Canon 7D uses a H.264 codec wrapped in a Quicktime container, thus giving you the .mov filename.
H.264 is a MPEG4 based compression, essentially a compression & decompression (CODEC) algorithm that is what AVCHD compliant camera uses too. It is no doubt one of the most efficient video compression in today's video technology, yielding the smallest file size while maintaining a very decent picture quality.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC
The coding & decoding of the video file is pretty intensive on the CPU, thus it's becomes a very unfriendly format to work with in post production.
Best workaround is to transcode the files to a format that is friendly & native to the editing system.
Although AVCHD, MPEG4 & H.264 are formats widely accepted for web delivery & by some broadcast TV stations, these however are only meant to be a delivery format or as a 'consumer' format. Although manufacturers have been pushing the AVCHD format to be part of the professional product line, I seriously think that is it not intended to be an acquisition (recording) format for critical work.
Even my professional camera have this disclaimer:
"This Product is licensed under the AVC Patent Portfolio License for Personal & non-commercial use of a consumer....no license is granted for any use other than the personal uses detailed below:
- To encode video in compliance to AVC
- To decode AVC video encoded by consumer engaged in personal & non commercial activity
- To decode AVC video that was obtained from a video provider licensed to provide AVC Video."
To me, this simply means that even the manufacturers refuse to take responsibility for professional use of the AVC codec mainly because recording is too compressed that it may distort the accuracy of image acquisition, and it may add unnecessary compressional noise & artifacts into the video image.
And when this happens to critical imaging applications like medical video documentation where every pixel data is important for post surgery analysis, etc... this format is a sure no-go for such use.
Similar analogy can be pulled from why still photographer like to shoot RAW compared to JPEG. Because when you shoot RAW, you'll have more pixel info to manipulate...when you shoot in JPEG, you lose a lot of critical data.....same goes for AVCHD & H.264 video recordings.
But having said all these, most of our applications are for web delivery, basic television work & short film productions for entertainment purposes, I guess many people won't mind the downside of using such a heavily compressed format for video recording purposes. :thumbsup:
:thumbsd:
