Interesting Column About AVCHD vs. HDV & Other HD Formats

http://tinyurl.com/nvvtd

The opinion piece is written by Wayne Cole for GOVERNMENT VIDEO
Magazine.

"As long as HDV, XDCAM-HD, and DVCPRO HD equipment continues to capture
the imagination of lower-cost HD producers and facilities, it's likely
that Sony and Panasonic will use their AVCHD licensing clout to ensure
that no "AVCHD-Pro" equipment ever comes to market."

"On the other hand, if Grass Valley implements direct H.264 recording
to REV PRO disks in its Infinity Digital Media Camcorder, and it begins
to cut significantly into the XDCAM HD or DVCPRO HD market share, Sony
and Panasonic would be able to quickly counter with 1/2-inch and
2/3-inch CCD units using almost the same AVCHD encoders as their
consumer units, but perhaps with higher data rates (and milder
compression levels)."

The article's other interesting quotes:

"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."

"With HDV, on the other hand, there would need to be a transcoding step
(MPEG-2 to H.264) involved that might be beyond the capability and tool
set of the average consumer."

"The prospect that consumers may be able to record better quality HD
with equipment that costs less than professional HDV equipment has some
industry observers scratching their heads."

"If you don't see AVCHD as the mechanism to support and perhaps make
Blu-ray the dominant consumer optical video disc format, then it almost
looks to be a competitor to HDV and possibly even XDCAM HD."

"However, the CCD and optics used on most HDV camcorders will allow HDV
to hold its own at least against early AVCHD camcorders."

http://tinyurl.com/nvvtd

Grass Valley's "Rev Pro" Web site:

http://www.revprolabs.com/rpl/index.html

Jerry Jones
http://www.jonesgroup.net