Sony PMW-X70

I'm baffled by the footage from this camera as well. Here's raw footage from a CX900 at the San Diego Film Festival that was posted today by a guy who shoots news in San Diego. This is 1080p29.97 and looks better than anything I've seen from the X70 - which is crazy because they're the same camera image wise except for the better codec in the X70.

http://1drv.ms/1pz9ewD

He says he's ordering an X70 from B&H Monday to try it out. Maybe he can get some results out of this thing.

By the way, you can view this from the link but the quality is awful so don't judge it by that. The quality is pretty impressive if you download the original - especially for a $1500 camera.
 
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AX100 footage looks great on a 4K monitor for the price. In all honesty for those not doing 4K need not bother if worrying about the 1080p. If 1080p is the aim just get a CX900
 
All three CX900/AX100/X70 share the same image quality and to me they all look as good or bad if you like to put it that way. But the CX900 in 1080p is half the cost of the X70. There's a huge different with 4k from the AX100 in my opinion and I expect the X70 to look exactly like the AX100 once it get 4k. The AX100 is the best deal if you are looking at all three judging image quality/price. The only advantage on the X70 is XLR audio and the handgrip in reality. By the look of things the X70 gains next to nothing by the better codec used.
 
I agree with the points about price. Realistically nobody has done tests with external recorders vs internal codecs of the cam. With the Atomos Star now out id like to see those tests from a higher bit rate.
 
I don't think external recording will help. By the looks of things it's the process from 4k to HD that limits IQ on these cameras. AX100 looks great in 4k and the camera do a full sensor capture with little processing as supposed to the process towards 1080 on the X70 for now. But I firmly believe that 4k from the X70 will look just as good as the AX100 and maybe improved with a better codec.
 
Osslund said:
.. and maybe improved with a better codec.
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I agree, and I'm very curious what Sony's response will be on the 4K capture considering how they market 1080p 10bit 4:2:2 as is. When I had owned an AG-AF100, capturing on the Nano Flash vs AVCHD there were miles apart in difference! When the NEX-FS100 came about Sony's AVCHD was so good that external recorders didn't make a difference, and somewhat similar symptoms to general DSLRs. If I'm not mistaken I've read some articles, maybe even Philip Bloom had said I don't recall, but going external from the AX100 to a recorder showed difference in quality. How much? That I don't know. But with my experience with the AF100 one could only hope for a drastic difference for the X70. Most of us will probably know what the end result will be, but sometimes we can get very lucky with new findings. I'm optimistic about the X70's 4K abilities vs 1080p comparisons. Also, it really depends on who's providing the analysis online with their renders... such as 4K sequence exporting to 1080p vs. 4K to 4K youtube upload -original or not - and finally a 4K monitor. too many and good variables at stake. :kali:
 
Osslund said:
All three CX900/AX100/X70 share the same image quality and to me they all look as good or bad if you like to put it that way. But the CX900 in 1080p is half the cost of the X70. There's a huge different with 4k from the AX100 in my opinion and I expect the X70 to look exactly like the AX100 once it get 4k. The AX100 is the best deal if you are looking at all three judging image quality/price. The only advantage on the X70 is XLR audio and the handgrip in reality. By the look of things the X70 gains next to nothing by the better codec used.
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I've found the 4K footage from the AX100 some of the most unappealing footage I've seen in the last 5 years. The compressiom artifacts and blown highlights completely turned me off to that camera. The Pana FZ 1000 is much superior for half the price. And I am not a Panasonic fan by any means.
 
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zeke said:
I've found the 4K footage from the AX100 some of the most unappealing footage I've seen in the last 5 years. The compressiom artifacts and blown highlights completely turned me off to that camera. The Pana FZ 1000 is much superior for half the price. And I am not a Panasonic fan by any means.
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I think the most appauling is very exagerrated. I own two GH4's and side by side with the AX100 the 4K image off the Sony has better detail. Most of my primes are Olympus. I like the form factor off the AX100 for fast operation from rig and Sony's zoom controller. I love Panny consumer products because it has sneaked its quality in prosumer arenas. To say the AX100's 4K is appauling can be technically challenged given all the variables in the market. Bottom line its quality can easily find its place on general network television with great detail quality, especially now that people are buying affordable 4K tvs or Samsung's affordable 4k monitor.
 
demoboy said:
I think the most appauling is very exagerrated. I own two GH4's and side by side with the AX100 the 4K image off the Sony has better detail. Most of my primes are Olympus. I like the form factor off the AX100 for fast operation from rig and Sony's zoom controller. I love Panny consumer products because it has sneaked its quality in prosumer arenas. To say the AX100's 4K is appauling can be technically challenged given all the variables in the market. Bottom line its quality can easily find its place on general network television with great detail quality, especially now that people are buying affordable 4K tvs or Samsung's affordable 4k monitor.
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He said "unappealing" not appalling.
 
ddixon said:
Here's raw footage from a CX900 at the San Diego Film Festival that was posted today by a guy who shoots news in San Diego. This is 1080p29.97 and looks better than anything I've seen from the X70 - which is crazy because they're the same camera image wise except for the better codec in the X70.
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Most of this footage looks good, but I noticed terrible chromatic aberrations near the edges of any of the wide shots. This might be caused a WA lens adapter if he used one.
 
