Is there a difference between HDV and AVCHD?
newguy
Thanks
David Ruether
<newguy> wrote in message news:pdvhh65afsl6ao74t...@4ax.com...
> Is one better than the other?
> Thanks
Ooooooooh! 8^) The answer is, "maybe" - but "Frank" can tell you
far more about this, and has written good articles on it. The short
answer is that HDV is tape-based (and therefore it provides automatic
archiving of the source material, unlike memory-card/HD-based
AVCHD which requires greater care in archiving material reliably);
being tape-based, dropouts are possible with HDV; HDV is easier
to work with and it requires less "able" computer gear unless relatively
lower quality "AVCHD-Lite" is used; HDV uses non-square pixels
for operations (at 1440x1080 resolution) while working with it
although the sensor may actually be 1920x1080, as will be the viewed
image; even though AVCHD's compression type may be more efficient
than that of HDV, for the most part (short of using the highest data rate
that any amateur camcorder is capable of), HDV as yet still often looks
better than AVCHD - but AVCHD is getting better. The new small
Panasonic HDC-TM700 can shoot very sharp-looking 28Mbps peak
1920x1080*p* footage, but I have yet to find a good way to export
the edited video in a usable form without noticeable loss (the best way
so far is with 60i Blu-ray).
--DR
Brian
I hope AVCHD does improve as it might be the only video format in the
future. The last time I checked on video cameras only one camera was
used tape. Most have a SD card or a hard drive or both.
Regards Brian
Smarty
> Is one better than the other?
> Thanks
>
Another opinion:
HDV is a dying format with virtually no new consumer products from Canon
or JVC, and diminished consumer involvement from Sony as well, leaving
the format (which was introduced in 2003) as a very weak alternative to
the newer camcorders based on h.264/AVCHD. AVCHD has been around for 5
years, and is a very mature and very pervasive format, growing on a
daily basis in terms of popularity. HDV is just the opposite.
In the last few years, literally dozens of AVCHD cameras have been
introduced, ranging from DSLRs to point and shoot to numerous camcorders
for the consumer and prosumer markets as well as for professional use.
Flip cameras and the like under $100 make the format ubiquitous, as does
the adoption of h.264 for virtually all web video and many / most BluRay
HD releases on disk as well. MPEG2 and HDV were fine for their day, but
their day was in the early part of the decade we are now completing.
Canon presently offers 10 consumer camcorders, with only 1 (the HV40)
offering HDV format. Their professional line has some older HDV models
from years ago, but their newer units do not offer HDV.
The older mpeg2 compression format developed in the prior century is,
indeed, easier to edit on an older computer. And HDV tapes may have some
benefit in archiving which I personally fail to understand and
comprehend, compared to moving flash and disk-based files at vastly
higher data rates than HDV tape drives, which only read and write at
nominally 25 Mbits/sec (3 megabytes per second), a ludicrously low rate
for archiving and data processing. Current flash and hard disk
technologies are 7 to 50 times faster for moving AVCHD files.
In terms of ease of processing and handling, the random access and easy
file transfers of AVCHD profoundly outstrip any time savings
attributable to editing in HDV assuming an adequate computer is used. I
can easily move a 1 hour h.264/AVCHD file in less than two minutes,
essentially 30 or 40 times faster than real time. I can randomly access
files and clips without winding, rewinding, and all the other nonsense
an HDV user endures. Transferring a one hour HDV video takes 1 hour,
versus well below 2 minutes on my computer for AVCHD.
Both camcorder technologies employ comparable optics, signal processors,
sensors, and other technologies, so the important difference boils down
to compression technology. It is vastly easier to starve a 25 Mbit/sec
HDV mpeg2 encoder than it is to starve an 18 Mbit/sec or 24 Mbit/sec
h.264 encoder, and motion artifacts in HDV reveal this very limitation.
This is why the newer mpeg2 camcorders are using a considerably higher
data rate, 50 Mbits/sec, which is not available in HDV and never will be.
