Sayonara HDV? Hello, AVC HD!

B

Barry_Green

Moderator
Check this out -- Sony and Panasonic have issued a joint statement about a new consumer HD recording system, called AVC HD.

They're ditching MPEG-2 entirely and going with H.264. H.264 is about twice as efficient as MPEG-2, and at 18 megabits it could provide substantially better quality than HDV. Plus AVC HD gets rid of the goofy MPEG-1 compressed audio of HDV, it instead offers uncompressed PCM or compressed Dolby AC-3!

And, Europe is going with H.264 for its broadcasts of HD; sure would be nice if the ATSC would add H.264 broadcasts to American HDTV.

Sony plans to record on to mini-DVD discs, Panasonic announced plans to record straight to SD memory cards.

With both big players backing it and promising to "extensively promote the format throughout the industry", the handwriting is on the wall for HDV. I'd sure hate to be Sony trying to push MPEG-2 XDCAM HD when their parent company is saying "MPEG-2 is the past, H.264 is the future"...

AVC HD is designed to be a consumer format (as was HDV) and looks like it's intended to replace HDV. While it's based on H.264, it's not the same type of H.264 that Panasonic Broadcast had previously announced that they would add to P2 cards with the HPC2000 camera; Panasonic Broadcast is talking about a high-bandwidth 10-bit intraframe-only version (more like what Sony uses in HDCAM SR), whereas AVC HD is a low-bandwidth interframe long-GOP 4:2:0 8-bit format.

More details: AVC HD is going to support both 1080 and 720 (so no goofy incompatibilities between manufacturers, hopefully!) and it supports full-raster recording of 1920x1080 and 1280x720, as well as anamorphic 1440x1080, and it supports 24p natively as well as 60p, 50p, 60i, and 50i.

See the press release at:
http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/News/Press/200605/06-0511E/index.html

There's another press release about Panasonic's plan for the new format and how they're going to go straight to SD memory cards, here: http://www.digitalproducer.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=42794
 
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SCHWEEEEEEEEEEET.... Kinda likethat sanyo Hd cam......

How do you feel about it in terms of a professionla format?
 
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EDIT: I updated the link to the press release with a much better one that has a graphic table of the formats.

I'm not sure how it ties into the Sanyo -- the Sanyo is 8 megabits, whereas AVC HD is going to be 18 megabits, but presumably there will be varying quality levels so you can adjust recording time.

I don't think it'll have any applicability to professional recording, it'll have the same low color sampling and long-GOP structure issues as MPEG-2 does. But H.264 is about twice as efficient and can record equivalent quality in about half the bandwidth, so 18 megabits of AVC HD could (COULD) be cleaner and more artifact-resistant than 25 megabits of HDV. That all remains to be seen, we don't know GOP length, we haven't seen test footage, etc.

It's a tapeless consumer format, but some of it looks quite interesting. The fact that it's H.264 is great, the bandwidth is potentially generous (I sure wish American HDTV was broadcast in 18-megabit H.264!) The best part is that Sony and Panasonic are both cooperating on it, and that it has native 24p support from the beginning. But there are millions of unanswered questions, such as: just because they're both part of the format, will they actually be compatible with each other? Or will they develop like HDV, totally incompatible with each other, sharing little more than a common banner?

I hope they get it right. I hope it's fully cross-compatible between modes and between manufacturers.
 
hopefully.

It would be kinda cool. If the price was right it would make a great "shoot in HD then downsample to 16:9 sd for like slomo and stuff.

thats what i plan to do with 60htz 1080i HDV. if i ever get hdv that is.......
 
I'd sure hate to be Sony trying to push MPEG-2 XDCAM HD when their parent company is saying "MPEG-2 is the past, H.264 is the future"...
Click to expand...

But, honestly, we've been saying MPG-2 is the past for how long now?

Jeez...
 
Very interesting piece of info. I love how HDV hasn't even been around that long and they're already saying it's the past.
 
That is amazing! I wonder how much it'll cost though...Panasonic already have their prosumer/professional model covered (HVX) for about 6grand. I'm thinking this might be around 3k. They might even pull off a ag-dvx100/ag-dvc30 kind of deal, with a lower and higher end AVC HD model.
 
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