Making life easier: Better HDV than AVC
 

THE NEW CANON HV10 Lightweight ( 440g ) and small size (104*106*56) recording in HDV2 @ 1920*1080 seems , for me, a much better evolution than going AVCHD.

I want to be able to do lightweight edits and derush on my portable, using some simple NLEs like Womble MVW before returning to the "comprehensive" NLE à la Edius, PP, etc. And i want to have the hability to mix HDV from different sources

But some newcomers (consumers..) without previous investments nor editing experience or need will not diagnose that and be seduced by the marketing storm of AVCHD.

So thkx Canon for offering this lightweight quality alternative.

Nevertheless, on my wishlist, a HV11 with a "tape slot" replaceable by a HDD or a HighSpeed ( Tosh announced it) SDSuperCard (16/32 gigs @ 25Mbps)

HDV records in 1440x1080 only, sadly. AVCHD can record in 1920x1080, though the new Sony's don't, they too record in 1440x1080.

Excuse this complete camcorder neophyte question, but I want to understand this resolution stuff- a Canon HV-20 will only be able to record at 1440x1080? I've read that because of the higher compression ratio for AVCHD, that the quality isn't as good as recording HDV to tape. But Hse Kha says that AVCHD records to 1920x1080 so I'd think that even with higher compression, it must come close to HDV. So, what am I missing here?

Joe

The chip that captures the image is a native 1920x1080, but because the HDV standard calls for 1440x1080, Canon had to downconvert on the fly to that lower resolution (with anamorphism ON).

AVCHD can extend its standards easily as they are not bound by bitrates and tape speeds. However, so far, AVCHD cameras have not yielded the same quality as HDV cameras, because mostly of two reasons:
1. 1080p bitrate is at 15 mbps max (a limit usually chosen by the manufacturers), while HDV is at 25mbps.
2. h.264 encoders are not perfected yet as well as mpeg2 ones have.

Eventually, these problems will be overcome. However, I will personally wait 2 more years before I get an AVCHD camera.

There's nothing sad about 1440x1080. The cameras can't even resolve that resolution yet.

HDV 1440x1080-1.33 pixel format scales to HD 1920x1080-square pixel format. This sample clip: (Download link) was formatted for square pixels.

Pierre -- Je me suis trouvé récemment dans vôtre beau coin du monde…