Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Does anyone know if Vegas 11 Pro will be able to edit XAVC S videos? I can edit the gopro 4k videos. I have been looking for a XAVC S clip to download but I can't find an un-edited clip to download.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Joey, I just took a quick look on the Sony site and the only software they specifically advertise as supporting XAVC S (for both import & export) are Movie Studio Platinum and Movie Studio Suite.

That may not necessarily mean that Vegas doesn't offer compatibility through some update it may have received, but at least the Sony site doesn't indicate that Vegas supports XAVC S.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Vegas Pro 12 will edit and render to XAVC and XAVC-S

Ron Evans

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

So Ron, was this a software update or did it always have that ability? I guess their information is incomplete. Looking at Vegas 12 on the Sony site, here's what it says:


Opens: AA3, AAF, AIF, ASF, AU, AVC, AVCHD, AVI, BMP, BWF, CDA, DIG, DLX, DPX, DV, EXR, FLAC, GIF, H.264, HDP, IVC, JPEG, M2T, M2TS, MVC, MOV, Sony MXF (XDCAM and HDCAM SR), MP3, MP4, M4A, MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 video, MPO, OGG, OMA, Panasonic MXF (DVCPRO, AVC-Intra) PCA, PNG, PSD, QT, R3D, SFA, SND, TIFF, TGA, VOX, W64, WAV, WDP, WMA, WMV

Saves: AA3, AC3, AIF, ATRAC, AVC, AVCHD, AVI, DPX, EXR, FLAC, H.264, HDP, MOV, MP3, MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 video, MP4, M2T, Sony MXF (XDCAM and HDCAM SR), MVC, OGG, PCA, W64, WAV, WMA, WMV

Now here's what it says for Movie Studio:

Import

AAC, AA3, AIFF, AVI, BMP, CDA, FLAC, GIF, JPEG, MP3, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, MVC, OGG, OMA, PCA, PNG, QuickTime®, SND, SFA, W64, WAV, WDP, WMA, WMV, XAVC S

Export

AAC, AC3, AA3, AIFF, AVC, AVI, BMP, FLAC, JPEG, LPEC, MP3, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, MVC, OGG, PCA, PNG, TIFF, QuickTime, W64, WAV, WDP, WMA, WMV, XAVC S

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Just to confirm, I just checked my Sony Vegas Pro 12 (latest build). The "Render As" and "Import Media" dialogs both show Sony XAVC and XAVC S as options. I don't know if they were originally there in the first version of VP12.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

1. Sony Vegas Pro 12 edits XAVC S clips. I have done this.

2. Here is a downloadable XAVC S file I made (from a pro 4K *original* shot by someone else) using Vegas Pro (to be just like the one produced by the AX100, though it is higher bitrate):

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

@ Ken -

About that "elephant"... they are OBVIOUSLY trolls being paid by some Chinese company selling a "$150 4K camera", so that no one buys the expensive name brand stuff when they can get the same thing from WiFU, the great new camera company that will rule them all!! Cameras for the people! What, you say you want cell phones...?

BTW, I just made that up... and have no evidence whatsoever to support my opinion, but I'm sticking to it anyway to benefit "my people"! The people must know!!

Or not...

Meanwhilst, I look forward to some actual hands on reports to see how this pup handles. I'd probably get one for "sentimental value" just because it reminds me of the HC1, but I'm hoping that it turns out to be a good initiation into 4K. If not, there's always the CX900, I'm sure the 1080 60p will be a big step up over most any other sub $2K camera, in some ways that may turn out to be the sneaky "secret weapon" here - higher bitrate 1080p at a consumer price... who woulda thunk the evil manufacturers would let "us" have something like that?!

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

About the cx900, don't know if this has been mentioned already, but on the feature list on Sony's page this camera is missing the following item: Manual Exposure Assist : Zebra Pattern Display. The ax100 has it but not the cx900, so it looks that if want you to use this camera professionally you need to get the 4k version, unless you want to guess where your exposure is.
They certainly know what to take away to steer whoever needs it to their more expensive 4k version :)

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

I cannot remember if it was in the original build of Vegas Pro 12 or not but I know I edited sample XAVC files last summer before I got my AX1 in the November and then I know it did both XAVC and XAVC-S.

