no issue.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

While setting up a Seiki uhd 39" panel to resolution 3840 x 2160 it seems that even though a pre-4K nvidia gt440 which when manually configured will display 4k,,
Perhaps though a card designed for 4K might do a better job natively.
We'll see about that presumption next week after I install the PNY XLR8 GeForce GTX 760 - Enthusiast Edition - Graphics Card - 2 GB
So far and only having access to downloaded 4k files The seiki looks pretty good but the wow factor might just kick in once this new card is in (fingers crossed)

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Just delivered and took it out for some quick and dirty practice. I'm off to an air show next week. Camera is upgraded to firmware 2.0

This one is 4K default auto settings except autofocus set to infinity, wind reducer on (getting a windcutter!), Active IS


This one is 4K defaults with autofocus on, Active IS


This one is 4K autofocus, Active IS with Cinematone


All were imported into FCP X and used the "standard" YouTube 4K "better quality" export from the normal FCP export settings.

I don't have a 4K monitor, does anyone know if the default FCP upload to YT is significantly different to the Compressor export? I'm trying to figure out if I need Compressor as well to maximize my results.

I deal primarily in YT and aviation. Thanks.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

I've downloaded the 4k off youtube and played on 39 seiki
not bad
No tripod?

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

No, I haven't got the hang of a tripod with that much movement yet, I needed to get down to the airport before the sun went down and the fog came in.

It just arrived really late to get some good practice in before I leave. I just couldn't decide if I need to move up to 4K and decided since I wanted the larger chip, I might as well.

I did a lot of freehand with my old HDR-CX550V (it shows) 2 years ago and I'm trying to find the right mix between tripod, shoulder rig and stabilization software. I'm hoping the larger chip will allow me to leave the zoom out more and capture more detail at the same time.


In hindsight, it might be that my tripod isn't good enough...and I've not focused on that being an issue.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

I have a cx550v as well fantastic little camera
Yeah decent sticks and a good video head make a big difference and I personally would not consider not using same. You do a good job hand held but its still hand held if you know what i mean?
I use a manfrotto 055 with a 501 head and zoom controller on the panhandle. It will be the best 500 bucks you ever spent in terms of making nice watchable video
Have a blast at the show

Mic/Line level?
 

Has anyone worked out the 'Mic In' connection? It seemed to adjust to mic/line level inputs automatically in one situation but in another the line level had to be so low before distortion on both the audio board feeding the camera and the camera itself that it seemed like the input was truly mic level only. If so, how does this camera record line level audio?

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Yes Ken,
I can see what you mean now. Edius took 25minutes to export under XAVCS a 50min footage in 1080 60p 50mbps , so it's half of the real time which is impressive. with a filter running too! (added contrast). the file was originally 55minutes , but I needed to cut 5minutes of unwanted material. So for a quick edit and rough cuts is perfect.

I'm evaluating the purchase now, it may deserve the 500bucks, but I'm still evaluating (because I'll still need Vegas for other things).

By the way WHY vegas takes such a long time to render?
did you try the rolling shutter/stabilization filter? It takes a while to analyze I see. is it any good? (on 4K in particular, obviously)

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Anthony, I've tried the stabilization built in to Edius and although it's moderately effective, I don't like the loss of resolution that's a byproduct of it. It's not that bad, but I just hate losing anything. Most people probably would find it a worthwhile tradeoff, and it probably is where shake is ruining the clip.

Now to be fair, I also tried Mercalli and was really shocked at how little difference there was between what's built into Edius and Mercalli.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

When editing a 4K file In a 1080p project however I don't see any loss in image quality when applying the stabiliser, another advantage of editing in this way. I am not that happy about the build in stabiliser in Edius as it does deforms the image and creates some odd wobbles. It's great to remove jitter on very stationary shots but once you move a the camera a bit too much it does more bad then good, I might have to experiment a bit more with the settings.
I just ordered the ax100 and will sell a few of my other camera's so my gh4/rx10 and ax100 will be my main camera's throughout the day and the gh3 will be a permanent steadicam camera. The ax100 will have to cover any run and gun situation I have to deal with, I"m curious how it will handle.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Noa -

You probably will find the AX100 to be good for that, my big debate is whether to keep a PJ760 for handheld use... sort of on the fence, as the magic eyeball is hard to beat, but somehow it's seeming like it won't get much use!

