Recording Formats : Available Options (AVCHD/MP4) and Setting Procedures

You can choose to record movies in AVCHD or MP4 format. AVCHD movies offer fantastic picture quality during playback. They can also be easily copied to external devices, such as a Blu-Ray Disc recorder. MP4 movies are versatile and can be easily saved on smartphones or uploaded to the Web.

Selecting the Movie Recording Format

1. Touch [ ].

2. Drag your finger left/right () to bring the [Recording Setup] menu to the center, and then touch the icon () to open it.

3. Touch [Movie Format].

4. Touch [ ] or [ ].

5. Touch [ ].

6. Touch [ ].

Selecting the Video Quality

The camcorder offers several video quality options (bit rates) for recording movies. For AVCHD movies, select 50P or MXP for higher quality or LP for longer recording times. Similarly, for MP4 movies, select 35 Mbps or 24 Mbps for higher quality or 4 Mbps for longer recording times.

1. Touch [ ].

2. Drag your finger left/right () to bring the [Recording Setup] menu to the center, and then touch the icon () to open it.

3. Touch [Video Quality].

4. Select the Desired video quality*.

*You can view details about the video quality with the following procedure.

Caution

5. Touch [ ].

6. Touch [ ].

Caution

If you select 50P or 35 Mbps, movies will be recorded at 50 frames per second, progressive.

Bit rate (measured in Mbps) indicates how much video data is recorded in 1 second.

Depending on the video quality used, you may not be able to use the iOS / Android device to check movies before saving them or to play back movies after saving them.

Movies recorded in 50P or MXP mode cannot be saved on AVCHD discs. You can copy such movies from the memory card onto Blu-ray discs using a Blu-ray Disc recorder that has an SD card slot and is compatible with AVCHD ver. 2.0.

The camcorder uses a variable bit rate (VBR) to encode video so the actual recording times will vary depending on the content of the scenes.

The following types of MP4 scenes will be recognized as multiple files on other devices.

　- Scenes exceeding 4 GB.

　- Scenes recorded at 35 Mbps exceeding 30 minutes.

　- Scenes recorded at a video quality other than 35 Mbps exceeding 1 hour.

Depending on the TV, you may not be able to play back movies recorded in 50P or at 35 Mbps.

When the shooting mode is set to , recording in 50P or 35 Mbps is not available. When the shooting mode is set to , recording in 50P is not available.