avc-intra

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vip77

Active member
I realize this topic may be getting a little annoying, but I think Jan kind of opened up the floodgates with the NAB comment.

So what are we looking at with NAB?

Could or would sony or panasonic produce an avc-intra prosumer camera for say less than $10,000???

Is that feasible, likely, or highly unlikely?
 
This is entirely speculation, but I would guess that Sony might announce a "prosumer-like" product similar to the FX1 with AVC capability. I wouldn't expect anything from Sony with true 24p from them in the under $10,000 range using AVC, however.

As for Panasonic, I'm sure they want to protect the market for the HVX for a while, not to mention that they are totally marketing P2 for professional use, and AVC for more personal, or possibly "prosumer" uses. So if Panasonic does release an AVC camera under $10,000, it will likely have features more on par with the FX1 than the HVX (ie no 24p, no variable frame rates, and no XLR inputs).

Just my two cents.
 
I think that'd be extraordinarily unlikely. The AVC-Intra codec has only been talked about in context of the big shoulder-mount $27,000+ cameras. I'd love to see it happen, but I think it'll be a while.

But then again, they didn't give us a consumer-down'd version of DVCPRO-HD, they put the full-fledged codec in there, so -- maybe?
 
TwistedLincoln said:
As for Panasonic, I'm sure they want to protect the market for the HVX for a while, not to mention that they are totally marketing P2 for professional use, and AVC for more personal, or possibly "prosumer" uses.
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Two different things under discussion. There's AVC-Intra, and then there's AVC-HD.

AVC-Intra is a new supercodec from Panasonic's broadcast division for their top-end cameras. Full raster, 10-bit, 100 megabits, etc.

AVC-HD is a new long-GOP "super-HDV" format from the consumer division, that is intended to replace HDV. It's not on par with DVCPRO-HD or AVC-Intra, but it's better than HDV. Right now only the consumer division is introducing cameras based on AVC-HD.

The HVX and DVX are from the Broadcast division. While I like what they're doing with AVC-Intra, I don't think that's what we really need, I'd like to see them introduce an HVX or high-def DVX using AVC-HD. That way those people who are satisfied with the quality of HDV could now have a low-bandwidth, long-GOP alternative from Panasonic, which would be tapeless and would provide for cheap interchangeable media (regular SD cards) as well as getting all the Panasonic "mojo" (CineGamma and cinematrix and all the panasonic image massaging that the HVX and DVX do so well).
 
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Barry_Green said:
Two different things under discussion. There's AVC-Intra, and then there's AVC-HD.

AVC-Intra is a new supercodec from Panasonic's broadcast division for their top-end cameras. Full raster, 10-bit, 100 megabits, etc.

AVC-HD is a new long-GOP "super-HDV" format from the consumer division, that is intended to replace HDV. It's not on par with DVCPRO-HD or AVC-Intra, but it's better than HDV. Right now only the consumer division is introducing cameras based on AVC-HD.
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Wow... that's what I get for not checking up on the forums for a while... Thanks for the info- I had no idea they were two seperate formats. I'll have to do some research on AVC-Intra now...
 
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TwistedLincoln said:
I had no idea they were two seperate formats. .
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Slightly more complicated than that. At heart they're effectively the same - AVC - the main difference between them being that Intra is distreet frames, AVC-HD is (like MPEG) inter frame compressed. But the differences don't end there, they should each be thought of more as "families" than formats, and at least two variants of AVC-Intra have been spoken of at 50Mbs and 100Mbs. The latter is supposed to be capable of recording full raster 1920x1080 at a depth of 10 bits and colour space of 4:2:2, the former limits recording resolution to 1440x1080 and (I believe) colour space to 4:2:0 to save data. (If it remains 10 bit I consider that a good trade v 4:2:2, relative to DvcProHD, and still improving on the limited horizontal resoliution of the latter.)

It's wrong to think of AVC-HD as necessarily "better" than HDV without qualifying bitrates etc - "more efficient" (for the same quality) would be more accurate.

And it's at the expense of needing more processing power - just as HDV did relative to DV when it first came out. The expectation is that technology will continue to improve, and this will become less of a problem, but if you want to get gear to make a film next year, current technologies may be the only practical choice for now.

