New! Sony FDR-AX1 4K Handycam!

[Piotr Wozniacki]

Originally Posted by Larry Secrest

I'd like to see how this cam is going to compare, not in ease of use, but in image quality with the BlackMagic Cinema Camera 4K.

Who wouldn't :)

[Ron Evans]

I do not think they are comparable. One is a small sensor camera that will have good large depth of field for general use and the other is a large sensor camera that one would use to get the cinematic look of shallow depth of field. In low light the BlackMagic Cinema Camera 4K, with the appropriate lens ( which you will have to buy as well as the camera ) will almost certainly outperform these 4K Sony's. If you want to walk around and shoot crowd scenes hand held with people staying in focus and without a juddering picture then the Sony will be superior with its smaller sensor, image stabilizer and 60P frame rate.

What do you want to do ?

Ron Evans

[Jack Zhang]

I agree the lack of 60p was a huge oversight by Blackmagic. But "open" codec solutions that were easy to integrate did not support 60p. If only the BMPC had XAVC...

[Larry Secrest]

You're correct, that was a stupid question.
The BMCC is a cinema cam for controlled environment and not for working hand held.
L.

[Philip Lipetz]

I disagree, the BMCC is used by many people as a walk around camera with limited batter life. Sure, it lacks big DOF, but it can be hand held. Try using it and it will surprise you. There are many many faults with the camera but it is not stupid to ask if it could be used for the same things as the AX1/Z100.

[Michael Bishop]

B&H just uploaded this video on it.

Sony FDR-AX1 4K Handycam - YouTube

[Ron Evans]

I have had my FDR-AX1 for just 2 weeks now . B&H report is reasonable for an advert from a supplier.

On the initially release things that do not work but hardware is there:-

Data code button
both SD card slots
Host USB slot

Things I would like different:-

Battery indication in time not icons
Expanded focus at higher than the 2x since focus is even more critical than on the NX5U and autofocus is just as bad as NX5U. I will not use.
Ability to change focus distance to feet as well as meters
Time code as well as clip time
Smooth gain switch changing.
Smooth ramp for the power zoom control start and stop
More picture profiles as there is just one paint control not selectable as on or off.
For a consumer camera there is no spotlight or backlight control
There is no remote control. First Sony camcorder I have had without one.

When thumbnails are selected camera is still active so there is feedback in the TV speakers before video plays. Most Sony camcorders mute camcorder when playback is selected.


Camera is between 1 and 2 stops slower than NX5U or my NX30U and seems to depend on conditions !!!

Video noise is similar to the small Sony's I have at the same gain settings, CX700, XR500 and NX30U since they all have similar vintage sensors. Seems consistently slower by about 6db to 9db than the CX700. Image is noticeably sharper !!

Recorded a test of 1 hour 45mins and there was still some power left in the battery ( showed 1/4 icon ) changed from one 64G card to the other 64G card at about 56 mins for the content I was shooting. Time on the LCD while recording keep correct clip time but since there is no data code or timecode this was lost when clips were transferred to PC. PlayMemories did not join clips spanning cards and clips just show clip time !!! Also unlike for AVCHD PlayMemories does not rename the clips by date and time and are left as the clip C0001 etc but in folders of the date recorded.

Clips in the time line played correctly though with no loss of sync in Edius Pro7 or Vegas Pro 12.

OF interest in the user manual there is a fig of the status screen that shows audio with 4 channels for a FDR-AX1 !!! Looks like the PXW-Z100 will have 4 channel audio and so maybe the updated firmware for the FDR-Ax1 will also have 4 channels. That would be nice.


My intended use was to use or crop a 1920x1080 output from the 3840x2160 and this works fine in both Vegas 12 and Edius Pro7. Exposure performance will be in the usable range for me and only downside is lots of processing power !!! Will look forward to Intel 8 core parts next year !!!

Ron Evans

[Alister Chapman]

What you need to process the 4K video in most cases now is not a big fast multicore CPU but a high end graphics processor. I regularly work with 4K raw in real time with a quad core CPU, but the machine has 3 graphics cards. 2x NVIDIA GTX570's plus a GT680 and the the GPU's that are doing all the hard work. The CPU is only used to decompress and re-compress.

[Ron Evans]

That depends on what NLE is being used. Edius for example does not use the GPU for normal editing at all only for GPU accelerated plugins/effects. Not sure Vegas uses the GPU either. Turning acceleration on reduces the performance of Vegas for me in rendering or editing AVCHD so my i7 3770 is faster than the GTX560 I have as my GPU. So I have GPU acceleration turned off. Both NLE's work fine on my i7 3770 ,16G RAM, WIN7 and processing XAVC. XAVC-S is different as both stutter or in the case of Vegas need to reduce preview resolution considerably. For Edius I use the GV HDSPark card over HDMI to external monitor. In a 3840x2160 project both can just about manage but placing native 3840x2160 XAVC-S on a 1920x1080 timeline and thus scaling is involved the extra load slows them down to less than realtime. Others with dual Xeons ( slower clock but more than twice the cores running) do not report this issue. Hence my waiting for 8 core parts. Solution is to use Canopus HQX intermediate which I can edit in both Edius or Vegas in realtime so the issue is really the decode load on the CPU of XAVC-S for native file editing. Going to an intermediate means more hard drive space and about 2 times realtime for conversion. OK for now. Takes me back to early days of both HDV and AVCHD until NLE's and CPU processing power were improved.