Ron Evans

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

What's interesting about your comment is that I notice all kinds of issues on video footage from numerous high budget tv shows. Just yesterday I was watching a show on HGTV and on some of the footage the edges of the screen were completely messed up to where white was splitting up into the colors of the rainbow. It looked utterly terrible like a 30 year old broken crt display, yet there it was on a high dollar tv show for all to see. Or issues like moire and aliasing are heavily present on all manner of shows on tv, and not just minor amounts but very heavy aliasing, stair stepping and moire that looks terrible. Yet there it is once again on these high dollar tv shows. Or I'm watching a show on the History channel where they are showing some ancient ruins and the camera is panning across them only to show a blurry mess. But there is it, that's what their high dollar gear and big budgets got them and they were ok with it.

Which makes me wonder, here we are pixel peeping a $2000 4k camcorder for our work yet in the tv world they are using "expensive" video gear for their high budget productions that produce all manner of errors in the footage and they seem ok with it. In the uber budget movie world they seem to go all out to make things look good using top gear, but outside of that it's quite easy to find video flaws in most everything out there. In spite of that though it doesn't stop these companies from broadcasting them for all to see with all the flaws intact, and still have a viable business. Like the popular exercise videos P90x, Insanity, T25, etc, all of which I do. Those sell hundreds of thousands of copies pulling in millions of dollars, yet the video footage from them quite frankly looks terrible!

I guess my point is that it's interesting how critical we are of video gear like the $2000 4k AX100, yet I see more flaws in tv footage from far higher budget productions and video gear than in the footage I've seen from the AX100 so far. If multi million dollar tv shows, exercise videos or whatever can work and earn money with all the flaws they have, then maybe others can as well. When you read all these forums after a while you start to think that it's impossible to create a video business unless you shoot in raw 4:2:2 at 600+ mbps. But everything I see on tv along with my own business proves otherwise. I think sometimes people need to step back a bit, figure out what they need for their work and go with it, and not worry as much about all the minutia.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Sweet ! Thanks Mark. I'll download it when I get home and see if my old Vegas 11 will let me edit it.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Peter, you're absolutely right. I too have seen many artifacts and many issues with PQ on high budget equipment. Of course you never know if the issue is related to something within the broadcast chain or the camera itself.

But it does bring up an inescapable irony. It seems that some will tend to judge a $2,000 camcorder more harshly than a megabuck piece of equipment or the equipment of their choice. What it boils down to is if you are determined to demean a piece of equipment, you'll demean that piece of equipment whether the points are valid or not.

As an example, on another forum, we've got one guy who absolutely goes catatonic when he sees 'superwhites' on the AX100. He pointed to the original Sony demo, which most thought was really excellent (so excellent that some continue to say it was faked or manipulated), but zoned in on a couple of clouds on the horizon that were overexposed in one or two scenes. Were these clouds the subject of the video? No. Was the subject of the video properly exposed? Yes. If you watch videos produced by his equipment, you can easily find the same superwhites in some scenes. But those don't count. The 4K version of his camera has also displayed these superwhites in some posted clips. However in his mind, the camera can do no wrong and if it does, it's simply OE. And so it goes. This is the internet. :)

Over the years I've learned to block posters like this (where the forum allows that choice) rather than wasting time reading their nonsense. When I see someone on a mission to obviously disparage a camera or piece of equipment, I know there's generally an ulterior motive. I'm not talking about someone who points out some flaw we all know exists, but rather those on a 'mission'. They're usually pretty easy to identify.

@ Dave

I KNEW those trolls were the Chinese pushing their $150 4K cameras! And here I thought I was the only one that figured that out. ;)

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Ha ha, this thread is certainly going all over the place with contributions form hard core professionals (you know who you are even if I don't) to idiot lay-about bums like me who are just in it for the fun. When the snow is 1.5 meters high out there and the temperature would freeze the bails of a brass monkey then us fun-loving folks delight in fussing over the minutia, and even getting downright outraged about Sony's marketing strategy, conspiracies, disdain for their customers, customer-focus - it's all good fun, keeps us off the streets and out of the pubs while filling our hearts and souls with the odd spot of righteous indignation.

Seriously, when I think back to a few short years ago and the gear we happily praised and loved...and today my biggest issue is whether to buy the FDR-AX100 or the GH4 (or both) or get a decent EVF for my BMPCC (naw, it's too noisy) or wait for the pro version of the FDR-AX100 (naw, waiting is not me) and that's all I've got to worry about!

