Blog/Article on Pana and AVC-HD: Any merit?

Well, the dude was the VP of Product Development and Engineering at Panasonic, so while he says he has no recent information or insider info, he does know how they think and how they work... may be some truth in this!

A lot of what he says is common sense -- obviously Panasonic intends to move heavily into AVC-HD. And HDV is dead in the water as far as Sony goes... if we're making predictions here I predict that we will never see another HDV model from Sony. They're giving away a rebate package with the Z1 right now (free batteries, free Vegas editing software) and there are persistent rumors that the FX1 has been discontinued already. The handwriting on the wall says that Sony's done with HDV. And Panasonic avoided the whole HDV thing altogether, instead waiting for AVC-HD. Every indicator points to them giving AVC-HD a massive push.

But as for Tor's prediction: " HVX200-type camcorder with AVCHD CODEC and mini-Blue-ray Disc recording, in addition to SecureDigital and/or P2 soon." I have no idea what Panasonic has planned, but I would be stunned out of my chair if Panasonic Broadcast produced a blu-ray disc recording unit. I don't see it happening, not now nor ever. I do fully expect that we'll see a high-def DVX using AVC-HD sooner or later (I want them to call it the "HVX100"), but I don't expect that anything Panasonic Broadcast produces will use any manner of spinning disc. I would instead expect that it would have a few SD slots on it; with SD cards at 4GB already you could have hours of recording time with three or four slots. The consumer side of Panasonic will probably produce spinning-disc blu-ray camcorders; they already make DVD camcorders so it seems like a logical extension for them. But I can't fathom Panasonic Broadcast using a spinning optical disc...

Oh, one other thing that I disagree with Nordahl on: he said "Sony and Panasonic announced their joint AVCHD consumer recording format ". Where did he get the word "consumer" from? Sure didn't come from the press release! The only place you'll hear "consumer" in an HD format press release is in the HDV press release -- HDV was announced as a "consumer" format, but AVC-HD's press release never says the word "consumer" anywhere in it.

So -- will we see announcements in October? I don't know, but Nordahl is selling himself as a consultant with an impressive resume and obviously knows a lot of people who may be leaking him info (or not). If he makes predictions like this and he's right, he gains credibility. If he makes predictions like this and he's completely wrong, who would hire him as a consultant? So I'd say he probably knows more than he's telling us, or he'd be foolish to go on record making a prediction based around a date like that.
 
"The handwriting on the wall says that Sony's done with HDV."

Barry, I'm curious what your reasoning was in making that statement? Not arguing, just curious. Also, what do you make of the Sony HDR-FX7 rumors?
 
The reasoning I use is their own words. I shouldn't have said "the handwriting on the wall", I should have said "the handwriting in their press release."

http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/News/Press/200605/06-0511E/index.html

Press releases like this aren't just spun out willy-nilly, the words in here are carefully chosen. And the words that I find most interesting are:

"The two companies have started preparations for licensing to extensively promote the format throughout the industry"

and

"The MPEG-4/H.264 codec is a promising technology which is over two times more efficient than MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 codec technologies. "

and, finally and most tellingly,

"Panasonic and Sony will extensively promote this format throughout the industry as the new HD digital video camera recorder format best suited for the HD era."

This is coming from Sony's website, not Panasonic's. Sony will extensively promote this format (meaning AVC-HD), and they represent that this is THE format best suited for HD camcorders. Where does that leave room for HDV in their product lineup? What rational reason would they have for stabbing their own HDV format in the back, and then go on and release new HDV products?

Furthermore, the AVC-HD announcement is now closing in on four months old. No new Sony HDV models have been announced since that time. The last Sony HDV was nearly five months ago, April, with the HC3. But they have introduced new AVC-HD models...

So -- hey, I don't know anything you guys don't know. But I feel confident enough to stick my neck out and say that I think Sony's done with HDV, they're moving on. It'll be AVC-HD from here on out for them (otherwise they have quite a balancing act to do... how do they say "hey, buy our new FX7, using an admittedly inferior format!")

If there's truth to the FX7 rumor, I wouldn't be surprised at all if the new FX7 uses AVC-HD instead of HDV. But I would be very surprised if it uses HDV. Then again, stranger things have happened so you never know.

