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New Sony AVCHD HDR-CX100, CX105

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I'm impressed that you are man enough to take responsiblity for your actions and I think it's clear what your "life philosophy" is.........

"Never turn your back on your woman ........even if you end up gettiing her pregnant."



Wow~! That must have taken some serious thought and a lot of imagination.:D

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I have a Memory Stick PRO Duo Media question.

Is there any advantage to using the faster/more costly media types in this camcorder?
Memory Stick PRO Duo
Memory Stick PRO Ultra II
Memory Stick PRO Extreme III
Memory Stick PRO Video HD
There's a huge price difference between them.



If it's an MSPD stick, that's all that matters. If it's Pro Duo, it'll read/write fast enough to support the data from the cam, it has to by definition.
You can gain faster Xfer speeds, but not faster write speeds/better card/better quality.

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Seems like the CX100 has stiff competition from Canon's HF100 that has more pixels (2M vs 1.43M), night mode (even skydivers sometimes need nightmode), same sized screen with more buttons, and about the same size. It's more available and sells for less. Just wondering.
"The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it. " -John Galt from Atlas Shrugged, 1957

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Vixia is very old news (almost discontinued news).
1Mbps more per second, optical image stabilizer, no external control/indicator possibility. No built in memory.
Progressive 24/30 are essentially useless for skydiving unless you're an exceptional shooter shooting exceptional people. Otherwise, it's 60i across the board.
Weaker body, weighs more, older generation AVCHD encoder.
Not ideal for skydiving, not a competitor to the CX100 at all, image or otherwise (except price point).

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So to answer my other question.....is there any cuve/fisheye effect with that 3032?



Check out this vid, first half has a lot of exits I shot with a 3030 and at 1:34 there's my feet, the horizon and the door to show the worst distortion you're gonna get. It's not fisheye-y, just the regular wide angle distortion, not bad at all compared to most other .3s!

ciel bleu,
Saskia

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Check out some footage from Saturday. Various methods, steadyshot on/off, etc. Unfortunately used a .3x SD wide angle lens since I did not have a .3 HD lens this weekend. There are a few rounds with the .5 Rayonox lens which is easily distinguishable. I also had the auto slow shutter turned off so I'm wondering how some of the back lite video would of looked differently if it was on. Thx to Cynci and Curtis for shooting the good video...
HYPOXIC

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My cam arrived last night. Here are my first impressions:

Pros: Tiny and light! Wow... this thing is small, at least without a wide-angle lens.

Cons:

Terrible low-light footage in SD-HQ mode. Grainy and noisy, and not at all crisp or sharp. Colors are dull. Contrast is flat. Hopefully this is better in daylight.

Slow auto-focus, even with the face detection off. Very slow.

The menu layout is not user friendly. Not at all intuitive. It's just odd.

Trying to record in HD-LP to the internal memory - the video is not smooth during recording or LCD playback. Seems to be bouncing around and skipping frames. I wonder if it can't write to the memory fast enough? Even worse with HD-HQ.

My first attempt to play HD footage on my computer using Adobe Encoder produced terrible video. Lots of digital artifacts and errors. BUT - that's probably just me not knowing what I'm doing yet (I hope).

Overall, the camera is very much a downgrade in features from the PC9. Few external controls, few creative options, and little control over how the cam captures video. Clearly this cam is intended for soccer moms, not professional videographers.

But hey, look at the size and price! There's always a compromise. I hope it holds up in freefall ...

*Disclaimer: I am new to solid state - I have always used Sony's PC-series cams with miniDV. These are just my initial observations and thoughts.

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Just a little bump. Any thoughts on below?

Question maybe for DSE...

So I've been messing around with my options for getting media from my cx100 to my mac. When I connect the cam to my mac via the usb cable the cam comes up on the desktop with no problem. My plan for the future is to just copy the .MTS files from the folder called Stream to my mac or external hard drive. This way in the future should I need the original AVCHD .MTS files for editing or whatever, I will have copies in their native format. As for just viewing my movies I will convert to AIC and view with quicktime.

Now for the strange questions...
Once I save the .MTS files on my mac and delete from cam, is there any way to reverse this process? In other words say I want hook up my cam to the tv and watch and old movie that I have saved on my mac. Can I put the .MTS file back into the Steam folder and play it on the camera? I played around with this and couldn't get it to work. There are 2 folders on the cam that have files in them after I record a movie. One folder is called Playlist and it contains .MTL files. The other folder is called Stream and it contains the .MTS files. I tried copying the contents of both folders onto my mac then deleting those files on the cam. I then took the files from the mac and put them back in their respective folders and went to the play movie section on camera and the movies did not show up on the cam.

Should this work?

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I have not looked at much footage in low light. I was recording in the tunnel on Saturday night and turned on the auto slow shutter and it seemed to help a bunch on the display. I did not throw it on my PC yet to see how it looks.