Ron Evans

[Gints Klimanis]

Vegas11 and later uses the GPU,but apparently, the speed-up is heavily dependent on the GFX card performance. It was tough to measure the difference with an Intel Core i7 980X running solo and i7 + eVGA (nVidia) 560ti GPU. The eVGA GPU usage meter showed GPU usage, but I didn't measure much of a difference with basic image adjustments (Color Balance, Levels, Sharpening) and h264 encoding. On the other hand, directly proportional improvements were measured by overclocking my water-cooled Core i7.

[Piotr Wozniacki]

Any 3840x2160 XAVC-S clips on line to download and check my Vegas playback capabilities?

Thanks

Piotr

[Ron Evans]

Here is a shot of some Canada Geese https://mega.co.nz/#!1ZFmXCrS!N65xUj...k1ydSX4-iSbQhI

Ron Evans

[Piotr Wozniacki]

Thanks Ron,

The details is incredible - even on my 1080p 50" plasma, when watching from some 1 m distance.

The playback in Vegas Pro 12 though... Well, according to waht has been said, time for a graphics card monster (and some better support from Sony).

Piotr

[Ron Evans]

The detail is there for sure and of course means focus is even more critical because the difference is very obvious if not in focus and then in focus !!! As with the NX5U the auto focus will get the scene in focus but will just drift or hunt a little so left in auto focus is not a good idea as the changes are too obvious. I use the same technique as for the NX5U stay in manual and use auto to get in range and then expanded focus and peaking to get closer. With only 2x expanded like the NX5U I do not think it is enough magnification for 4K. The LCD is also a little too small for visual focusing and I think I may get a larger monitor !!! I did a tracking crop 1920x1080 of the geese in Vegas that worked just great which is what I wanted the FDR-AX1 to be able to do rather than edit in 4K.

On my PC ( i7 3770, 16G RAM, GTX560 Win7 64 about 5T on 5 discs ) I cannot get Vegas 12 to play at source frame rate. Edius Pro7 will play at frame rate with buffer hovering on empty !! I will need a faster PC !! My main editor is Edius so GPU will not help as it does not use the GPU for normal editing just need more cores/speed.

Ron Evans

[Douglas Call]

Originally Posted by Alister Chapman

What you need to process the 4K video in most cases now is not a big fast multicore CPU but a high end graphics processor. I regularly work with 4K raw in real time with a quad core CPU, but the machine has 3 graphics cards. 2x NVIDIA GTX570's plus a GT680 and the the GPU's that are doing all the hard work. The CPU is only used to decompress and re-compress.

Alister hope this isn’t to dumb a question or the inappropriate forum thread to post the question in but are you aware of any potential to playback 4K video content directly through the Sony Ultra 4K TV’s USB slot? I was in the Sony Style store the other day and asked the salesmen if I could directly view my own 4K content shot on Sony FS700 (it has the 4K upgrade firmware installed) or the FDR-AX1 directly on the Sony XBR-65X850A 4K TV? He said yes I could all I needed to do is put the content in a certain format and then select it on the Sony TV’s USB menu.

Since it’s pretty easy but pricey to get a 512GB USB 3.0 thumb drive (DataTraveler® HyperX® Predator 3.0 USB Flash drive)
Kingston Digital Ships Its Fastest, World?s Largest-Capacity USB 3.0 Flash Drive | Kingston Technology
I was thinking I could get about 56 minutes (150Mbps) of 4K content on the USB so I could display things like a pilot 4K lifestyle TV show (30 minute) to potential clients (advertisers).

I looked on page 206 of the Sony Brava i-Manual
https://docs.sony.com/release/XBR-X900A_imanual_EN.pdf

That describes all the supported Video Codecs supported through the USB connection on their 4K Ultra TV but didn’t see any mention of a 4K codec. It sure would be cool if Sony could add some 4K Video Codec support viewable through the USB connector. While they’re at it they should make it a USB 3.0 compatible connector.

The only way I could see to play personal 4K content directly on any of the Sony 4K TV’s was by uploading the data directly on to the Sony 4K Ultra HD Media Player FMP-X1 through its USB port and then watching the content using the Sony Media Player through the 4K HDMI 2.0 connector. However I wonder what format I would need to generate from Adobe PP CS6 to get my 4K content recognized by one of the supported Sony 4K video codecs so it would play correctly from the FMP-X1.