Jeff, I use the SR11 and XR500 as fixed cameras in theatre shoots full stage or where i know the action is going to be. They are usually set at AE shift -4 for the XR500 and manual exposure for the SR11,with focus set by spot focus ( touch the LCD where you want it to focus, once set it stays there for the whole show) With good stage light the XR500 is sharper, XR500 is 1920x1080i with "R"sensor Exmor CMOS chip and it shows over the FX1 at the same wide setting. The XR500 has better shadow detail since the FX1 does not have black stretch, so the stage looks more real than the FX1 shot. When stage goes black the SR11 will show gain but the XR500 is OK. Signal is very clean. At 18db gain it has about the same gain noise as the FX1 at 12db depending on how it got to this gain setting ( with AE shift it seems to have less noise, full manual one can get the same data code but gain noise is more. Don't understand but its repeatable !!!)
For close up work the FX1 is still better because of the control but its a small difference. If I had to take just one camera it would be the XR500 over the FX1. So you see why I am enthusiastic over the NXCAm !!!
One other thing I didn't mention in the other post. I can run the XR500 for about 6 hours with the Fh100 battery since it has enough HD for 14 hours of 1920x1080 I would have to change batteries to use up the storage. The NXCAM is even better, just keep changing the memory sticks for ever!!!! or flash unit is about 11 hours, battery again is like the FX1 so will run for about 6 hours again before changing. With tape it is at most 80 mins before a tape change and I bet its always at an inappropriate time!!!!
The Z5 can be tapeless but I think the AVCHD 1920x1080 of the NXCAM is better.
I am sold on tapeless.

Ron Evans

The XR500 is a pretty significant step in the small cam arena, it has pretty amazing image quality and low noise, along with good low light performance - you may want to look at the XR550 and CX550 that were just announced - probably be great "B" cams for the AX2000.

There's a thread in the AVCHD part of DVi on these cameras - perhaps Chris should consider giving them their own area alongside the AX2000 - used to be one, but it got bumped to HDMom... so these cams sort of get discussed in the AVCHD area - Canon gets it's own forum sections, perhaps time to let Sony have dedicated threads again??

Once in a tapeless environment one needs to think like an IT group. I bought a Quantum HH LTO3 tape backup drive( about $1000 Can) and tapes are about $25 for 400G native since with video there is little opportunity for further compression. I put all project files in a folder and back up to tape. Tape transfer or recover is as fast as the hard drives will go. In my system that's about 65MBps sustained so a few hours of AVCHD is very quick !!! Data tapes are archival quality with redundancy tracks and if one is concerned about reliability a second tape is not that expensive and the EMC Retrospect Professional Backup software I use allows for multiple copies. Much cheaper than HDV tapes and more reliable. I keep recent finished project DVD's on hard drive for quick access and don't worry about a hard drive backup of this.

Ron Evans

Thanks Ron and Dave. I'm heading over to the AVCHD area now...I absolutely hated my experience with the Panasonic HMC 150, nice camera but I never got the hang of the AVCHD...I thought I tried the best workflow, but maybe not.

Jeff - might also want to keep in mind that when HDV came out a few years back people were bemoaning the fact that it was very hard to edit in it's native form & now it's just as easy as DV was before it. AVCHD will be there too in a little while.

The only disappointment I see with these new cameras are:

1. The sensors are not 1920 x 1080. According to Sony's own spec's they are 1,037,000 pixels, so however they are arranged, there is some sort of uprezzing going on to get either 1920 x 1080 or 1440 x 1080 recording.

2. There is something very funny about both Sony's and Canon's new topline CONSUMER cams getting bigger screens (3.5" vs 3.2") than these far larger and more expensive professional cameras.

Other than that the NX5 and AX2000 both look great to me.

Bill, you may want to look at Sony's info on the sensors Sony Global - Technology - ClearVid CMOS Sensor Writeup is for single chip systems but the array is the same for 3 chip single colour arrays.
The array can be thought of as having sensors that are twice the size of the pixels in the array. The 1920x1080 is made up from both sensor sites and interpolated pixels sites as can be seen in the Sony write up. The interpolated sites are created from 4 surrounding sensor sites.