demoboy said:
I think the most appauling is very exagerrated. I own two GH4's and side by side with the AX100 the 4K image off the Sony has better detail. Most of my primes are Olympus. I like the form factor off the AX100 for fast operation from rig and Sony's zoom controller. I love Panny consumer products because it has sneaked its quality in prosumer arenas. To say the AX100's 4K is appauling can be technically challenged given all the variables in the market. Bottom line its quality can easily find its place on general network television with great detail quality, especially now that people are buying affordable 4K tvs or Samsung's affordable 4k monitor.
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I never said appauling, I said unapealing. Different meanings. The washed out colors remind me of first gen HDV video cameras.
It's my dislike of the AX100 footage that keeps me from purchasing the X70, until there are more real world field tests.
 
Can anyone confirm that the X-70 will record 1920X1080 60p in the XAVC-L 50Mbps mode? The Sony EU specs says it can, but the Sony U.S. specs indicates it is only 60i. B&H indicates only 60i. I have heard from some users that it can indeed shoot 60p, so any clarification would be appreciated. Thanks
Kevin
 
hantanbl said:
After unzipping the mxf files, I am not able to drag and drop into Sony Vegas 13. Am I missing something?
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I just got mine -- yesterday -- and it looks like the XAVC off this camera isn't compatible with Vegas Pro 13. Or anything else, really.

I have Adobe CS6, which doesn't load it. I'm not going to upgrade to CC, because then if I EVER stop paying (like if I switch to Avid or something) then I lose access to everything I ever created. No thanks.

So I got the trial of Vegas Pro 13 -- no joy. It just doesn't see the footage. That's a bit disappointing, given that the Vegas Pro product page says "... the latest version supports today's most popular camcorder formats including XAVC, ...".

Sony's Content Browser and Catalyst Browse both seem to recognise the footage, but that's it -- there's no option to re-wrap as an MP4.

They both offer options to export in other formats. In Content Browser, this option just gives you an error. In Catalyst you can transcode one clip at a time, but this means re-encoding the actual video stream. So you could transcode to XAVC Intra, which I think Vegas might read. But it's one clip at a time, and it's re-compressing the video... there's no reason for that.

I'm working on a solution based on FFMPEG, which is run from the command line. This would re-wrap the video stream in an MP4 container without altering it in any way. Unfortunately I just hit a snag with it -- a 30FPS clip comes in as 15FPS. So, work in progress.

It's really shameful that Sony could release this camera without the software support to enable you to read the footage... but for now, that's how it is. At least you can use AVCHD mode, if 4:2:0 8-bit is OK for you. I guess we can hope that Handbrake will be updated to handle XAVC. As for Sony... well.

If it stops raining, I'm going to shoot some more tests and see what I can do with them.


[edit] this seems to work; note that this switches the audio channels:

ffmpeg -loglevel warning -y -i "Clip0002.MXF" -map 0:0 -filter_complex "[0:2] [0:1] amerge" -acodec aac -b:a 256k -strict -2 -vcodec copy "Clip0002.mp4"
 
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Tinroof said:
Can anyone confirm that the X-70 will record 1920X1080 60p in the XAVC-L 50Mbps mode?
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Yes.


These are the options that appear in the menu:


In 60i mode (i.e. NTSC), XAVC:


  • 1080/60p 50Mbps
  • 1080/60p 35Mbps
  • 1080/60i 50Mbps
  • 1080/60i 35Mbps
  • 1080/60i 25Mbps
  • 1080/30p 50Mbps
  • 1080/30p 35Mbps
  • 1080/24p 50Mbps
  • 1080/24p 35Mbps
  • 720/60p 50Mbps

In 60i mode (i.e. NTSC), AVCHD:


  • 1080/60p PS
  • 1080/60i FX
  • 1080/60i FH
  • 1080/30p FX
  • 1080/30p FH
  • 1080/24p FX
  • 1080/24p FH
  • 720/60p FX
  • 720/60p FH
  • 720/60p HQ

In 50i mode (i.e. PAL), XAVC:


  • 1080/50p 50Mbps
  • 1080/50p 35Mbps
  • 1080/50i 50Mbps
  • 1080/50i 35Mbps
  • 1080/50i 25Mbps
  • 1080/25p 50Mbps
  • 1080/25p 35Mbps
  • 720/50p 50Mbps

In 50i mode (i.e. PAL), AVCHD:


  • 1080/50p PS
  • 1080/50i FX
  • 1080/50i FH
  • 1080/25p FX
  • 1080/25p FH
  • 720/50p FX
  • 720/50p FH
  • 720/50p HQ
 
OK, here's a good one: looks like the audio channels are reversed. Talking into the internal mic from the left, when I play the clip back in Content Browser or Catalyst Browse, the audio is coming out the right; and vice versa.

Same thing using an external stereo mic, assuming that left goes into input 1.

Is it just me going mad, or are other people seeing this?

[edit] Just tested it again, from scratch. In XAVC, the channels are definitely reversed, when playing a clip in Content Browser, Catalyst Browse, or Catalyst Prepare. AVCHD is fine, it's just XAVC.
 
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