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

I really need to get rid of some of my camera's :) I think my cx730 still hold some value and should be easy to sell but I might hold onto one of them, just to have one backup videocamera that doesn't have that stupid 30 minute recording time as all my dslr's are blessed with that gift.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

I really need to get rid of some of my cameras too, I think :-)

My BMPCC sits in storage. Now it is being offered at half price. I kinda love the thing and every now and again I pull it out of storage, charge the batteries and go at it again, get frustrated, tell myself to sell it and back it goes into the white elephant cupboard.

My EX1, such a 'professional' piece of kit, and likewise it sits in storage mostly because of the size and cumbersome nature of the beast not to mention the noise in low light areas. But for certain uses it is a very fine cam. I should keep it.

The most recent acquisition, the Sony AS100v action cam...how did I live without it! Not that I'm big into action but for when I go sailing; perfect.

And a bunch of Sony HX series bridge cameras worth next to nothing now.

Oh yes, my NEX 5n (I almost forgot about it). Why did I purchase it? Yes, I remember; poor man's FX100...

The RX10 is now my goto cam for most everything. Great image, moving and stills, but I wish it had more reach and much better image stabilization.

Which brings me to the AX100. After seeing what Ken Ross and Mark Rosenzweig, to name just a couple of folks, have delivered with this cam, in particular Mark's recent shoots in China where he shot incredibly steady hand-held stuff that impressed me greatly. No way I can get that with my RX10 but then the man holding the camera might be more responsible for that than the built in image stabilization.

For those of you who have both the RX10 and the AX100 is the AX100 that much better? Seriously? I fear the answer is yes and instead of reducing the number of cameras I have the opposite will happen!

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

I will know soon enough :) I expect a difference, mainly in detail downscaled to 1080p, I have seen what my GH4 can deliver so have a pretty good indication what "4k" is all about.

Edit: the rx10 is already a very sharp 1080p camera, about the same as my gh3, but a 4K camera when downscaled to 1080p holds more detail which you especially notice on wider shots. I can mix footage from a 1080p camera with 4K footage without seeing much difference but I do have to watch out a when shooting wide with 2 camera's because then the difference is more noticeable. The ax100 is not "that" much better, it can show much more fine detail and it has a better functionality as a videocamera compared to the rx10 which I absolutely need for my work, the rx10 is just a very good 1080p camera. My ax100 will arrive tomorrow, I hope I can take it with me this saturday for the next wedding, just ordered a SDXC Professional UHS-I U3 64GB Kinston card ("only" 97 euro) for it which should arrive tomorrow as well. I should feel right at home using the camera because the menu's and the way you operate it look exactly the same as on my cx730.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Thanks John. Yes, the last several videos from Mark have been great. I think you develop techniques to hand hold a camera and maximize its inherent stability...or lack thereof. I've seen Mark's videos improve as they've become more stabile. The AX100's OIS is good, but not great. The Active IS is better and only minimally detracts from the resolution of the image. In fact I doubt most people would be able to see any loss.
John, in a word, yes. It was a relatively short period of time after my AX100 arrived, that I decided to sell my RX10. I really loved the RX10 and it's overall PQ. But the leap in PQ with the AX100 is there, and to my eyes, obvious when viewing in 4K. Additionally, as has often been discussed, you get the great advantage of getting a much superior 2K image by down rez'g your 4K footage to HD. This way you get the best looking HD footage you've probably ever seen and have that gorgeous 4K footage waiting for the moment you decided to get a 4K display (or UHD display).

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

For anyone interested in the audio portion of this camera... It seems that the 'Mic In' jack is indeed mic level only. That said, if you crank down the manual audio input level settings to the 2nd from the bottom hashmark, you can get away with line level inputs without much distortion unless the audio signal has a wide dynamic range. If you use an external soundboard you may want to invest in line-to-mic impedance adapters.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Don't you think the main difference between the 2 camera's image wise is the extra detail the ax100 can show? Not sure if any other aspect like dynamic range or how the camera's render colors or how both deal with moire and aliasing are that different?

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Also, if anyone knows of a handy transforming adapter...?

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

A subforum for the FDR AX100 is an absolute necessity. This thread is too bloated to have any usefulness but to the very few that follow it daily...