Ron Evans

Heavy
 

At 2.7kg, this is a 'heavyweight' of a camera. Heavier than the Canon XH A1 that I lug....:-)

What you basically have is best thought of as two arrays of 960x540, interleaved. The pixels are square, but with the straight edges at 45 degrees to the horizontal and vertical - I like to think of floor tiles to visualise it, half white, half black, the rows laid diagonally across the room.

It took me a while to get my head around it, but it's actually very elegant, and lends itself well to processing in a 1920x1080 matrix. Count down a row, and you'll count 1080 (960 white, 960 black, in the analogy above), and count along a row and you'll get 1920. But they will be overlapping each other, so the resolution will be reduced compared to 1920 photosites in a conventional row, or 1080 in a column - this is where the ACTUAL resolution of 1440x810 comes from.

But unlike a sensor with 1440x810, this arrangement is easily processed in a 1920x1080 processor - as easily as 1920x1080 or 960x540 chips, whilst having a pixel count and resolution halfway between the two, and symmetrical about H&V. (Which wouldn't be the case for, say, a conventional 960x1080 arrangement.)

It's a good compromise for 1/3" chips between sensitivity and resolution. Just don't expect full 1920x1080 resolution, it won't be as good as an EX.

Hmm...well I'm still trying to get my head around it.

I think the ClearVid CMOS page is actually not that relevant, as it's about a single chip, whereas these are three chip cameras.

So they must be offset from each other (but still overlapping.) Are all three offset from each other, or is it two and one (perhaps Red and Blue aligned while Green is offset?) This would give you accurate brightness for a 1920 x 1080 grid, but color would not be as accurate as a true 1920 chip.

I did read the article.

I do believe you are exactly right, Michael. A prism is being used to do a three-way color split of the incoming light to the three imaging chips in the NX5 and AX2000, so talking about how the Red, Green, and Blue pixels are interleaved on a single chip is irrelevant.

My concern, if I were in Sony's shoes, is that Canon will come out with a camera with a 1920 x 1080 sensor block, and a codec engine derived from the Canon 7D/5DM2/1DM4, able to go all the way up to 40+ Mbps. There are indications Canon is going to make a major announcement around NAB.

I think the chances of Canon going 1920 x 1080 are high, given the XH-A1/G1 had a sensor block of 1440 x 1080, natively supporting the full resolution of HDV.

The thoughts about the codec are pure speculation on my part.
But it certainly would be a pro bitrate in a pro video camera.
And they have already demonstrated the technology in real products.

B&H has already cut the pre-order price of the NX5U to $3990. That was an awfully quick $500 price drop! For goodness sake, the cam hasn't even not been out yet for a couple weeks! They also cut the price of the 128GB recoding memory thingy by $50 (to $750) and now there's a $500 mail-in rebate on it, making it a whole whopping $250 when all is said and done. That's cheaper than using SDHC cards even. Apparently Sony wants to enter the professional AVCHD camcorder marketplace a wee bit aggressively.

With the NX5U priced at slightly under $4k already (and what amounts to an all-day recording memory module available for it cheap-a-cheap), the stripped down AX2000 starts looking pretty lame at $3500. I've got to think the AX2000 and HMC150 might just wind up well below $3k by the end of the year, especially if Canon comes out with a real strong offering too (and they usually do, on those rare occasions when they introduce an entirely new prosumer camcorder).

It's only January 16th, and this is already starting to look like a banner year for prosumer HD video cams!

All good speculation, and I'm interested to see what Canon does too. Though if their camera is a replacement for the XH-G1s and is priced similarly, then it will be around $7,000, which places it in the category of the EX1.

Similarly, at $4,000, the jump from the NX5U to the EX1 is much further (and interestingly, that's basically the same drop from list to actual selling price as the HVR-Z5U, and I think suggests that the AX2000 will be about $3,000 too.)

As interesting as all this is, I'm trying to figure out if these cameras are evolutionary or revolutionary.

You are correct in that reference is for the single chip version however the layout is the same, there is no offset for the three chip version. There are less sensors in the 3 chip version. It takes a little bit to understand how the extra pixels are interpolated but once you see how its done its obvious. Looking at the array its like a set of diamonds. Imagine a smaller square in the middle of the diamond which then leaves 4 corners, top, bottom and sides. Now add the corners from the adjacent diamonds and you will get another square of the same size as the one in the center of the diamond. This is the pixel that is interpolated from the four surrounding diamonds. When you add the squares in the center of the diamonds and the squares created by adding the corners left from the diamonds after taking the center square, you will get 1920x1080 pixels. The advantage is the diamonds are large for light gathering and the DSP creates the pixels from the data. The square will be simplistically half the level from the diamond the DSP then has levels from 4 adjacent diamonds to create the level for the interpolated pixel. I am sure its a lot more complicated but that is the core of what is happening. This is true for all primary colours which would not be the case for pixel shifting.

