Sony’s ultra-high solution for budding movie-makers

ULTRAHIGH definition TVs have been missing one vital ingredient — UHD movie content.

The Sony FDR-AX100E 4K camcorder produces stunning results.

ULTRA-HIGH definition TVs with four times the resolution of the previous best displays have been missing one vital ingredient — UHD movie content.

It makes sense that if new TVs can offer amazingly crisp and detailed vision, there’d be equally compelling content to match, but that’s not the case.

But you still can watch ultra-high definition content, alternatively called 4K, by creating your own 4K movies, and Sony’s FDR-AX100E 4K camera is an accomplished way to do it.

I took the AX100E for a test drive last week, shooting video around Erskineville and Newtown in Sydney’s inner west, and through Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens.

(Video link - NB You need a very fast connection to enjoy 4K, and even so, the original video quality is much better.)

I viewed my footage on a large Sony 65-inch 4K TV.

The results were stunning.

I could see the individual potholes in roads, and count bricks on the Erskineville pub from afar.

Distant signage was easily discernible, and people walking out of the Newtown railway station looked like they would pop out of the TV.

It was so clear, so sharp.

4K video shot with this camera has a resolution of 3840x2160 pixels, or 8.3 million pixels per frame, and a bit rate of 60 megabits per second, at 24 or 30 frames per second.

The AX100E shoots in Sony’s XAVC S video format announced last year, which is designed for 4K and the consumer market.

The camera also shoots regular full HD video and you can take stills as you shoot, although pressing a downward button while you take video introduced camera shake for me.

The AX100E has an especially clever feature, a ‘‘dual video’’ mode that creates two videos simultaneously — a 4K video together with a lower resolution MP4 version that you can upload to your phone and from there to social networks.

You don’t have to convert footage before sharing.

Users can stream and save video and stills to iOS and Android phones by connecting it to the camera’s built-in WiFi, and uploading via Sony’s PlayMemories app, which is free.

You can use a supplied HDMI cable to stream the video straight to a 4K TV, upload it to a PC using a desktop version of PlayMemories, or just upload the content from the camera’s SD card, as I did. I always like simplicity.

The camera supports storage of up to 64 gigabytes on an SD card but you’ll need a fast class 10 card that captures large 4K data streams.

My clips took up about 437 megabytes per minute, so I could fit around 2 hours 20 minutes on to one 64GB card.

I also wanted to try out editing 4K video — I used the latest Adobe Premier Pro CC 2014 to create a 2 minute, 20 second edited 4K movie from around 30 short clips.

Even on a mediocre Core i3 machine, editing was a breeze, ­although preview playback stuttered.

Adobe didn’t have an in-built preset for this, so I created one — an H264 video with the same 3840x2160 resolution, bit rates of about 80Mbps to be safe, and ticked the “maximum render quality” box.

I also did a basic edit in PlayMemories, which lets you trim and combine clips natively.

Quality was the same as the original, but edits were blunt.

You’d expect a video camera of this quality to have plentiful offerings and there are.

It features an external microphone jack, HDMI out, a multi-port jack that transfers video straight to a USB portable drive, a hot shoe mount and a 5.1-channel surround sound mic on top.

Audio recording quality can be variable quality on camcorders, but on this it is excellent, with 2-channel linear PCM audio.

The auto settings worked well, although auto focus was slow in lower light conditions.

Manual settings include aperture, ISO, shutter speed and light intensity, and manual focusing.

A zoom focus button magnifies the image to aid focusing.

The AX100E also has Sony’s Night Shot, so you can take infra-red night time exposes in glorious 4K resolution.

There’s Optical SteadyShot to help give you a steady hand.

In summary, the vision and audio quality of this 4K camcorder are excellent.

If you plan to buy a 4K TV now, or want to future-proof yourself for getting one later, this is a great camcorder for consumers and budding movie-makers alike.