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

I know Chris has mentioned that a subforum was already a bit overdue but I"m sure he will provide that for us shortly.

I just got the camera and to my surprise my old batteries fit and work with this new camera as well! (on the image below you can see the biggest sony battery attached to the camera) That's not like Sony, they often make small changes so you need to buy new batteries each time. I only hope they haven"t build any restrictions in battery use. If I use a generic battery on my older sony xr520's the camera shuts down during record with a warning that the battery is not an original one.

This camera is an oversized handicam for sure :) below photo compared to my cx730. I was hoping I could fit my varavon loupe onto it but unfortunately it doesn't fit and th eflipout screen is also too large, too bad.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Ok, I know this it doesn't have anything to do with this topic but it was a reason for some heated discussion a short while back and a reason for this thread to go off topic, about all of that noise has been removed by admin and I was glad because of one person to keep on insisting I would show my current camera's I talked about as he didn't believe I had so many.

Now I am not responding to the image I"m posting below and refuse to start a new pointless discussion and I"m encouraging others to do the same but I don't like to be called a liar and with this I finally want to clear this matter up once and for all and to show my camera's don't exist in my mind only.

The photo does include a picture of a ax100 so it's still on topic :D, I honestly wish Sony and Panasonic would make expensive camera only so I just could afford to buy one :D but I"m selling a few now so I look like a sane person again.

If admin feels this message has no place here and needs to be removed, I"m fine with that as well. The photo was taken with a cellphone so not great quality but I promise, its' not photoshopped :)

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Ken,
what's a good workflow to post on youtube 1hour and 30min footage , from AX100 in 1080? What would you suggest?

XAVCS is fast enough but it stays at 1080 50mbps (can't change anything)
what I'm doing now (thanks to your edius tip by the way)
is to process xavcs (that ends up in a 35GB file) and then use handbrake to bring it down to 3.5GB (I believe that's about the limit you can post on youtube): to do that I have to scale it to 720p, bitrate 5000
what you think?Is using XAVCS as the intermediate for handbrake a good choice?
I mean the quality on youtube is still good (after the youtube processing that brings down a 3.5GB to 1.5GB adjusting I don't know what since the bitrate was already 5000)
anyway thanks to the AX100 even with that kind of massive compression HD looks better than anything Ive been using before (XDcam included).

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Does anyone know how long you can record with the battery that is delivered with the camera when you shoot in 4K mode?

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Yes, image detail, but also a slightly better OIS and what I find to be better colors. The OIS on the RX10 was not particularly good.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Anthony, I'm really a zero on YouTube. Whatever I do post, I post on Vimeo and thus I have very little experience with a good YouTube workflow. I favor Vimeo for its easy download of native 4K files.

Anyone else?

Noa, I've gotten about 90 minutes with the supplied battery.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

I already feel so comfortable with the camera I"m using it for the ceremony tomorrow as a-camera, it's practically identical to my cx730, there are some minor differences I need to get used to like the way how I set my iris, iso and shutter. The rolling shutter however is very bad, it won't be much of an issue in my case as I always do slow camera movements so I won't notice anything but once when you zoom in completely and then pan a bit too quick the skew is off the scale, it's that bad, I won't be shooting any soccergames with this camera, that's for sure. :)

90 minutes out of the battery is about the same as the smallest batteries for my cx730, but it's good to know my original sony batteries for my cx camera's do work as well, will save me quite some money.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Low light performance is also comparable with my cx730, 24db of gain on my cx730 looks the same as 33db of gain on the ax100, the noise is more "blotchy" on the cx730 while the noise on the ax100 has a finer grain structure when I downscale 4k to 1080p but the cx730 does look a bit cleaner when viewed from a normal distance on a tv. Nevertheless impressive for a 4K handicam, this camera won't have any issues whatsoever in dark churches or even venues.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Good to hear it's working out for you Noa. :)

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Not so sure yet if it will work out for me but will find out soon enough :)

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

thanks anyway,
vimeo standard doesn't even handle 60p and 1080 (brings it to 720 30p) with a 500MB limit per week. I have to spend $200 to get 1080 60p and still a limited upload. Youtube goes up to 4K and it's free and it's unlimited.
Posting a 35GB file on vimeo appears to be complicated, technically.
no?