For the last several years, I have not seen any reason to recommend HDV
as a superior solution, other than for those with old computers, those
unwilling to adapt to more modern technologies, or those whose customers
/ sponsors / editors demand the old format.
ushere
depends on where you're coming from....
many of your points are very valid, but some aspects of tape you
obviously have had no experience with.
a. many of my clients, incl. national broadcasters demand tape.
b. nearly all recent sony hdv camcorders have an option for card or hd
recording (i use fc on mine). i always record to tape (which is so
cheap) and fc. i might never look at the tape, but it's instant archiving.
c. i have tapes on the shelf shot with my first dv camera, not too
mention an extensive library of betasp. true, most of it has been
transferred to hd's for simplicity of use, however, there's a few hd's
that have died on us, and unless you're incredibly well organised (we
are!), anything over a few dozen hd's requires extremely careful logging
and labelling. in the past 3 months i've found occasions when it was
easier to simply recapture a tape.
d. the quality difference between hdv / avchd when shot on a prosumer
camera is at best, when released on dvd, debatable. as i haven't
produced anything on blu-ray for a client, i can't judge.
e. at the end of the day, good lighting, camera handling is vastly more
important than whether one shoots avchd or hdv.
i should add i shoot both, but transcode avchd to mxf when working on
long form doco's since on my i7/920 avchd plays well, but not once i
start cc'ing, etc.,
Smarty
I very specifically stated this already as a reason to prefer HDV. I
worked in broadcast engineering for many years (:
>
> b. nearly all recent sony hdv camcorders have an option for card or hd
> recording (i use fc on mine). i always record to tape (which is so
> cheap) and fc. i might never look at the tape, but it's instant
> archiving.
Sony's consumer line of camcorders are virtually all AVCHD / flash
design with no tape and no HDV.
>
> c. i have tapes on the shelf shot with my first dv camera, not too
> mention an extensive library of betasp. true, most of it has been
> transferred to hd's for simplicity of use, however, there's a few hd's
> that have died on us, and unless you're incredibly well organised (we
> are!), anything over a few dozen hd's requires extremely careful
> logging and labelling. in the past 3 months i've found occasions when
> it was easier to simply recapture a tape.
I have a huge library of cassette, VHS, Beta (original 1 hour), Beta
newer format, open reel, video 1/2 inch open reel, Betacam, MiniDV,
Video 8, Metal Particle High 8, Cartivision, and formats which we
evaluated experimentally. They are all great archives............ I
would personally much prefer my video to be in a transferable, digital,
file-based format, thank you................
>
> d. the quality difference between hdv / avchd when shot on a prosumer
> camera is at best, when released on dvd, debatable. as i haven't
> produced anything on blu-ray for a client, i can't judge.
The quality difference between HDV versus AVCHD when viewed as a
standard def DVD? You must be joking........... What about the quality
difference between HDV and AVCHD when viewed on a black and white TV
made in the 1950's?
>
> e. at the end of the day, good lighting, camera handling is vastly
> more important than whether one shoots avchd or hdv.
That was not the original poster's question. Of course it is true, but
to repeat the original poster's question: Is there a difference between
HDV and AVCHD?
>
> i should add i shoot both, but transcode avchd to mxf when working on
> long form doco's since on my i7/920 avchd plays well, but not once i
> start cc'ing, etc.,
Off the topic, but MXF is a container / wrapper and not HDV-centric in
any way. Not knowing your specific workflow, I can only offer the
observation that an i7/920 (a 2.66GHz quadcore) runs NLEs like Edius
(Neo AVCHD Booster) editing like a hot knife through butter. Download
the trial and check it out. Or add the Firecoder Blu hardware
accelerator card and render several times faster. Or add an nVidia card
with CUDA support and see AVCHD performance fly on NLEs which support it.
I came to this forum many years ago, and spend endless hours trying to
convince those who were regular attendees that mpeg was more than merely
a delivery format, that their precious TRV900s and TRV950s and VX2000s
were NOT the ultimate tools for capturing video on the cheap, and that
HDV was the wave of the future. I embraced the JVC and FX-1 as soon as
they were introduced, and have literally hundreds of HDV tapes (authored
without little or no transcoding to HD DVDs) to show for it. I know and
appreciate the HDV concept, and am still impressed with the ingenious
re-use of the MiniDV transport and tape cartridge to allow for upward
migration from MiniDV.
That was nearly 9 years ago, and a lot has changed.
