AVHCD Vs HD

[AcueMedia]

Read some interesting comments. Is it better really ? :bigeyes:


"AVCHD uses MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 compression and encoding for video
recording."

"HDV, on the other hand, uses MPEG-2 Main Profile @ High-1440."

"Anyone who has compressed an HD video feed to H.264 and to MPEG-2
High-1440 at the same bit rate will tell you that the H.264 version is
noticeably better."

"And this is the first 'rub' to HDV users -- AVCHD uses an almost
identical data rate (24 Mbps) -- in an MPEG-2 transport stream
wrapper."

"There are other video advantages in the AVCHD format."

"For example, it allows for 16:9 aspect ratio pictures in HD with a
raster size of 1920x1080 in addition to the HDV raster sizes of
1440x1080 and 1280x720."

"At the larger raster size, AVCHD has the potential to produce higher
horizontal resolution than HDV."

"AVCHD recording supports 1080i/24/50/60, as well as 720p/24/50/60."

"Plus, the new format supports 16:9 and 4:3 SD raster sizes of 720x480
at 60i (NTSC) and 720x576 at 50i (PAL)."

"Digging a little deeper into the two specs, AVCHD has an advantage
over HDV in luminance sampling of 1080 video."

"With the 1920x1080 raster, AVCHD uses a luminance sampling frequency
of 74.25 MHz, compared to HDV's 55.7 MHz."

"The Blu-ray camp may be able to sabotage HD-DVD by having the first HD
optical disc burners and media in the market, a possibility that seems
very likely."

"But with the motion picture industry's paranoia driving the
incorporation of technical copy protection implementation details by
Congress in the laws governing the production and sale of HD optical
disc players, recorders, and HD displays, manufacturers had to create
something to make Blu-ray recording equipment and media attractive to
John Q. Public."

"Enter AVCHD camcorders with IEEE-1394 and USB 2 ports."

"With companies like Ulead, Adobe, Sonic, Nero, and InterVideo signed
up to support AVCHD, it seems clear that the idea is to allow consumers
to burn their own AVCHD videos direct to Blu-ray discs."

"The audio and video specs of AVCHD match up perfectly with one of the
formats specified for Blu-ray."

 

[DXNMedia]

With compression technology progressing and improving, the question is now really subjective.

'Better' can mean a lot of things to many users.
Better in workflow?
Better because it is more convenient for playback?
Better because it is tapeless?
Better because filesize is smaller?
Better in visual quality, color space and picture integrity?

Here's my opinion.

I've adopted the use of AVCHD soon after Panasonic released their new Pro AVCHD range, and I thought that given the manageable file-size, convenience of tapeless operation, I can give the quality consideration a compromise. If I am comparing to HDV resolution at 1440x1080, I would think that AVCHD format can give equally good pictures.

However, comparing to similar compressed formats like HDV, AVCHD losses out slightly more in high motion/movement picture content. You can notice a lot of motion compression artifacts especially in fast moving images.
I would avoid using AVCHD compressed acquisition format for sports filming and color space critical application like chroma keying and compositing.
(HDV is equally bad, if you want my fair opinion.)

Of course you cannot compare picture quality to other HD uncompressed video formats. They're not even in the league for fair comparison.

2cents... :thumbsup:

 

[lsisaxon]

Read some interesting comments. Is it better really ? :bigeyes:

I'm not so much into video, but from a technology point of view, AVCHD's compression algorithm is more CPU intensive so it will require more processing power to compress/decompress. You'll need a faster machine to work with AVCHD.

 

[DXNMedia]

Taking the stress in computing power can be avoided if your workflow is well planned out.

You can always choose to acquire in AVCHD but work in other native video formats in post..

An analogy of the workflow would be like shooting a still picture in JPG format, then you convert to uncompressed TGA to work with. This will allow more depth & flexibility in touching up, and also avoiding further re-compression.

But....your image is only as good as the source.
:thumbsup:

 

[sloth]

And to add fuel to the fire everybody has their own needs and wants

I went with AVHCD for the convenience and the ability to go tapeless. Pinnacle Studio is quite OK dealing with AVHCD, but you must buy the PLUS version with HD support for this.

An Intel quad-core would be nice though....some days the conversion takes quite a while (currently on a C2D 2.33Ghz)

 

[engr]

there is a sw by BlueFx that allows for a proxy file generation to skip the painful editing. IT will work well on lower spec PCs. So its a nice option