Sony FDR-AX100E from PAL to NTSC

[Danilo2000]

Hello. I own a Sony FDR-AX100E, the European version set to PAL. So I can only make videos in 24p, 25p, or 50p. I would really need to have the 30p of the NTSC version. Has anyone already tried to unlock the PAL/NTSC switching on this camera? How were the results? Thank you in advance. Danilo

[Danilo2000]

I just tried. No way. Pmca-gui connects to the FDR-AX100E so I start tweaking and follow the first indication on the screen of the camcorder that tells me to give the ok for the reboot in updater mode. I did and the FDR-AX100E looks dead and pmca-gui tells me Operation Time Out. Any suggestions?

[ExtremeU]

When the camera restarts you need to turn it on again. Sony hx20v example video: https://youtu.be/nYocwzgdLbI?t=71

[ashmkuk]

Try this. Used on the AX53 and works fine.

https://youtu.be/vUZtZ8bRXB0

[Danilo2000]

Wow! I can confirm that I was able to switch from the PAL to the NTSC (24p, 30p, 60p) with a Sony FDR-AX100E. Thank you! I would also like to add that it is a shame that it was not Sony itself that offered us this possibility. Big thanks Ma1ko! And thanks to ExtremeU and Ashmkuk.

[AlexDaniel]

Confirming that it works. The setting does not enable the switch in the settings, but by tweaking it from your computer you can switch to 60fps mode and back. Using the 24p mode as suggested in the video seems to be necessary, I'm not sure why.

[AlexDaniel]

More experiments with that camera. I've always been interested in trying 4k50p mode regardless of what settings allow you to do (a jump from 4k30p to 4k50p isn't that huge after all). Framerate for each mode on that camera is controlled separately. For example, 0x01070c9a is the framerate for normal XAVC S mode and 0x01070cd9 is the setting for 4K mode (see previous threads: 1, 2).

• 4K: if you set it to 50p on 4K mode the camera locks up after loading. It may show a few frames but then it gets stuck. On the display where it normally shows the framerate you'll see nothing (like if the framerate is unknown).
• XAVC S: if you set it to 100p on FullHD it sorta works. Note that this feature natively exists on AX700 (next version of that camera). When the camera loads, it shows 100p mode on the display. So it is definitely recognized and the camera behaves normally. However, when you hit record it will blink once but won't start recording. It's possible that this mode is usable but more tweaking is be required.

[AlexDaniel]

By the way, I was able to find 0x01070cd9 (4K framerate) by toggling the “24p mode” function which rewrites all framerates in all modes (so I was able to diff 4K24p settings with 4K25p settings). However, I'm noticing that 24p function changes a few other values, some of which are not really related to the normal settings (maybe?). Given that the camera itself talks about needing changes to the SD card, could it be that there are other settings at play here? If so, maybe someone should find an AX700 and try to figure out what 100p mode does there.

Or maybe we should try AX700 firmware on AX100. Pretty sure it won't work fully but we can probably learn something from the experiment.