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Sony FDR-X1000 / X3000 - good for flying movies

A further update on connectivity:

The only way to get data off the camera over WIFI is using the two Sony apps. Unfortunately they contain no config and are hard-coded to use the Movies directory in the device’s internal memory, which is almost never going to be big enough for a movie which went anywhere near the camera’s capability.

The only way to get data off the camera over USB is to a Windows computer (I haven’t tested a Mac). Of the 2 or 3 logical drives which the camera presents over USB, Android devices don’t recognise the one with the movies on it…

Of course one can always extract the SD card from the camera and read that using one of the many ways. Not ideal, but gives the fastest transfer rate.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

A couple more video tests.

This one shows 25fps versus 50fps, done with the 1000V


This is a more general one which was done with a Samsung S6 smartphone, 30fps versus 60fps


Note that, on the 1000V camera, the config of 25/50 or 30/60 is implicit in PAL/NTSC config, respectively. I don’t know much about this but I don’t think the terms NTSC/PAL have any meaning in digital video such as MP4 or any variant of MPEG. I wonder if the other action cams do the same thing.

Clearly 50/60fps is the way to go for flying videos.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

Clearly 50/60fps is the way to go for flying videos

Perhaps, if maximum smoothness is required.

But 99% of the video we watch elsewhere is < 30fps, and for me I can put up with a little shakiness for a more cinematic look. 60fps looks a little artificial and ‘slippery’ to my mind.

The Hobbit was the first big blockbuster film to use 60fps. Some people found it made them feel seasick.

In general, shutter speed should be double the FPS, so 1/60th for 30fps. On a normal sunny day this will be impossible without an ND filter, but for me, preferable to 60fps.

It probably comes down to whether your camera or your subject is moving. If the camera is stationary and the your subject is moving, such as a car on the A23, then I’d want <30fps every time. 60fps wouldn’t look natural. A little motion blur is your friend.

I guess your ac if moving and the landscape isn’t then maybe 60fps is the way to go.

Very interesting input, DavidJ; thanks.

50/60fps does look “smooth” and rather “CGI” than real.

Also true about the shutter speed. I am using 1/80 on my Canon G10 (to remove the prop effect totally) and use an ND4 filter to stop it washing bits out. That BTW records at 50i which is the best data rate I can get out of it. So I wonder what you think of 1/80 together with 50i? I used to transcode the 50i into 25P in Vegas, or in Handbrake.

I will do some tests on the 1000V this weekend and bought a set of cheap ND filters to see which one works to (almost) remove the prop effect on that. I reckon it will be ND8 or ND12.

The problem with doing any proper test is that unless the camera is mounted externally, the quality takes such a hit that it doesn’t matter much what the settings are. And external mounting is a lot more work…

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

I don’t know much about this but I don’t think the terms NTSC/PAL have any meaning in digital video such as MP4 or any variant of MPEG.

It has nothing to do with video encoding as such but with playback. When “we” went digital, the one difference between regions that survived from analog is frame rate. I guess that’s why Sony uses NTSC and PAL terms. However, I’m no expert in this either.

I really wouldn’t both with 4k. Only sitting unnaturally close to a very large will allow one to see a significant difference.

The extra gubbins required, both at card level and tv level just aren’t worth the hassle.

It’s all very well in John Lewis , where they’re all positioned 3 feet from your nose, but I don’t know many people who watch tv like that at home….

I agree 100%, but it has been claimed that recording in 4k and downsampling to 1080 gets you a lot better 1080 than recording in 1080.

And IMHO this is exactly what the FDR-1000V camera does internally. I reckon this is so because the battery life hardly changes

I have a “state of the art prosumer” 1080P camcorder, £1500 a few years ago, whose image quality is nothing as good as this one. The optical image stabilisation is awesome though and it has all the other controls…

I am told by a pro video maker (commercials I think) that they all use 4k now, and it obviously allows cropping and all kinds of post processing, as one would expect. But the vast majority of “amateur” videos are either unedited or edited only by cutting. Anything else is too much bother.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

recording in 4k and downsampling to 1080 gets you a lot better 1080 than recording in 1080.

Yes, that’s not improbable. And there are other advantages, in colour gamut and so on.

I use a 30" 5k display for work (photography), and 4k video is great on that. There’s no doubt that if that was where I watched GoPro footage then I’d film everything in 4k, but unsurprisingly I don’t.

I guess a decision needs to be made as to what one is trying to create. If I wanted a forensic recording of the land around my imaginary Scottish farm then I’d use 4k. If I wanted to gather the family around to watch our trip flying across the Alps then HD would suffice.

Last Edited by DavidJ at 11 Apr 18:53

I’ve just discovered a reason for recording in 4k.

All the action cams distort horribly. I know some people like that… but the result is a bit naff.

The FDR-1000V, when set to 120 degree view (implicit by enabling stabilisation) is better than most but still distorts too much whenever there are straight lines present, and even in landscape shooting (e.g. airborne) you usually have a horizon which is a dead give-away

I have Vegas 11 and it has a Distort FX filter which works pretty well. Together with a second filter to offset and crop the image a bit, the result is pretty good. But if recording at 1920×1080 one really ends up with a 1280×720 frame, because the corrections introduce black areas around the edges and have to be cropped off. You lose about 15-20% on each linear dimension.

With the geometric corrections, it is really slow to render. The fastest thing I have is a Lenovo X230-I7 laptop and that took 2hrs to render a 15 minute section. I will upload it overnight.

God knows what sort of computer one would need to render 4k material.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

God knows what sort of computer one would need to render 4k material.

Mac Pro, with Thunderbolt RAID.

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