The menu layout is the same as all the CX series and yes I still go through a couple of menus each time. The focus really needs to be set to manual on this camera for skydiving. I believe most would recommend this on any camera you are going to take in the sky. Therefore, I did not see this as a major problem.

That bouncy issue is really strange, are you using the internal memory? Try that and see if it still happens. Did you happen to buy a pro duo card from ebay or something?

Yes there are few external buttons on the cx100 but think there is more control on how it captures the video. You have all the focus, spot metering, modes (beach/ski), slow shutter, maybe I'm forgetting a feature on the PC9.

As for creative options, they are still there too, but if you are not linearly editing, why do it from the camera?

I think you'll find once you/we figure out the bouncy issue, you'll love the quality way over the PC9.

Oh, the remote thing is kinda a bummer on this camera. You'll have to use the screen to slow motion and debrief for students. You probably don't want to try it for linearly editing/slow motion tandem videos, but hey someone figure out a neat method of doing it and prove me wrong. I do not see a IR window anywhere so assuming a remote will not work.

bdazel, thanks for your input and I'm sure other people are having the same issues with the transistion.
HYPOXIC

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Oh, the remote thing is kinda a bummer on this camera. You'll have to use the screen to slow motion and debrief for students. You probably don't want to try it for linearly editing/slow motion tandem videos, but hey someone figure out a neat method of doing it and prove me wrong. I do not see a IR window anywhere so assuming a remote will not work.



Sounds like a potential business opportunity for you Trunk! B|
Skydiving Fatalities - Cease not to learn 'til thou cease to live

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Rover, Like you I just copy the MTS files over and rename the stream folder the event. There might be a better way but I don't know it.

The whole video index menu on the CX series seems to be serialized to the physical camera. This weekend Greg tried placing a card recorded on a CX7 in my CX7 and it did not load up. I have not seen a utility that can recreate these indexes yet back onto the camera but maybe try the repair damaged indexs and see if that works as a hack.
HYPOXIC

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You know, I'm just thinking having a Sony Vegas Script that grabs the last sequence of jumps and quickly renders it may just be the best thing for ground debriefing going forward. The mechanism Spot/Chris developed in Tandem Videos Made Easy can be adapted for debriefing purposes and would serve a really good purpose for coaches. This also would make it easy to give your student a complete DVD at the end of the day.
HYPOXIC

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Rover, Like you I just copy the MTS files over and rename the stream folder the event. There might be a better way but I don't know it.



Yeah that's a great way to just save the .MTS files, but it would be nice to be able to throw .MTS files back on the camera just to view full res movies on my HDTV without having to deal with burning Blue Rays.

BTW. I was worried before I bought this camera since I was using a mac, but the process of getting footage off the cam and converting to quicktime or any other usable format is pretty easy.

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is there any options on this camera for editing on the fly like on the PC family? such as fade, over lap, dot? what about in play back mode can you do slow motion for editing tandem videos on a board or is it just normal play? i had a cx12 and didnt like the fact that it didnt have any options so i sold it on ebay...
i am really wanting a new camera, but it just seems like at this time the HD line still has nothing on the PC line. o and one other question... at the drop zone i work at we load all student videos to real xtream via fire wire.... does anyone know if this is able to be transfered to that site via USB? do i have to down load any special drivers? it did not work on my cx12...
DSE, thanks for all your help... im still jumping with that "NO STEP" camera suit i bought from you a while back...

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...but it would be nice to be able to throw .MTS files back on the camera just to view full res movies on my HDTV without having to deal with burning Blue Rays



It's just another toy but...

Get an Apple TV (or some other media server) and connect it to your HDTV. Then you can send HD video files straight from your computer to that. Compressor and Quicktime (at least QT Pro) have presets that write HD QT files for the AppleTV. They are 720P, but they look great on an HDTV. It's so quick and simple that I gave up on writing disks of any type for my own viewing use.

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If you are using a Mixing board then the flash based systems are really not going to meet your needs. Upgrade to a PC based editing solution, especially since you already have a PC for the RealXtreme upload system.

If you only want to shoot SD and need the fades, etc then stick to a tape based system like the older PC series cameras.
Yesterday is history
And tomorrow is a mystery

Parachutemanuals.com

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I'm just thinking having a Sony Vegas Script that grabs the last sequence of jumps and quickly renders it may just be the best thing for ground debriefing going forward. The mechanism Spot/Chris developed in Tandem Videos Made Easy....



Tell me please about the above reference.

I did a search for "Tandem Videos Made Easy" but could not find anything.

I remember some time back reading DSE saying he was coming out with some tutorial or even software to manage the work flow of tandem editing.

Is that what you mean? Or has he even done that yet?

I am trying to transition to editing via a computer instead of a board. I really need help.
Be the canopy pilot you want that other guy to be.

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