Barry_Green said:
While I like what they're doing with AVC-Intra, I don't think that's what we really need, I'd like to see them introduce an HVX or high-def DVX using AVC-HD.
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Yes, but why not both? Then use AVC-HD when run time and data space is most important, but the option of AVC-Intra when it isn't, at least the 50Mbs version? Coupled with the use of SD memory cards in place of P2 that would get over many of some peoples reservations about the use of solid state.
 
AVCDHD supports both 1920*1080 4:2:0 and 1440*1080 4:2:0 but its maxbitrate is still 18mbs, so the question is if 18mbs is enough for 1920*1080...
 
Barry_Green said:
Two different things under discussion. There's AVC-Intra, and then there's AVC-HD.

Right now only the consumer division is introducing cameras based on AVC-Intra.
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Is that so? I think its AVC-HD for consumer cams.
 
MovieSwede said:
AVCDHD supports both 1920*1080 4:2:0 and 1440*1080 4:2:0 but its maxbitrate is still 18mbs, so the question is if 18mbs is enough for 1920*1080...
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Eh? I thought the maximum bitrate for AVCHD is 24mbs. I think when it was first anounced it was 18, but that number was revised. I think they realized that at 18mbs it would not have enjoyed much of a perceived competitive advantage over HDV.
 
harddrive said:
It's wrong to think of AVC-HD as necessarily "better" than HDV without qualifying bitrates etc - "more efficient" (for the same quality) would be more accurate.
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I disagree -- I assume that we're talking about comparable bitrates, of course, but above and beyond bitrates there are things about AVC-HD that are just plain "better". First and foremost (that everyone can agree on) would be uncompressed audio. Second would be that AVC-HD supports up to 5.1 channels of Dolby Digital AC-3 audio, or 7.1 channels of uncompressed audio, as opposed to HDV's limitations of just two channels of highly-compressed MPEG-1 Layer II, or four channels of extraordinarily-compressed MPEG-1 Layer II.

Next would be the option of full raster encoding. Doesn't make THAT much difference, but it is still better. AVC-HD will encode a full 1920x1080, as opposed to the subsampling done by just about every other format.

Next, and more important as far as I'm concerned, is that it's a fully tapeless system.

Next, and most important, is that it's FULLY COMPATIBLE. HDV is a mishmash of three separate and largely incompatible formats all lumped together under the same name, but when you've got a JVC HDV camera that can't play a Sony or Canon HDV tape, you've got a problem. AVC-HD is completely interchangeable and fully inter-compatible. That is undeniably "better".

And having native 24p support designed in from the beginning, without having to mess with pulldown flags or repeat frames (or, in Canon's case, inventing their own format that made their footage incompatible with every deck on the market) has just got to be seen as "better."

And then we come to bitrate and efficiency. AVC-HD is better in two ways -- it can deliver comparable video quality at half the bitrate, or it can deliver better video quality at the same bitrate.

Every way you slice it, AVC-HD is simply a superior format.

But that is tech talk, not practical applications, because right now -- today -- undoubtedly HDV has the better camera heads. Until AVC-HD gets a camera head appropriate for the format, it'll remain a curiosity. But when it gets a camera head that matches the potential of the format, I think you're going to see HDV disappear. I can't help but think what it would have been like had Canon's XHA1 been AVC-HD instead of HDV...
 
Barry_Green said:
........ above and beyond bitrates there are things about AVC-HD that are just plain "better"(than HDV). First and foremost ........
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Oh absolutely, though as I'm sure you are well aware, there are also things about it that are just plain "worse" - such as the greater processing power needed to handle it! An issue likely to diminish with time. But I was responding to your comment:
Barry_Green said:
AVC-HD is a new ...... format .....that is intended to replace HDV. It's not on par with DVCPRO-HD or AVC-Intra, but it's better than HDV......
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The above comment makes sense if we are thinking of picture quality, but if you broaden the argument to include audio support and the option of full raster encoding, then AVC-HD is far superior to DVCPRO-HD in that respect!

I don't doubt that AVC-HD has a bright future, and the fact that it and both variants of AVC-Intra are both subsets of the same family is also a good thing. (As must be the Sony/Panasonic support, and it being a format directly supported within Blu-Ray.) As for taking over from HDV, then yes, that's likely to happen eventually, though I'd expect DVCPRO-HD to die away in favour first, giving way to AVC-Intra in higher end cameras, AVC-HD in pro/consumer models.
 
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