Alpha Series |
PXW-FS5 II |
PXW-FS7 II |
PXW-FX9 |
PMW-F55 |
VENICE |
Click above for resources on specific Sony 4k camera models.
The brilliance. Without the baggage. Sony’s XAVC™ recording
Exquisite recording typically requires extreme bitrates, quickly filling up your cards, overwhelming your storage and bogging down your network. The answer is Sony’s clever XAVC encoding. Here’s the supple texture of 4K, beautiful super slow motion, extraordinary 10-bit contrast and precise 4:2:2 color—all at real-world bitrates. Here’s the quality you want with the savings you need.
The amazing imagery you deserve
Careful cinematographers and producers can work wonders within the conventional limits: grayscale graduation of just 8 bits per color component, 4:2:2 color coding, 30 frames per second and a maximum of 1920 x 1080 resolution. But there’s an amazing world of image creation beyond those limits. Sony XAVC recording can make that world a practical reality for you.
Vivid 4:2:2 color
Many entry-level camcorders save on bandwidth by using 4:1:1 or 4:2:0 color sampling. The XAVC codec’s 10-bit 4:2:2 color coding is substantially better than existing 8-bit formats. This makes for better rendition of edge detail, especially where an area of one color meets another, as where a red T-shirt appears against green grass. For this reason, the XAVC codec’s 4:2:2 color sampling is also far better than 4:1:1 or 4:2:0 for green screen compositing.
Beautiful 10-bit imagery
For decades, the workhorse digital formats have all used 8-bit digital precision, resulting in about 250 grayscale levels for each channel (Y, Cb and Cr). While 8-bit recording is good for broadcasting, it’s somewhat fragile in color correction. When you start to lift shadows or compress highlights, you may see “banding” across areas of flat color, such as sky. That’s why so many productions are moving to the more precise, more robust 10-bit recording, which provides about 1,000 grayscale levels per channel. Sony’s XAVC codec delivers 10-bit precision without any penalty in storage costs.
The superior texture of 4K
As cinematographers and moviegoers have discovered, 4K is a glorious image format. But 4K is a data hog, entailing more than four times the pixels of Full HD. The XAVC codec enables you to record 4K without spending quite so much money on storage. For example, XAVC-I recording captures 4K at 24p using only 240 Megabits per second (Mbps), while XAVC-L recording captures 4K at bit rates as low as 60 Mbps!
High Frame Rates
High Frame Rate (HFR) shots can turn everyday actions into slow-motion ballet, a visual celebration of elegant movement. But just as 4K can gobble up vast quantities of storage space, so can HFR. For example, 180 fps requires 7.5 times the data storage of conventional 24 fps recording. The XAVC codec helps manage the data flow, making HFR a more practical option.
