New Sony FDR-AX100 settings?

[zepplyn]

New Sony cam settings

Hoping for some tips and advice...
HELP PLEASE.
I just bought a new Sony cam, model FDR-AX100. SO MANY settings and not enough time to experiment. I will be video taping a high school play in a few days and need advice on some basic trouble free settings.
Not interested in 4k yet. I just want basic normal HiDef. So I can easily edit it with my Sony Vegas 13 Pro.

I am used to using my Canon HV20, Then capturing the video tape to PC with firewire and editing with Vegas pro 13. And then, creating Blu-ray's and DVD's. This cam will be my backup second cam for this project.

On my new Sony FDR-AX100, there are 2 different choices for HiDef, and then many choices under those, example, 60i 60p and 24p and then AVCHD - FX, FH, HQ and LP.
Should stay away from some of these, or definetly use certain ones??

With my old Canon, I would go to manual exposure to get a better picture. Should I consider doing that with this new cam? If so, is there and easy way?

I want to make sure I am able to edit with my (not so new) i7, 8 gigs ram PC.

I have a few SD cards:
SanDisk Extreme PRO 64GB SDXC Flash Memory Card with up to 95MB/s
and a few,
SanDisk Ultra 32GB SDHC UHS-1 80mbs

Any tips on how to see if there are full, (while in cam) and how much can really fit on these?

Thanks in advance,
I planned on experimenting with all of this but ran out of time

Ron

[smrpix]

60i will match the framerate of your HDV cam.
There are three exposure buttons on the port side of your camera - f-stop, gain and shutter speed. If you tap the buttons they will toggle between auto and manual. You can then adjust them with the knurled knob to their left. Generally in a theatrical situation set the exposure all the way open, the shutter speed to 60-100, then manually adjust the gain sparingly during the performance for exposure. Use the zebra stripes to help you.
At the highest quality HD you'll burn about 12gigs/hour on your SD cards. Always format your cards before a big gig so they are empty.

Your HV20 is going to be your backup cam from now on.

[zepplyn]

Is there a way of knowing how much space is left on the card, while recording?
With tape it's easy to see.

When transferring From SD card to PC, Do with Cable or pull SD card?
I hear about nightmares about corrupt cards...

What is the best Steady shot setting to be on when shooting on a tripod?
Steady shot, active, standard or off?

Thanks again,
Ron

[smrpix]

The camera gives you a warning when there are about 4 minutes left on the card.
As a matter of practice, I calculate 16 gigs per hour of event (even though I know it's more like 12) and only use fresh-formatted cards.

Again as a matter of practice, I copy the entire folder structure of the card to the PC using a fast card reader. If you have a good NLE it will automatically understand spanned clips -- clips that are more than a single file.

The best steady shot setting depends on the quality of your tripod.

[zepplyn]

The tripod I have is not a cheap one, but not extremely expensive either. Manfrotto, About $180...
Of the 3 choices, (active, standard or off) which would be most similar to my canon's steady setting?

Thanks,
Ron

[zepplyn]

Well, last night was the first taping. I set the steady setting to off. All went ok, except when copying the footage to the PC to edit with Vegas 13 Pro. I DID NOT pause the recording at all, but it did chop it into a few pieces. A few times when it got dark, and a few times when it did NOT get dark, in fact important parts of the show. I looked for some setting that says scene detection, but can't find it. Shooting again tonight, hoping to fix this before 5pm...
Thanks,
Ron

[TreeTops]

You said you copied to pc. Use one of Sony's software to do that. I use 'play memories' (or similar) to copy from camera and it stitches all parts together.

[smrpix]

Well, last night was the first taping. I set the steady setting to off. All went ok, except when copying the footage to the PC to edit with Vegas 13 Pro. I DID NOT pause the recording at all, but it did chop it into a few pieces. A few times when it got dark, and a few times when it did NOT get dark, in fact important parts of the show. I looked for some setting that says scene detection, but can't find it. Shooting again tonight, hoping to fix this before 5pm...
Thanks,
Ron

If you drag the entire card structure (from PRIVATE on down) into Vegas Pro, your clips should appear as continuous.
--Clips are broken into ~2G pieces in the camera, but the metadata in the folder structure instructs the NLE to stitch the spanned clips. This is actually smart from an engineering standpoint. The smaller stream files make for smoother editing of long-GOP material and should a disaster occur during recording, it's easier to recover most of the footage.