EDIT: just looked at the picture. Looks legit; doesn't look like a photoshop job. But it makes no sense -- leaves Sony with some explaining to do...
 
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Barry_Green said:
But as for Tor's prediction: " HVX200-type camcorder with AVCHD CODEC and mini-Blue-ray Disc recording, in addition to SecureDigital and/or P2 soon." I have no idea what Panasonic has planned, but I would be stunned out of my chair if Panasonic Broadcast produced a blu-ray disc recording unit. I don't see it happening, not now nor ever.
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Whether it will happen or not, I have no idea - it would involve quite a U-turn.

As for desirability, I consider it would make vast sense. Many users may be content with the solid state only for HD of the HVX200, but many others aren't. (So hence lost sales.) Not because they don't see the merits of solid state, but because for a great many situations consumable media is far and away the easiest (and cheapest) workflow.

A hybrid solution gives the best of both worlds. If P2 works for you now, then just use the SD option with this camera - and get more GB/$. If consumable media is the key element for some work, use the Blu-Ray option. Recording to both at the same time may be sensible for much work - the disc forms the archive, the solid state forms the preferred input system to your NLE.

Just look at the attention Grass Valleys Infinity has attracted in less than a year on the basis of it's recording options, the key point being it is a hybrid device - solid state and consumable media. From a recording viewpoint it begs the question of why go for a P2 only recording system. Solid state, yes - and it uses much cheaper CF - but consumable media as an option AS WELL!!

A camera of the sort speculated about would give similar workflow benefits in the prosumer marketplace. It may or may not come about, we can only wait and see, but I certainly can see the sense behind the concept.
 
And it could happen. Just like Sony may introduce another HDV model. But as you say, it would involve a significant U-turn!

Like I said earlier, stranger things have happened.
 
Just had a chance to visit the forum. Thanks for the insight, Barry.

If the man has some kind of credibility than October's A1 decision might not be as easy as I thought. =(

For the record: You're toting that HVX100 name is kinda fishy. Spill the beans, already.
 
There are no beans to spill. I just took the idea of a DVX100, shoveling the HVX chips in the front and an SD card slot in the back, changed the "D" to an "H" and came up with HVX100.

I have no idea if such a product is on Panasonic's radar or not, but I think it's simply obvious. Doesn't mean it'll happen though, since the DVX is from Panasonic's Broadcast division, and I don't know if they'll embrace AVC-HD or not. The consumer division is committed to AVC-HD, but I don't know if the broadcast division will embrace it; AVC-HD is still a highly-compressed long-GOP format; it's better than HDV but it's still an animal of a completely different kind. The only statement Panasonic Broadcast has made so far about AVC-anything is that they'll come up with an AVC-Intra format for the HPC2000 camera.

I think it's obvious though; it's a budget longform version of the P2 type of workflow and I think it'd be a natural door-opener for their bigger P2 products. I think that's why Sony went with the spinning-DVD version; it's like a budget blu-ray/XDCAM type of system; if people like it maybe they'd be more open to going with XDCAM-HD, y'know? So if Panasonic puts out an HVX100 and people love it, maybe that'll make people more likely to look at HVX200's or HPC2000's or SPX800's or other P2 systems.
 
Barry_Green said:
And it could happen. Just like Sony may introduce another HDV model. But as you say, it would involve a significant U-turn!
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If anything makes me think it likely, it's that they may not be able to ignore the competition. Sony seem highly likely to use Blu-Ray anyway, and they may have seen that solid state is liked by some. What if they introduce a Blu-Ray/Memory Stick hybrid? If Panasonic stick to solid state ONLY, then with both models offering comparable other features, codecs etc, the Sony hybrid becomes a very clear winner.

Many of your other predictions surrounding AVCHD I broadly agree with, but whilst you predict it has really put the writing on the wall for HDV, I'd go further and say it marks the beginning of the end for other things as well - DVCProHD and P2 itself. Though whilst Panasonic may be very happy to see the death of HDV forecast, they may not want to flag up the imminent demise of those two - at least not yet.......

