AVCHD -- new HD format from Sony & Panasonic

[Kevin Shaw]

Originally Posted by Dan Euritt

h.264 already has nvidia purevideo hardware acceleration support in premiere 2.0 and ae7.

So how effectively does that work in practice, and what are the prospects for other editing programs supporting this solution? Can we expect most major editing applications to offer H.264 and purevideo support in a timely manner, and will we be able to edit multiple layers of video and effects without pre-rendering the timeline? It's taken about three years to get widespread support for HDV; do you think the ramp-up will be any quicker for AVCHD?

[Wayne Morellini]

It is not a wonder, if you look at the announcement of Samsung last year, to introduce a H264 HD camera that does around 18Mb/s, then you know something might be up. At last, are we finally to bury the HDV 1 hatchet? Unless this is some mean trick, like when they used Mpeg2 coding in a Mpeg4 content. What does this H264 in a Mpeg2-T stream really mean, real full H264 with some Mpeg2 like transport headers, or Mpeg2 coding with some h264 benefits (like what happens in those Mpeg4 systems I mention above.

This is exactly what I though Panasonic was planning to pull for its SD range of cameras this year.

Where does this leave JVC, or is the HD-200, to be shipping with h264 in Mpeg2 transport wrapper. Will HDTV be going for H264 in a Mpeg2T wrapper, now that would be a revolutionary benefit.

www.ambarella.com is an potential leading hardware solution for h264.

I read the official maximum bit rate of Bluray content is 48Mb/s, so Panasonic is not too far off on the upper end. This is what I was saying the companies needed to do to take advantage of the format. Which means that a 100Mb/s format of equal codec is probably the high grade for acquisition to Bluray (extra bandwidth to have something to play around with, and for the broadcaster encoders to choose from).

You don't know how joyed I am to see this (well, mildly joyed at least with me) this si what I have been pushing, advocating, hoping for. While this is not the 25Mb/s that I hoped for, and I would prefer to work in h264 at 50Mb/s, 18Mb/s is a good start as a future alternative to HDV for prosumers. Because a lot of compression codecs have a narrow range of compression for max quality (1:1-5:1, MOSTLY 1:1-2.X:1) the only way to virtually guarantee, in my opinion only, that H264 will get better high motion footage and low light+high noise footage, is for it to have the same data rate as the one it is replacing. But with all other footage there should be advantage. The industry is finally maturing.


Mike,

For hardware assistance on encode/decode, apart from those I usually mention, wait until the need of the year, maybe upto Nab 2007.

This is why I have been watching the news Post NAB, to get all the prosumer/consumer announcements.

[Wayne Morellini]

http://www.macworld.com/news/2004/11/09/avc/index.php

Notice, that they are still talking about the US Digital Broadcasting adopting for the use of bandwidth saving and program flexibility. It is NTSC/PAL, all over again. No, what is important is transmitted picture quality, not more channels. More channels means less viewers per channel, less quality per channel, ultimately, less advertising profit per channel. I want our American brothers (and us Mpeg2 19Mb/s max Aussies here) to enjoy what we have enjoyed here for many PAL years, prime picture quality.

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Guys, set your Digital TV recorders on stun, looks like there will be so many channels we will need triple tuner recorders, and have to pick and kick which programs to record in advance (the last thing a network needs to hear).

When we had two TV stations here, the commercial station used to be packed with the best programming from across the networks. Sure, we missed half the good commercial shows, but that could have been filled by one more channel. Once all the networks were here, now five plus extra DB channels, I just watched less TV. A lesson in too many channels, like the old saying, two's company, three's a crowd.

[Dan Euritt]

purevideo acceleration is being used right now, and AVCHD hasn't even been released yet... vegas 6.0d also has h.264 hd support to some degree, so the trends are there already... i don't think that it'll be a similar situation to hdv editing delays.

you are probably right about that higher bitrate on the 2/3" camera, even tho panasonic hasn't stated what bitrate it'll record at.

those who aren't familiar with h.264 may want to read this xlnt article at ee times, it details a whole bunch of codecs, with test results, here on page 3: http://www.eet.com/news/latest/showA...4417335&pgno=3

[Balazs Rozsa]

What is the capacity of an 8cm disk?

Maybe about 2GB. A 1 hour MiniDV tape is 11GB.

2GB at 18Mbits/sec is enough for about 15 minutes. Not too much.

[Kevin Shaw]

Dan: do you think we'll get most of the quality benefit of H.264 from the real-time encoders used in the cameras, or will there be some compromise as we've seen from low-cost MPEG2 encoders? I guess we'll find out when the cameras start shipping, but what's your take on that? Also, do early results for purevideo suggest effective real-time editing at HD resolution? Thanks for keeping us all informed on this.

[Wayne Morellini]

The 20 minute recoding time mentioned in:
http://www.webwereld.nl/articles/411...amcorders.html

Is that single layer, or dual layer? I opt for a hard disk version.

Originally Posted by Dan Euritt

you are probably right about that higher bitrate on the 2/3" camera, even tho panasonic hasn't stated what bitrate it'll record at.

I thought I read that it was 50Mb/s in one of the panasonic threads.

[Wayne Morellini]

10-bit gamma, 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 at 25Mb/s would be great. Sony, Pana please.

[Wayne Morellini]

Notice that it finally has 1920*1080 HD!
Whoo hoo, whoo hoo, whoo hoo!, as Oprah would say ;)

[Chris Hurd]

Mike Curtis over at HF For Indies posts his comments about AVCHD:

http://www.hdforindies.com/2006/05/p...developed.html

[Zack Birlew]

Didn't Panasonic say something about h.264 for the HVX200? Might this be what they were talking about? I hope an HVX200A isn't too close around the corner since I plan on getting one at the end of summer. =(

[Jack Zhang]

I would love to see an AVCHD Blu-ray/"Professional Disc" camera that can record 1080p60.

[Barry Green]

Originally Posted by Jack Felis

Didn't Panasonic say something about h.264 for the HVX200? Might this be what they were talking about? I hope an HVX200A isn't too close around the corner since I plan on getting one at the end of summer. =(

No, completely different things.

This H.264 system (AVC-HD) is a long-GOP, low-bandwidth, 4:2:0 consumer format.

The H.264 Panasonic was talking about in their professional lineup would be a high-bandwidth, 10-bit, 4:2:2, intra-frame-only implementation.

And it wouldn't be applied to the HVX, they're talking about having an H.264 option card for their HPC2000 camera.

[David Andrews]

The EBU have published some papers on AVC/H.264.
Technical Review #302, published April 2005 and found here provides a summary of its various flavours.
http://www.ebu.ch/en/technical/trev/trev_home.html
Select Digital Compression and scroll down to the article.

The Sony/Panasonic announcement appears to cover the High Profile version (8 bit 4:2:0). It also seems that Panasonic intends to develop this for use with SD cards.

The article makes the point that decoder complexity is 2.5x to 4x that of mpeg-2. That will be a serious challenge for nles.

[Alister Chapman]

They had better have sorted out the issue of spinning DVD's and gyroscopic distortion. Any dropouts could be very lengthy. Doubt DVD's will be robust enough for pro work. Very interesting development though.