Sony unveils the EX3 successor: PMW-300

[Steve Siegel]

I don't know how to get inside the viewfinder to remove the dust, but once you get it cleaned, you might want to protect it further with a diopter lens. It is possible to screw in a simple diopter lens (I forget the diameter) between your eye and the viewfinder. This not only protects the viewfinder from dirt, but magnifies your view just a bit.

As far as tripod heads, you might want to look at my recent posts in the Support Your Local Camera>Tripod Sticks and Heads section of this forum

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/tripod-s...luid-head.html

The problem is one that I have had with several Manfrotto heads.

[Brent Kaplan]

FYI After much trial and error youll find that no aftermarket batteries work with the pmw-300 you have to use sony batteries. Also that means no dtap. I cant go into much detail but I have made one after market battery company aware of this and they are working with me to solve the issue.

Also I noticed that you have to have the shoulder pad always extended if you want to keep a tripod plate on as it covers the tripod plate release, ( may be im doing it wrong)

THANKS SONY

[Alister Chapman]

I know Sony want to sell their batteries, but why do they do this. Eventually someone will crack the handshake codes or everyone that needs cheaper batts will go back to the pigtail solution used with the EX's. It just seems a waste of everyones time just to sell a few more batteries.

[Jack Zhang]

All you do is regulate the pigtail to 12V instead of taking the direct voltage. A Dolgin EX-V-LH plate should be able to do that without giving the high voltage warning on the 300.

Temporary solution is the Dolgin plate, and it looks like they will have to make a PMW-300 specific version either by regulating the pigtail or tricking the camera.

[Meng Li]

Originally Posted by Alister Chapman

I know Sony want to sell their batteries, but why do they do this. Eventually someone will crack the handshake codes or everyone that needs cheaper batts will go back to the pigtail solution used with the EX's. It just seems a waste of everyones time just to sell a few more batteries.

I guess I can explain some of that. Sony's overall business operation can barely keep a balance between incomes and expenses. In other words, the quarterly net profit is quite close to zero. Facing a super high pressure in the cell phone market from Apple and Samsung (which yet has a big portion of market but still suffer from net losses sometimes), every department becomes desperate collecting revenue in order to make up the black hole of other departments. That however, is usually proved to be useless.

All the Japanese companies tend to make all of their products only compatible to native accessories of *the current generation*. This is even more severe than Korean companies. This is mainly because of a psychologic demanding from consumers (especially native Japanese) to the brand, which is hijacked by the company. For example, PS4 has just been launched for days. However, all of the controllers, cameras and games are using completely new standards of hardware and encoding, making them not compatible with PS3 at all. If you want to play well and have fun, paying up for more accessories is essential, which is actually against most of customers' will.

Meanwhile, their vision is also quite narrow. Whatever they do to Japanese native customers, they want to render it to the entire world. That being said, their skills of science and engineering is not quite outstanding at all. Almost any professional guy graduated engineering or science departments can easily decrypt their 'new standard' back to original shape, it usually turns out that their so called 'new standard' is just some simple alterations of wire crossings and interface shapes. For example, The chip wiring order of PS Vita game cards is just a complete inverse of standard SD cards. You make your custom inverted wiring and put a skin on it, then boom, the games are readable into your computer, then you can pry it open and see whatever inside. Same clumsy trick also applies for video cameras, a simple alteration of wiring can remove all the limitations, then Sony loses revenue again.

In Japan due to the ancient culture, the society often emphasizes the absolute devotion to lords, brands and superiors. Strong superiors bind their subordinates' lives under total control. Yet Japanese auto vehicle companies (like Toyota) still restrict their staffs to drive only their own brand of cars to work, or they will be immediately fired. I am not surprised if Sony will do the same to their staffs using iPhones at work, since it must be Xperia series made by their own. Steve Ballmer tried to wreck his staff's iPhone, and what good did he got? Nothing.

The companies realize that they can't limit the wisdom of users trying to crack their stuff, so they bring it to legislation using political funding strategies, and hence make Japanese users illegal to alter any key part of the product. Doing so will lead to a criminal prosecution of patent/copyright infringement, even if the product belongs to the end users. While that only happens in Japan, we are not limited to it. Once we buy something, it belongs to us, not Sony anymore. We can do whatever to the product without any problem from any other parties.

Years ago in Germany, Sony raided a PS3 hacker's home and seized all his computers and other electronic devices, with the aid of local police force. I bet that Sony never dares to do the same thing in the States even with 10 times of guts borrowed, due to the fear of self-defence rights. Really, don't do it in the States, or the people would have a very bad day. The aftermath of the German was, that they forgot to take away a small pamphlet taking note of all the technical details, so the enraged hacker walked out of razed home into a cyber cafe, started a new blog, and published everything written there online.

