albatross911

OK as promised I have made a video with clips from my trip and each without FCPX editing, with stabilization, with rolling shutter and with both applied. You can see the differences and if stabilization and/or rolling shutter is good or not. http://s138.beta.photobucket.com/user/albatross911/media/RX100%20Videos/StabilizationTest_zps06613529.mp4.html

Actually I also don't have arm on the right side, so left hand on the arm and right hand on the housing. So for sure the front lens dial on the Recsea is not efficient. I hope Sony will have a firmware update to allow tweaking the sensitivity of the front dial so manual focus is more useful. Or maybe quick adjustment in normal view and fine adjustment in zoomed view?

In general I think to use a second hand controlling a front ring around the lens is not practical underwater. On a tray system with either 1 or 2 arms your second hand need to move quite far (either around the arm or underneath?) to get to the front ring to change settings then back to the handle before the shot for stability. Nauticam's little "knob" for the front dial make it easy as I can use my trigger index finger to move over to change and back to the trigger quickly.

Indeed I used the front dial for manual focus only, and when I really need to manual focus set it to closest focus range and move camera with focus peaking to get the focus point on my intended target. I only thought of this technique nearing the end of my trip so did not practice it much. Another way to have better control on focus is to use tracking focus which by default is the center button. Then I can tell the camera where to keep in focus. Using manual focus in video is not that practical overall, as the front dial's "turn to effect" ratio as SPP has explained is too slow. Making A&S changes in manual with the rear dial and down button is easy and effective though.

I should have some spare time next week and I'll try to play around with the clips for more scrutinized comparison and share with you. Let me know if you have any specific way that you want me to test.

Yes I used it extensively. Besides a few scenes having the "warping" effects I am happy with the results.

Yes I zoomed and most of the time all the way to the tele end. It worked great on this setup but still trying to get used to the short focus range. Particularly those critters that move quickly like cuttlefish it's hard to keep the constant distance so it can focus correctly. Yeah I didn't do custom white balance as I did not have a white/grey board and also as you said it's not easy to do in video mode. The wide angles were mainly the thresher sharks which I almost shot entirely video. Only the last day I tried some photos when they were quite close. Overall I'm very happy with the results from the RX100 and as I improve my skills should get better and better!

Thanks! Yes I shot 1080p and used stabilization in FCPX a lot. Since I'm not doing this for a living, and my target audience are mostly non-divers, what is important to them is a comfortable viewing experience than a technically perfect video. Also sharing this online would compress and degrade the quality anyway. Shooting macro with the close-up lens make it very jerky even with Active SteadyShot mode. I had a tripod on the setup for the first 2 days but found it more a hindrance than help, as it makes it difficult to go into small spaces for the small critters. So I did not use it the rest of the trip.

Finally I have finished my video highlights. Hope you like it!

only in camera, not yet on FCPX

try this: http://s138.beta.photobucket.com/user/albatross911/library/RX100%20Videos actually it's pretty good. once the analysis is done, which may take a while, enabling it is quite straight forward. it will need to render again.

No I still think it's worth it to use stabilization in FCPX to reduce movement for more comfortable viewing. As I said the SteadyShot of RX100 is not that effective, IMO. Here're 4 videos I've uploaded. If I remember correctly the blue ring and thresher were on standard mode and the frog fish and nudi were on active mode. Can't see on info screen to check this setting after importing. I guess the only way to check is to copy the whole folder back onto a SD card and put it back into the RX100 to see. http://s138.beta.photobucket.com/user/albatross911/library/RX100%20Videos

Oh I had FCPX analyzed all the clips first which took quite a bit of time.

I am still using iVI to repackage into m4v and then straight import into iMovie. Once in iMovie I can open the events in FCPX too. So it's quite simple also.

I guess I'm in the minority whom have actually done a diving trip with the RX100 so let me chip in a bit here. I have only shared my stills so far as you can see from my post. I have not uploaded any video I have taken yet as it takes time to edit them. I usually make a video as highlights of my trip and rarely upload individual clips unedited. Let me try to upload a few FYR. I'm trying to edit RX100 clips for the first time and the high bit rate and AVCHD files are making the process slower than usual. Actually I have lost the files of half of my trip that were backed up to a HDD and spent half a day just to recover them. Lucky that I got them back and so far I have only managed to repackage them into m4v format, imported into iMovie and trying editing them in both iMovie and FCPX. However my 2 years old iMac is a bit under-powered for the RX100 clips. During my trip I did not pay much attention to the SteadyShot mode. I think I had it on Standard in the beginning and changed to Active halfway in the trip. I did notice the cropping but have not compared the effects between the 2. I'll pay attention to it when I get down to working on editing and give more comments later. Overall I don't think it's at the same level as my previous camera which was a Panasonic DC, but that was a much smaller sensor and 720p only. I was doing 1080 50p all the time in this trip. There were quite a few times when I pressed the Menu button thinking it as the Record button, and I missed the moment when 2 thresher sharks were swimming towards and very close to me. My biggest regret in this trip! Let me know if you have any question and I'll try to answer as best I can.