Ron Evans

Your tape brethren have to first capture that footage at real time which in my experience take way longer than transcoding... then editing in a much friendlier format will save time compared to HDV editing...

Not to put too fine a point on it but correct me if I'm wrong:
Is there an NLE solution that allows for ingestion of HDV material over Firewire, straight cut editing that requires neither rendering or a degradation of image and subsequent output of a full quality signal again over Firewire to a record deck?

That's what I was able to do almost exactly 11 years ago with an Apple G3 Blue and White at 450 MHz with DV. My HDV experience is certainly more complicated than that today.

HDV editing has come a long way but DV became a standard for a decade due to the straight forward nature of acquisition, edit and output, NOT it's "outstanding" quality - DV is certainly inferior in quality to the BetaSP format that DVCam has pretty much replaced.

I would have expected the price on this to come down.
Given you can already buy 32GB SDHC cards at very reasonable pricing, and the camera will accept two of them, that gets you almost six hours of record time. So how many people were going to buy the unit at $800? or even $750? They were never going to get what they charged for the MRC1K, which broke the far more severe time constraints of a tape for HDV shooters.

Evolutionary.

They took a HVR-Z5 and ...
1) They updated the codec from HDV to AVCHD.
2) They updated the recording medium from tape to flash MS Pro Duo / SDHC.
3) 16 bit PCM audio isn't just for DV anymore.
4) They updated output options with HDMI + HD-SDI.
5) They removed FireWire but added USB.

That's it. The lens and sensor block, for instance, appear to be the same.
It's still a pretty good list.

I do think it announces the day of the XH-G1, were Canon initially charged ~$3000 USD premium for the Jackpack, is over. For that kind of extra money people will go to the EX1. In a pro video cam, this is becoming the kind of stuff people simply expect to be there.

In fact, checking prices (B&H), I see the XH-G1s is $7000 and the XH-A1s is $3400, the Sony PMW-EX1R is $6300.
Good luck with that, Canon...

Pretty amazing that Sony ha already dropped the price by $500 on the MX 5.
I originally saw the price of the AX2000 at Sony listed as $3,199, so I wouldn't be surprised if the AX2000 came down to that price.
EDIT: Just a not that Sony has seem to have taken down it's pricing on the AX2000 on their site. So a new price might very well be in the works before it's released.?

I was originally leaning towards the AX2000 at the current pricing. But if the NX 5 stays at it's B&H price point, I will pick this up with no hesitation. As a $500 price difference between the two is a no brainier for me and I send a little more for more camera.

If Sony doesn't drop the price of the AX2000 now to around $3,199, then I feel that many like me will bypass the AX2000 and go the NX 5 route. As a result Sony might very well be killing potential sales of the AX2000 before it's even released.

In any way I think that with the upcoming camera crop from Canon, that Sony might very well be getting into a price war with Canon and Panny. But then again Sony might not even care, as they always seem to release a large crop of cameras that seem to compete against each other. Sort of a throw everything against the wall and see what sticks sales approach. I guess this approach works for them somehow, but seems like a waste of company funds and time. Canon seems to take the opposite approach and bides it time before releasing only a small amount of cameras.

Womble as a low cost and Vegas will both do editing without re-compress. There may be others but they are the one's I have on my PC. Clearly if the cut is in the middle of a GOP a new GOP will have to be rendered. Vegas will even do a fast re-compress from CBR HDV to VBR for Bluray. I mainly use Edius as an editor and edit native HDV, multitrack, as fast as I did DV. Same is true for Vegas. I will accept that for DV I would output back to tape and to do this for HDV is slower since the NLE's all create a file first and then export to tape whereas I could go straight from the timeline to tape before with DV. But since I don't go back to tape anymore but to some disc format( or backup to LTO3 data tape) this is of no concern to me. Ingest time, editing speed and encode to format for disc is more important. Tapeless is much faster ingest to the point that transcode to an intermediate ( Cineform or Canopus HQ in my case or I imagine ProRes for MAC) is still faster than tape ingest by a considerable margin for a 2hour program. On my Q9450 Quad Core I can ingest over 2 hours of AVCHD and transcode to Canopus HQ in about 1 hour and 20 mins. I then have easy editing just like DV in a format that is better for effects etc. For single track editing I just edit native AVCHD in Vegas. Edius Neo with Booster will edit AVCHD native at full resolution and I can't wait for this booster technology to be available in Edius Pro.