Solid state is here to stay, but P2 is looking increasingly unnecessary and expensive compared to such as CF and SD for video recording. That's largely due to memory technolgy improving, but also AVCHD offering high quality at much lower bitrates. Coupled with laptops moving over to the newer expansion slot (so P2 cards won't be able to be plugged directly in), I wonder if any future cameras will actually use P2? What would be the advantage, compared to SD or Compact Flash?

The bitrate versus quality tradeoff is often referred to, but in reality it's a three way trade off - quality, bitrate and COMPLEXITY. It is (contrary to some beliefs) possible to get high quality at seemingly low bitrates, but the catch (isn't there always one?) is that the processing power for encoding, editing etc needs to be far higher. Using VERY approximate figures, inter frame should be able to reduce bitrates by a factor of about 2.5, and AVC by another factor of about 2, compared to an older intra frame system, whilst yielding comparable quality. Taken together, they mean that DVCProHD quality may be obtained in a bitstream of about one fifth the size - about 20Mbs.

But you don't get anything for nothing, and the downside will be the power needed to deal with this. It may need transcoding for ease of editing. It's issues like this that make me wonder if forecasts of the total and rapid demise of HDV (and DVCProHD, if not P2) may not be premature. I wait and see.
 
harddrive said:
The bitrate versus quality tradeoff is often referred to, but in reality it's a three way trade off - quality, bitrate and COMPLEXITY. It is (contrary to some beliefs) possible to get high quality at seemingly low bitrates, but the catch (isn't there always one?) is that the processing power for encoding, editing etc needs to be far higher. Using VERY approximate figures, inter frame should be able to reduce bitrates by a factor of about 2.5, and AVC by another factor of about 2, compared to an older intra frame system, whilst yielding comparable quality. Taken together, they mean that DVCProHD quality may be obtained in a bitstream of about one fifth the size - about 20Mbs.

But you don't get anything for nothing, and the downside will be the power needed to deal with this. It may need transcoding for ease of editing. It's issues like this that make me wonder if forecasts of the total and rapid demise of HDV (and DVCProHD, if not P2) may not be premature. I wait and see.
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This is summed up extremely well!

Barry had said something about h.264 accelerating graphic cards being here or around the corner, but all I know is when I either encode or try to decode h.264 long GOP stuff, it slows my very fast computer to a crawl. And this is in contrast to HDV, which when you take a DVCPRO HD clip and trascode to HDV doesn't take long at all.

The quality may be there but the complexity of the algorithm may, like you say, necessitate that it be thought of more as an acquisition codec than an editing codec...which sounds a lot like HDV.
 
harddrive said:
Sony seem highly likely to use Blu-Ray anyway
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Sony and panasonic have both said that they want AVC-HD to record to blu-ray discs. I just don't expect Panasonic Broadcast to do it, I expect it'll be Panasonic Consumer who does the spinning-disc thing.

If Panasonic stick to solid state ONLY, then with both models offering comparable other features, codecs etc, the Sony hybrid becomes a very clear winner.
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Only if all other things are equal, of course. And if all other things are equal, then yes more options = better for the consumer.

but whilst you predict it has really put the writing on the wall for HDV, I'd go further and say it marks the beginning of the end for other things as well - DVCProHD and P2 itself.
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Well, maybe for DVCPRO-HD when AVC-Intra becomes a reality. Phil Livingston of Panasonic said that with AVC-Intra they can deliver DVCPRO-HD quality at half the bitrate (50mbps) so that sounds like ... yeah, other than backwards compatibility, why would you need to use the DVCPRO-HD option? Problem is, the only AVC-Intra product announced so far is an upgrade card for the HPC2000, so it's in a totally different price bracket.

AVC-HD is a direct competitor for HDV, in that they're both long-GOP 4:2:0 systems. There are still some pretty good reasons why some of us will prefer a frame-discrete 4:2:2 system (although if AVC-Intra does well, I agree that could be the beginning of the end of developing new DVCPRO-HD products).

I wonder if any future cameras will actually use P2? What would be the advantage, compared to SD or Compact Flash?
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At least one more will, they've announced the HPC2000. And Panasonic says they're very committed to the form factor. The advantages are in capacity and speed. No matter how big SD cards get, P2 cards can always be 4x bigger and 4x faster.

