Sony LiveWire
I never thought I'd have to worry about the technicalities of shooting high speed at night, but the FS700 has changed all that. There's one very, very important trick to know before you take your new camera into the streets...
By Art Adams | June 08, 2012
Adam Wilt and I presented a talk about the new Sony FS700 camera to an audience at CineGear 2012. As part of our preparation we ran around and shot a bunch of slow motion night footage… which is certainly something I've never been able to do before.That was a VERY informative experience because we found a very interesting "gotcha" when shooting 240fps on city streets…
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Get a sneak peak before the big screen premiere at CineGear 2012!
By Art Adams | May 29, 2012
Adam Wilt and I will host a presentation on the new Sony FS700 at CineGear 2012. This video, a promo for clothing brand Betabrand, is the centerpiece. Get a sneak peek now, and get all the juicy camera details on Saturday, June 2nd, on the Paramount lot in Hollywood.
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You want 240fps 1920x1080? I've got your high-speed HD right here... for less than $10K.
By Art Adams | May 15, 2012
When Adam Wilt and I shot "Fire and Ice" together on a prototype FS700 we had no idea that it would be shown at NAB... and that it would be hit. We wanted to do more, so we pitched Sony a commercial concept for a local company that involved high speed "veggie baseball." Guess what: they sent us an FS700 again. Edible baseball never looked so good.
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OLED monitors are about to change the way we view images, both at work and at home. Prepare to look better than you ever have before.
By Art Adams | March 06, 2012
The first time I laid eyes on a professional Sony OLED monitor I knew my professional life had changed. In a few years I'm sure we'll take this technology for granted, but right now it looks AMAZING compared to any other monitoring system I use on a regular basis. For a slightly-technical-but-mostly-educational look at why, read on...
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Snowflakes In The Desert?
By Terence Curren | February 15, 2012
Welcome to Indian Wells, an offshoot of Palm Springs, CA. So why is the first day's "Super Session" titled "Snowflakes with an Increasing Chance of Clouds"? As moderator Leon Silverman said, modern post workflows are like snowflakes because no two are alike, and they change as soon as they hit the ground.
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By Kristen Stamm | December 23, 2011
Sony announces new free firmware upgrades for the HXR-NX70U and NEX-FS100U/UK that are planned to be available for early 2012. To learn more, visit and bookmark sony.com/nxcam
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Sony's new 24mm, 50mm, and 30mm macro lenses for NEX cameras.
By Adam Wilt | December 17, 2011
The 50mm f/1.8, 30mm f/3.5 macro, and 24mm f/1.8 lenses, with hoods.
Sony has three E-Mount primes coming out right about now, and I had a chance to play with prototypes of them attached to an NEX-FS100 LSS camcorder. Here are my impressions, and a short test.
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A practical and versatile solution for multi-format, multi-codec content management.
By The Sony Tech Guy | December 08, 2011
Introducing the ultimate multi-tasker. The Sony XDCAM Archive System is the affordable, scalable content management and archive system that allows quick, easy access to multi-format, multi-codec content-up to 85,000 hours of online proxy that link to the high resolution media on your shelf.
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Next-generation cameras need a new generation of media.
By The Sony Tech Guy | November 30, 2011
One trillion bytes in your shirt pocket.
How many hours are you willing to spend backing up your assets after a long day's shoot? What kind of data protection do you need for an indie project, a TV episode or a $100 million feature? What data rates do you need to record uncompressed 1080p high definition? Or 16-bit linear RAW at 4K and beyond? These questions aren't simply rhetorical. They're the issues Sony grappled with in developing the next generation of high-end recording media: the SRMemory card. About the size of a smart phone, the new media card neatly accommodates today's recording needs-and anticipates tomorrow's.
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By Allan Tépper | October 31, 2011
In part 1 of PsF’s missing workflow, we introduced the new terms benign PsF and malignant PsF (Progressive Segmented Frame), reviewed their vital importance and fragility in post-production, and clarified the PsF status of two Panasonic professional AVCHD cameras (branded as AVCCAM). In part 2, we clarified the PsF status of the Canon XA10 professional AVCHD camera. Now, in part 3, we’ll clarify the PsF status of Sony’s professional AVCHD cameras, some of which carry the NXCAM brand.
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The Sony Super 35mm Intensive • Wednesday, November 2nd • Theater One • Burbank Marriott • 4:15 p.m to 6:15 p.m.
By Kristen Stamm | October 28, 2011
Juan Martinez, Senior Product Manager, will present the features and benefits of the NEX-FS100U, Sony's Super 35mm camera that opens a new world of high-quality production convenience and creativity. He will demonstrate how, thanks to the flexibility of the universal e-mount, this camera provides virtually unlimited choices in 35mm lenses including SLR, legacy 35mm and Cine, for a wide range of production applications.
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Sony Trimaster OLED monitors really deliver.
By Terence Curren | October 04, 2011
With the death of CRTs, those of us who needed to critically evaluate video images in a standardized display universe were left with no adequate replacement. Most of us have been nursing along our aging CRT monitors and hoping something of equal or better quality would arrive before our trusted displays give up the ghost. Well, that product has finally arrived, and I predict that Sony is going to own the pro monitor market for delivering it.
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Taking Place at Createasphere's Entertainment Techonology Expo September 20-21 at The New Yorker Hotel.