So in the meantime we talk about it, and why not. Right here and now the low cloud is breaking up, the sun is almost here, going to be another hot one and I'm off out with the RX10 to see what I might shoot down at the marina now that I almost have this thing figured out.

All good fun isn't it?

Great thread :-)

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Good post John and good timing. It does sometimes tend to get a bit hot & heavy.

BTW, what temperature is it that a brass monkey's balls freeze at? Is there a wind chill factor in that? :)

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

As an update - I downloaded the video and was able to render out with a custom template in 4k so I'm set !

That was my final worry now put to rest.

I really want to see a video of the 120fps mode and Nightshot. I wonder if it has the old 240fps mode because I used it a lot on my HC3.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

The power of HEVC!

As a test, I converted the 4K French cat video from it's non-popular .qt format to HEVC using the free DIVX converter and wow! Side by side on a native 4K display from normal viewing distance and you can't tell a difference! The output file was only 178 Mb vs the 1.78 Gb original file, holy hand grenade Batman! I have seen the future and it is HEVC! :-)

You could easily get a great quality 4K movie on a 50 Gb Blu-ray disc encoded with HEVC! Come on content manufacturers and studios, work it out please!

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

We find superwhite in ALL consumer cameras that I have seen in the last 20 years. Not really superblack, but the luminance range starts about 16 typically and tends to go beyond 235 for our 8bit systems.

Why should it be different for the AX100?

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

It is not only that Vegas Pro 12 (but now also the much cheaper Vegas Moviestudio HD Platinum 13) offers support for the XAVC and XAVC-S import. That is relativ simple since both XAVC and XAVC-s are H.264 structures.

But with Vegas Pro 12 (not 11) and VMS 13 you will also find the first XAVC/XAVC-S encoder that allow the rendering of 4K to XAVC/-S. That works fine here - and I have tested that both with Z100 but also AX1 footage.

Maybe also important: both XAVC and XAVC-S (even with the long GOP structure) can be edited with Vegas and adjusted project settings with a framerate near to the full frame rate - for example, for 24p I see the full 24p with my older i7 2600K 16 GB ram overclocked to 4.2 Ghz. So editing is possible now, even if you have not a 4K monitor up to now.

In Vegas Pro 11 this encoder is not included - but one could use the Mainconcept AVC encoder that allows manual settings for 4K too. Up to now the Sony AVC encoder is limited to 2K - but here Vegas has the XAVC encoder - so that is fine.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

"But with Vegas Pro 12 (not 11) and VMS 13 you will also find the first XAVC/XAVC-S encoder that allow the rendering of 4K to XAVC/-S."

Yes, and the clip I made and uploaded to Vimeo *encoded* the AX1 originals *to* XAVC-S 4K using Vegas Pro 12.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Correct! The bottom line is that in most cases, the superwhites don't destroy the scene since they're generally not the subject of the scene. Unless you're anal about that cloud on the horizon, not many really care.

Of course if your intent is to knock the video of a given camera, that's not hard to do and you wouldn't be limited to just a discussion on 'superwhites'. ;)

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Edius Pro 7 also offers support for XAVC/-S. More and more editing platforms will offer this support over time.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Here we go...it's started: unboxing and some videotests.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Thanks Jan for sharing the link. Looks like Rolling shutter is bad only in 4K mode. I guess it's not scanning the chip fast enough. In 1080P mode it looks great just like any new camcorder released. The auto-focus did seem to work slow, hopefully that's a setting in the menu and just not the standard speed. The DSLR was lightning fast in comparison. I wish I spoke Japanese to understand him but I'm happy about my pre-order. Can't wait to utilize the cam on paid jobs. 4K when the cam is on a tripod or lightstand or for personal projects. I like what I see here.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

That's strange, because it's the same sensor that's in the RX10, which scans at up to 4Kp60. I would think that if it could do 60p, the read/reset time must be fairly good.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

I've never seen anyone shake a camera so much during its first test run. Very weird. I think during the 'shake & bake', you're also seeing some interaction with the OIS. I still don't think this is a realistic test for real world use...at least not how I shoot.

The focus speed seems about what it is on my RX10. It's not lightning fast, but it doesn't tend to hunt. I think I'd rather have a slightly slower lock on rather than one that hunts. With that said, I've always found my Canon camcorders were the fastest and most accurate focusers.