Using VERY approximate figures, inter frame should be able to reduce bitrates by a factor of about 2.5, and AVC by another factor of about 2, compared to an older intra frame system, whilst yielding comparable quality. Taken together, they mean that DVCProHD quality may be obtained in a bitstream of about one fifth the size - about 20Mbs.
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But it's still an inter-frame long-GOP codec and will still be potentially subject to the same long-GOP issues that HDV does. Hopefully more resilient, but it can still happen. 50mbps for DVCPRO-HD quality, that I'll grant you, because that's what they've said they've already accomplished. But 20mbps? I sincerely doubt it, unless you're talking about primarily static shots that don't show motion artifacting.

It's issues like this that make me wonder if forecasts of the total and rapid demise of HDV (and DVCProHD, if not P2) may not be premature. I wait and see.
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The prediction of the rapid demise of HDV is this: I think Sony's moving on. Maybe they'll give it one last "hurrah" with an FX7, we'll see, although I would be willing to bet $5 that they won't, it would just be too contradictory with their published statements. JVC will continue to offer HDV products (at least as long as they stay in business) and Canon will offer HDV products. But I think Sony's made it pretty clear that they're done with it, and it's all AVC-HD from here on out.

But we'll see...
 
Elton said:
Barry had said something about h.264 accelerating graphic cards being here or around the corner,
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From what I understand nVidia and ATI already offer them.
but all I know is when I either encode or try to decode h.264 long GOP stuff, it slows my very fast computer to a crawl.
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The editing software will need to know how to hook into the hardware function. I presume that Vegas 7 and FCP6 will offer that functionality. As it stands right now, software-only AVC encoding is indeed extraordinarily slow.
 
Barry_Green said:
Sony and panasonic have both said that they want AVC-HD to record to blu-ray discs. I just don't expect Panasonic Broadcast to do it, I expect it'll be Panasonic Consumer who does the spinning-disc thing.
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Fair point. I wouldn't expect anything like the HPC2000 to use Blu-Ray, and well see it's worth in consumer cameras especially. But the HVX200, Z1 etc normally get called "prosumer" (whichever division they actually come from), and here they are on a bit of a dividing line. I'm not predicting what WILL happen, just pointing out the advantages of a hybrid solution (IMHO) in a camera in this price/feature range. All else equal, if Sony produced a Z1 successor with disc and solid state, and Panasonic produced an HVX200 successor with solid state only, I maintain this would put Panasonic at a huge disadvantage. All else equal.

Barry_Green said:
AVC-HD is a direct competitor for HDV, in that they're both long-GOP 4:2:0 systems. There are still some pretty good reasons why some of us will prefer a frame-discrete 4:2:2 system (although if AVC-Intra does well, I agree that could be the beginning of the end of developing new DVCPRO-HD products).
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Maybe, though I maintain that the difference between AVCHD and AVC-Intra may be more of complexity than quality. I can see it being AVCHD only for the consumer, AVC-Intra only for the top end (HPC2000 etc), but would a switchable option for the next gen HVX200 not be nice? If you really can't afford enough memory for AVC-Intra, well, there's always AVCHD?

Barry_Green said:
At least one more [camera use P2]will, they've announced the HPC2000. And Panasonic says they're very committed to the form factor. The advantages are in capacity and speed. No matter how big SD cards get, P2 cards can always be 4x bigger and 4x faster.
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OK, I was discounting the HPC2000, as it's been announced a while, if not yet available. "Future 1/3" cameras" would have been better wording from me. As regards the P2 form factor, it's real selling point at the moment is that it will plug directly into any laptop. As laptops move to the new architecture (early next year?), that advantage goes away. I wouldn't expect ANY manufacturer NOT to be "very committed" to anything to do with any current product. Until they announce the successor........

Yes, P2 cards may indeed be 4x bigger and 4x faster than SD, but the biggest Compact Flash cards have tended to match the size of the biggest P2 cards quite closely, whilst being several times cheaper per GB. Alternatively more than two SD slots could be incorporated into a camera for the same size as two P2.