By PVC News Staff | September 08, 2011
Seats are first-come, first-served to registered attendees of the Expo. Educational and informative - guaranteed.
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Reducing CMOS Jello-cam.
By The Sony Tech Guy | August 19, 2011
Stop that train! Right-to-left subject motion causes the train's verticals to tilt, while the foreground fence is unaffected.
With much respect to the fine people at Kraft Foods, purveyors of Jello® brand gelatin desert, there is another Jello that we're not fond of: the Jello-cam of some CMOS cameras. An artifact typically visible in moving subjects with strong vertical lines, Jello-cam can make uprights appear slanted and table legs look wobbly. A powerful Sony technology addresses this image distortion.
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Shedding some darkness on sample-and-hold displays.
By The Sony Tech Guy | July 27, 2011
This is a beautiful picture.
Ironic but true: CRT phosphors flash briefly and then go dark for most of the frame duration. Film projectors also go dark when the film gets pulled down to the next frame. Isn't the whole point of these displays to produce light? After more than a century of flickering images, the present generation of monitors is built on sample-and-hold technology, such as LCD and OLED. Today's monitors can show pictures that are absolutely unblinking. Is constant illumination display nirvana? Actually, no. The purpose of video displays is not simply to produce light. It's to trick the human visual system into perceiving a sequence of still images as continuous motion. And that's a good reason to embrace the darkness.
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When Sony can't break the laws of physics, we bend them.
By The Sony Tech Guy | July 21, 2011
The diamond pixel pattern of Sony's ClearVid CMOS sensor is featured on small-chip camcorders including the HXR-NX5U and HVR-Z5U.
Physics can be a harsh taskmaster. It constantly forces image sensor designers to walk the line between high resolution (which requires smaller photosites for a given imager size) and high sensitivity, signal-to-noise ratio and exposure latitude (which all favor larger photosites). In small-format sensors, the challenges are especially severe. While Sony engineers must respect the laws of physics, creative designs can give us a little wiggle room. Sony's ClearVid design rotates the conventional pixel array by 45 degrees and employs diamond-shaped photosites to address the specific challenges of small-format sensors.
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Perceptive people pick popular pages
By The Sony Tech Guy | July 20, 2011
We're campaigning. This is our button.
You might not know this, but one of our motivations in launching the Sony Livewire vendor blog was to have a place on Pro Video Coalition where readers could have easy access to Sony downloads. On the right side of the Livewire home page there lives a series of DOWNLOAD buttons, ready to serve up goodies for XDCAM, XDCAM EX, AVCHD and HDV products. If web traffic is any indication, it seems to be working. The download pages are among Sony's most popular. For example, about once every two minutes someone makes a download from the relevant XDCAM optical web pages. And now we're making that process even nicer.
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Lens choices with the NEX-FS100U and Sony's E Mount system
By The Sony Tech Guy | July 13, 2011
The NEX-FS100U accepts tons of lenses. For example, these Sony A Mount lenses work via the LA-EA1 adaptor.
It's Cinematography 101: the right lens does more than establish the frame. It can help communicate emotion and tell us something about space, character and story. The ability to choose lenses is no small thing. Which brings us to the NEX-FS100U Super 35mm digital motion picture camera. Thanks to Sony's E Mount system, the FS100U helps tell your story through a robust selection of lenses.
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Trimaster EL technology for the rest of us
By The Sony Tech Guy | June 28, 2011
An all-in-one chassis design, the PVM-2541 includes a range of inputs, standard.
Sony's BVM Series Trimaster EL™ monitors were big news at the HPA Tech Retreat in February, and an even bigger hit at NAB, where they garnered one award after another. Designed for critical evaluation, the BVM Series has always served the elite. So it was all the more newsworthy that NAB saw the introduction of two new PVM Series monitors that combine Trimaster EL technology with tremendous value. The PVM-1741 (16.5 inches viewable area, measured diagonally) carries a suggested list price of just $4,100 while the PVM-2541 (24.5 inches) has an MSRP of $6,100. This places OLED performance right into the monitor mainstream.
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Uncompressed 1080 50p/59.94p, timecode, and even RGB 4:4:4 from your camera's HDMI port!
By Allan Tépper | June 09, 2011
Sony's latest NXCAM cameras fortunately feature unprecedented new features with their live HDMI outputs, including uncompressed 1080p at 50p or 59.94p, timecode, and even RGB 4:4:4 capabilities as an alternative to the standard YUV 4:2:2 modes. They also offer special pulldown modes for 23.976p (2:3), 25p (2:2), or 29.97p (2:2) (model dependent) with flags to help an external recorder reverse-telecine and recover the original, pure progressive signal. This is great for those of us that -for certain projects- want to record an even better signal than what's possible inside of the camera with AVCHD. However, today's external HDMI recorders don't yet support these new features. This article is about which NXCAM models include these new features, more details about them, and the response from each external recorder manufacturer about the likelihood of supporting these features, either in their current -or future- models. We'll also explore which new NXCAMs say farewell to 29.97p.
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Sony F65 - true 4K and Beyond
DPs gave Sony a wish list. Higher resolution than any previous digital motion picture camera.1 Even greater exposure latitude, dynamic range and wider color gamut than Sony's previous best. Plus file-based SR Codec recording for fast, efficient episodic TV production workflow. Plus 16-bit linear RAW to support the most demanding feature films. On the Sony F65 digital motion picture camera, it's all true. And it's only the beginning.
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