Yet I still admit that in the area of professional video production, the meticulousness of Japanese people makes quite a lot of their success and hence gains reputation as craftsmen. However, their business strategies are no match of open minded western companies. Cooperation and openness is the key to global success, which is sadly not in their scope of recognition. Frogs under wells. Really.

[Jack Zhang]

Originally Posted by Brent Kaplan

FYI After much trial and error youll find that no aftermarket batteries work with the pmw-300 you have to use sony batteries. Also that means no dtap. I cant go into much detail but I have made one after market battery company aware of this and they are working with me to solve the issue.

I just tried the newest SWIT battery at a local dealer in the 300 and it just works. (The SWIT has D-tap and 1A DC5V USB) Same would go I assume for the DSM-U84 84Wh batteries you reviewed, Alister.

[Brent Kaplan]

I was trying Switronix EX-L96UD (updated version that works with pmw-100/200) They dont work by themself, what battery are you using ?

[Brent Kaplan]

I have only tryed thew SWIT Battery because of my need for a DTAP, which it appears the DSM battery dont have. Correct me if im wrong plzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

[Jack Zhang]

The DSM doesn't have the D-tap because the battery cell manufacturer had safety concerns over the use of D-tap.

The NEWEST SWIT S-8U63 will work in a PMW-300. It may not have the capacity of the Switronix, but it does have D-tap.

[Brent Kaplan]

Jack have you tried it with a pmw-300 ?

[Jack Zhang]

Like I said, I was just at the local dealer that had a PMW-300 and the latest SWIT worked on the machine. It showed a fully charged SWIT battery at 300mins in the battery remaining indicator.

[Brent Kaplan]

Sorry I wasnt clear which battery you had tested


thanks for the info

[Meng Li]

OK here comes another question. I am trying to copy the XDCAM 422 MXF files into the hard drive and progress it using Final Cut Pro X, but it does not support it natively. Installing the sony xdcam codec plugin doesn't help either, looks like they did not update it to the latest XDCAM 422 version. The filenames are always gray in the browser.

So I did it another way. I used iSkysoft Video Converter trying to convert it to Apple Prores 422, the pictures are fine but the audio turns to be silent after some certain time, and keeps silent afterward. Apparently there are some problems converting the audio. It is hard to pick one from all 8 audio channels listed in the Video Converter, I haven't tried everything yet but don't have a big hope to convert the entire piece in a whole.

So anyone have any nice tools that can support this mxf file natively or convert it flawlessly to Prores? Thanks. By the way, I am using Mac, so Sony Vegas is not really an option there. Quicktime doesn't have the codec for it and can't play it, but VLC player can.

[Meng Li]

Ok after a long time of searching I got something useful. Basically, the plugin on pro.sony.com doesn't work as it was not up to date. The one should be downloaded is here:

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/...keycode=731500

It's the 3rd item. The steps are quite easy. Install and restart FCPX, then it's all done. When the SxS or XQD card is plugged onto the computer, it will automatically recognize this card as a camera and display all the files in the folder named Clips. All the files become readable and playable, though the speed of USB 3 may not be able to catch up the playing bit rate.

It sounds intelligent, and looks like really is, but this aggressive behaviour can cause a lot of problems. Most of video editors tend to use external drives as scratch disks. So as the playback on card sometimes lags, I copied one of the MXF files onto my other scratch disk, in the root directory. After I have restarted FCPX, the plugin immediately recognized that file and also my scratch disk as a camera, and hence restricted all the other accesses on the disk. All the events and projects are not operable at all. Events and projects which have links to movies on this disk all showed as "Source Missing" and is not relinkable. When I tried to shut down FCPX, it crashed and said "FCPX crashed due to malfunction of Flamingo XDCAM RAD plugin", which I have found later in the system ProApps folder. By checking back the scratch disk for MXF files I have found that there's a folder named XDROOT which was automatically built, and a copy of that MXF file is located inside. Deleting the folder and MXF files solved the problem, and FCPX does not pop any weird stuff after restarting, but it should be advised to be cautious for this aggressive bug. Do not copy any MXF files on the scratch disk by your own, I guess.

[Jack Zhang]

To your earlier point about VLC, it has never been able to play XDCAM 422 audio without it skipping like a CD and eventually silencing itself. It's a weird thing with 30p drop-frame video that VLC hates. No problems on 24p.

The converter likely is having the same problem VLC had, in which the audio skipped a ton and then silenced itself.