Here's a thought. Spend $X on P2 and get Y minutes of recording with 20Mbs AVCHD. Spend the same amount on CF or SD, and the economics are such as to allow MORE than Y minutes AT 50Mbs AVC-INTRA!!!

As regards speed, modern CF has progressed to be more than fast enough for HD video, even allowing for quite a lot in hand - as Infinity proves only too clearly. So why pay several times more for performance that isn't really needed?

P2, like HDV, is a solution that is available here and now, unlike what we're speculating about. That's the worth of them both. But the writing must be heavily on the wall for both of them.

Barry_Green said:
But it's still an inter-frame long-GOP codec and will still be potentially subject to the same long-GOP issues that HDV does. Hopefully more resilient, but it can still happen. 50mbps for DVCPRO-HD quality, that I'll grant you, because that's what they've said they've already accomplished. But 20mbps? I sincerely doubt it, unless you're talking about primarily static shots that don't show motion artifacting.
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Lets be clear on one thing - motion artifacting is not NECESSARILY a problem with inter-frame long-GOP codecs, though it obviously CAN BE, if the datarate is too low. Which begs the question of what is "too low"?

One valid reference may be: http://www.dvb.org/documents/newsletters/DVB-SCENE Issue 16 Final.pdf - where on page 7 there's a report about the involvement of Eurovision and the recent World Cup. If we accept as a rule of thumb that AVC is twice as efficient as MPEG2 (all else equal), then 20Mbs AVCHD roughly equates to 40Mbs MPEG2. The author describes that the contribution circuits were 60Mbs MPEG2, but refers to that as "seamless" from a broadcasters perspective. Note that carefully - even DVCProHD couldn't be referred to as "seamless" in this context, if only because it downrezzes from 1920 to 1440! (In Europe.) "Seamless" means just that.

He also refers to the home broadcasting channels, and them being about 12Mbs AVC. No claims of them being seamless, but they were generally regarded as very good, with about as much motion as you're ever likely to get, and at about only 60% of the datarate we're talking about for AVCHD 20Mbs. Consequently, I think talking about 20Mbs AVCHD as being on a quality par with DVCProHD is valid, at least as an approximate rule of thumb.

Where it may NOT be seen as desirable as DVCProHD is in complexity, ease of editing, processing power needed etc. That's the big difference, not "quality".

Barry_Green said:
But we'll see...
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Exactly. Coming back to the original article, Nordahl has a pretty good reputation for accuracy, I believe, which makes me take it more seriously than I otherwise may.
 
On another forum, (the one that likes to censor and ban people for no reason, with tyrannical ease:furious3: ) Douglas Spotted Eagle wrote, "I've spent the past month shooting with a consumer AVC camcorder from Sony and a not-so-consumer oriented prototype from another company...". Now, this sounds like a "HVX 100" to me. What do you think? And why are they letting a "Sony" guy test-drive it instead of Barry or Jarred?

How much time is there usually between these prototypes and the actual shipping of new cameras?

Barry_Green said:
I would instead expect that it would have a few SD slots on it; with SD cards at 4GB already you could have hours of recording time with three or four slots.
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I've been wanting to know how much AVC-HD 1080/720 24P time will fit on a 4GB card, but was afraid to ask. I figured people would write, "The camera hasn't even been announced yet, dumb ass; you'll find out later."

So, how much time will fit on a 4GB card? And here's another premature and probably stupid question - what fits on a 4GB card can be transferred and fit on a 4.7 GB SD DVD for archiving, right?

Oh, and do you think they'll put a mini-DV deck in the cam like they did with the HVX200 so we can shoot it as a 16:9 DVX while the AVC-HD workflow is smoothed out?

Thank you.
 
John Trent said:
I've been wanting to know how much AVC-HD 1080/720 24P time will fit on a 4GB card, but was afraid to ask.
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Well, for 1080p/24 DVCProHD at 100Mbs, it's roughly 1 minute/GB (so about 4 minutes), and the expectation is that AVC-HD will be around 20Mbs, so I'd expect 5x as long. Does about 20 minutes sound right?
 
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