Excuse me how, I've got take some Dramamine after watching that.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

The RX10 scans upto 4kp60? I thought that was a 1080p camera.

Ken the shakes were very extreme but when he tried it in 4k 30p there was a weird wobble going up nd down which i only seen in Canon and Nikon dslrs that had bad rolling shutter. Easily one can work around it but it seems to be pretty prevalent in 4k mode. I noticed it a little bit in the cat video but wrote it off. Now I see it clearly. Still a good buy nonetheless.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Yeah Monday, I'm not overly concerned, but yes it was more prevalent in 4K. But I still don't know why someone would shake the camera to that extent. Would he really shoot video that way? I'd like to see how it behaves with normal pans.

As I've said before, my biggest concern remains the OIS and how effective it is. I'm hoping it's better than what exists in my RX10. The 10 is a great camera, but the OIS could be better.

Regarding the RX10 scanning 4Kp60, I'm not sure what Larry is referring to.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Actually, I misspoke. The RX10 supposedly scans the entire sensor (no line-skipping or binning) at up to 60p, then down-samples to 1080p via the Bionz X.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

It's very frustrating here in Aus.

Someone in Japan has theirs already, while Sony Australia don't even have it listed as SOON, let alone order it anywhere!

(Grumpy!)

Vaughan

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Nor Sony New Zealand. Not a word on their website. I believe Sony New Zealand and Sony Australia are one and same and they ain't Sony, or should I say they are Sony in name only. I've more or less given up on those people and order elsewhere. Yes, I know I might miss out on a warranty related situation but thus far that has never happened, and the nature of the warranty is getting meaner and meaner so as not to be a big deal anyway.

Whoever, whatever they are down in this neck of the woods Sony isn't what it was, and if things keep heading in this direction you can forget the so-called Sony Consumer Division down here.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Judging by the last two videos I have seen, rolling shutter doesn't seem as bad as I originally thought. (the instability of the "cat" video on the web made me nervous)

I'd say that rolling shutter on the AX100 might be about the same as a typical DSLR and it seems like it should be reasonably manageable. I think the RX10 does a great job at reducing it.

I suspect that the Jell-O level of the AX100 is really exactly where Sony wants it for the $2,000 price point.

Remember that Sony wants to keep it's top paying and mid level paying customers far away from this "Handycam". Sony wants those customer's money to go into upper models. And for those, Sony will reduce the rolling shutter Jell-O. (yes, Sony will make you pay extra for that)

Some people call that "conspiracy theory". It's really not. It's how these cameras are designed and market planned right from the initial blue print phase. It's nothing new,...car companies do that every year with all their models. They all slice and dice features between their models very very carefully and then up-sell you. It's done by ALL the camera companies and a crucial part of their success.

I'm excited to pick up the AX100. My only thoughts now are what Sony has has planned in a couple weeks for NAB. We are certainly going to get more cameras announced.

What will they add to the possible AX100 "pro" big brother? XLR handle for sure,...but what else? Sony will need to add about $1000 more features to the cost of the AX100.

It's been a very interesting year already.

CT

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Clips are beginning to show up. This was apparently shot at dusk, so lighting wasn't good. Still, not bad.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Very nice detail, but this one illustrates my concern regarding the OIS.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

One more, outdoors with a kitty:

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

This guys videos all have some sort of twisting wobble as he walks.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Another thing is that none of these videos look as sharp at 1080p as the french cat video. It will still be great for how I shoot. I'll shoot anything action in 1080 60p and the tripod stuff at 4k. I want to see how goot the still you can pull from 4K video too. I want mine now !!!

I'm hoping to get some macro shots in 4K like this one from my old TM90

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

he is not walking he is riding his bike you cn hear the tires on the pavement :)

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Finally Nightshot ! I miss this feature on all my camping trips. I was just thinking I'll be out camping with it in 4K mode and I'll see bigfoot and my footage will be more shaky than the Patterson film lol.

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

Joey, I was actually thinking the opposite. On my display they're razor sharp, perhaps sharper than the French video. But he does have that annoying twist as he walks. It may be his particular gait. I've never been much good with 'walking videos' either as they never really look like what you'd get from a Glidecam.

Here's another of his...very sharp:

Re: Sony FDR-AX100
 

You know what Ken I'm watching these at work on a crappy PC monitor so I'm sure that's a huge difference.