Ron Evans

I think you might have confused your Sony pages! I'm pretty sure the page @ Sony Style never had a price (or if it did, it was $3,499.)

I think where you saw the $3,199 price - and it's still there - was the Sony business to business site. Though I don't know who can get that price...

Sony | For Business | HDR-AX2000

That's true - but the diagram of the 45 degree rotation is still valid - just ignore the references to red, green and blue. That's applicable to the single chip version, but not here. Here there are three identical sensors, the colour splitting done via a beam splitter, and each sensor has about 1 million photosites.
No offset, no overlap of any colour w.r.t. any other - any given photosite on the red chip has an exact equivalent on both the green and blue chips. That's very important since it means that colour resolution is equal to luminance resolution (unlike the situation with a single chip or pixel shifting). You may not think it matters as the chroma resolution gets reduced for recording anyway, but a problem with Bayer or pixel shifting is that either luminance resolution or colour aliasing has to be compromised.

Another way to look at it (with reference to the 45 degree diagram in the above link) is to try counting across a row. You either count pixels touching corner to corner (and get 960) or count right-down, right-up, right down, etc to get 1920. Do it the latter way and it's obvious there's a horizontal overlap, which is why the resolution must be less than 1920 - even though it lends itself to 1920x1080 processing. Same happens for all three chips, (to get r, g, b images) then final output is derived in the normal way.

As far as the Canons go, then if they are full 1920x1080 1/3" then yes, the resolution will be better than such as these cameras - but each photosite will be half the size, with a corresponding effect on sensitivity. That's why I previously said that IMO 1 megapixel is a good compromise for 1/3" chips. 1920x1080 is a good thing in principle, but it really needs to be matched with bigger chips - as with the EX.

This is probably a good explanation of why the price dropped.

TOSHIBA TO LAUNCH WORLD'S FIRST 64GB SDXC CARD

Granted, SDXC will be expensive initially, but the price will drop over time.
Two 64GB SDXC cards and you don't need the HXR-FMU128 Flash Memory Unit.
Which ends up meaning the HDR-AX2000 folks don't really miss the HXR-FMU128.

Even if the price was the same, I'd much prefer using that memory module to little postage stamp size cards. SDHC cards are just plain too small for my liking.

I sure hope it was a typo, and Toshiba means "minimum" where they talk about "maximum" write speeds.

Bill very true about the upcoming release of 64GB cards, which was inevitable.
But one thing to remember about the 128GB recording unit, is that it enables you to have redundancy with your recording. As well as the ability to record in 2 different formats if you desire AVCHD and SD) Something that you can't get with the AX2000.

This was what was nice about the Z5U, in that you had the peace of mind knowing that you have redundant backup of tape (which is most likely the backup source) of CF card in case of recording failure.

It's funny how tape now seems like a safer bet. =)

I bet you'll still take the price cut ;-)

I don't think so. Reading the fine print yields this:

"Supports UHS104, a new ultra high speed interface in the new SD Memory Card Standard Ver. 3.00, which provides 104MB per second bus speed on the SD interface, and realizes maximum write speed of 35MB per sec., with a read speed of 60MB per sec. "

My reading of that is that the limits are baked into the bus interface specification.

I got some answers to questions I had about the HXR-NX5U from Sony.

The HDMI is 4:2:2, and the 24p is native (not interleaved). The 60i/50i upgrade was done to prevent gray market sales, and will cost about $300. I was also interested to learn that the reason the Active Steadyshot mode crops part of the image is because of vignetting - the lens moves much further than in regular Steadyshot - not because it's doing any kind of electronic stabilization.....

I wrote up the details here: Notes On Video: HXR-NX5 Q & A

$500.00 rebate on the hxr-fmu128
 

$500.00 mail in rebate on the HXR-FMU128 Flash Memory Unit Brings the price to approx. $249.00

I like the comments that the imager actually records 1920x1080@60P. I can see an upgrade coming in the future for a full 1920x1080P60 output. I am hoping that Sony have the same FMU promotion in Canada

Ron Evans

For anyone interested, you can get the NX5U manual (PDF) here:

http://pro.sony.com/bbsccms/assets/f...Ops_Manual.pdf

I notice on the B & H page about the Sony HDR-CX550V under "Specifications":

"Video Format High Definition

MPEG AVC/H.264
1,920 x 1,080 (60 fps)"


And under "Features":



"1920 x 1080 High Definition Video Recording
1920 x 1080i high definition resolution lets you record your memories in exceptional high definition quality. Capable of 1080/60p playback via HDMI and compatible HDTV providing stunning clarity and incredibly detailed playback of your memories"

Further down under "Features":

"1080/60p Playback Via HDMI and Compatible HDTV

1080/60p playback via HDMI and compatible HDTV providing stunning clarity and incredibly detailed playback of your memories"

Could the NX5U and the CX550V have the same video format?

I guess the information on the B & H site comes from Sony. Perhaps the author got mixed up between 1080i and 1080p.

Andrew Gyles

I think that the latest Sony cameras start off as 60P from the sensors but then are formatted after by the DSP and recorded as 60i. So I think B&H are technically correct but it is recorded as 60i. However the playback at 60P over HDMI is likely correct, conversion taking place in the camera from 60i to 60p. I would just like the recorded file to be 60p !!!! By implementing 60i to 60p in camera Sony are potentially avoiding poor deinterlacing in the TV.

Now more information is starting to appear it will be more difficult for me to decide whether the AX2000 or NX5 is for me. I would like the ring assigned exposure control on the AX2000 ( not on the NX5) if it can also set gain and iris limits with shutter set to manual. This may be a better solution for me rather than the smooth gain change on the NX5. Will have to see a comparison in detail. At first the NX5 looked the most attractive but now I am not so sure !!

Ron Evans

Price increase on NX5.
 

Well the pricing rollercoaster is still in full force.

Did anyone notice yesterday that the price of the NX5 went back up. Went from $3,995.00 to $4,295.00.

Sony | HXR-NX5U NXCAM Professional Camcorder | HXR-NX5U | B&H

Hmm... now it's

Price : $ 3,995.00

Your right.
Seems that they changed it back to what the pricing was originally lowered to.

Man Sony drives me nuts sometimes.

Hey, Mike. Haven't been on this forum in forever. The pricing is fluctuating constantly, with many resellers still near the 4500-5000 mark. Some units are already in the US and set for delivery the first week of February and I should have one during that time with a few more -hopefully- soon to follow.

The pricing is supposed to be at or just above $4K for the NX5U and low-mid $3K for the AX-2000. The NX5U 128G Reader can be purchased for varying amounts between $650-800 in most instances.

The current Sony rebate is $500 towards the reader and for purchases by March 31st.

For Sony financing, which is done through LeaseDirect, it's 12 months at 0% but just keep in mind that they will do the following three things in the agreement:
1> There's a $99 processing fee
2> You must have the financed equipment insured or they will charge you a per-month insurance on the equipment
3> They will collect sales tax on each payment due so be sure that if you're paying tax on the purchase through your reseller, you're not double-taxed. And come tax time, you don't get hit a third time, either.

Interesting, as Sony never officially posted a release date for the camera.
As the only release date for their AVCHD lineup that I saw was on Amazon for the AX2000 and a release date of Feb. 8th.

I'd love to get my hands on one of yours and hear some feedback from you first hand.

Nothing cools off my interest in a cam as quickly or more effectively than raising the price. JVC did that a few years back with the HD100U. I had been looking at it very seriously, but when they raised the price, I never considered it again (or even paid much attention to it after that either). Same thing with the HMC150 awhile back. The NX5U definitely has my attention at this point and I could see perhaps getting one before the year is out. If the price of the NX5U goes up however, more likely than not, I'll probably never own one.

When they announced the cameras officially at CES, the NX5U was supposedly shipping "this month", while the release date for the AX2000 was "sometime in March". Sony said the NX5U was shipping last week when I spoke to them....but I don't know in what quantities.

Since then, Amazon has the ship date of February 8th for the AX2000, but Sony's website still just says "Notify Me" about availability.


Re: NX5U pricing: So far, it's not the list price that's changed. That's still $4,950. It's the selling price that's been fluctuating a bit.