I can only say that HDV as a format is a dead, dead, format which will
join the ranks of VHS and Beta and High 8 and Video 8 etc. very soon.
Yes, the fact that you have a physical tape is nice, but this is hardly
a good reason to commit a new camcorder purchase to it.
Brian
>Is one better than the other?
>Thanks
Many still photo cameras can now record high resolution video. Do
these camera's use AVCHD?
Regards Brian
Smarty
Yes they do use AVCHD or some variant of it.
The variants I am referring to are "AVCHD Lite", a somewhat less capable
form of AVCHD, or a much higher speed AVC which take advantage of the
very capable sensors and processors in the high end DSLRs to record even
more detail than the AVCHD format can hold. Virtually all of the still
cameras on the market which incorporate HD video are now using some form
of AVC, some of them wrapping it in an Apple Quicktime container called
.mov to make it easier for Macintosh users to import. A small number of
(especially lower end) cameras use an ancient format called MJPEG,
primarily because it is cheaper to incorporate and requires very little
computer power to process.
AVC is also pervasive in industrial and commercial web cams, home web
cams, small cheap pocket video cameras such as the Flip, and in most
satellite and some cable TV broadcasting. It also provides the core of
Microsoft's "Windows Media Video" .wmv format and thus has also pervaded
the PC world to the exclusion of mpeg2 / HDV content almost entirely.
Same thing with Apple Quicktime which only supports older mpeg2 editing
with the purchase of additional software but is delivered with built-in
AVC support.
David Ruether
"Brian" <bcl...@es.co.nz> wrote in message
news:d0gjh691vneqbts28...@4ax.com...
> newguy wrote:
Or MJPEG (.MOV), or both..., but it is not just the "HD or
not" issue, but resolution and data rate - and most still cameras
do not shoot very high-quality HD video (and even basic
features like AF, AE, and zooming while shooting are just
coming into being with still cameras that can also shoot video).
For formats, AVCHD for instance, comes in many different
"flavors", from 1280x720(p) resolution, low frame rate, and
low data rate to much better than that, but the quality of the
output is still generally not equal to the best that the best small
camcorders can produce. Still cameras are good for a
"snap-shooting" level of video quality, but not generally yet
for high quality...
--DR
Smarty
> "Brian"<bcl...@es.co.nz> wrote in message
> news:d0gjh691vneqbts28...@4ax.com...
>
>> these camera's use AVCHD?
>>
>> Regards Brian
> Or MJPEG (.MOV), or both..., but it is not just the "HD or
> not" issue, but resolution and data rate - and most still cameras
> do not shoot very high-quality HD video (and even basic
> features like AF, AE, and zooming while shooting are just
> coming into being with still cameras that can also shoot video).
> For formats, AVCHD for instance, comes in many different
> "flavors", from 1280x720(p) resolution, low frame rate, and
> low data rate to much better than that, but the quality of the
> output is still generally not equal to the best that the best small
> camcorders can produce.
> Still cameras are good for a
> "snap-shooting" level of video quality, but not generally yet
> for high quality...
> --DR
>
>
compression format introduced in the early 1990s which has been retained
and used in some high def still cameras as a means of creating low
content video primarily for emailing video clips and editing on really
old computers. It is sometimes placed in a Quicktime .mov wrapper /
container, but the type terms, MJPEG and .mov describe 2 very different
things, one a video format, the other a container format.
The .mov container format can be used to contain many different types of
video, most notably AVC/h.264, and many if not most DSLRs which
typically can ONLY deliver h.264/AVC video do this in a .mov wrapper.
Regarding the opinion that:
"AVCHD for instance, comes in many different 'flavors', but the quality of the output is still generally not equal to the best that the best small camcorders can produce."
I wanted to note that I believe there is now only once such HDV small camcorder yet on the market, from Canon, the HV40 amidst at least a couple dozen AVCHD camcorders from Sony, Canon, JVC and others. To say that all of them are inferior to this HV40 makes no sense, and many AVCHD camcorders produce results which are comparable or superior, depending upon which specific attribute of video / image quality is being considered.
To answer the original question, yes there is a difference between HDV and AVCHD, which simply stated boils down to AVCHD being the excellent format recent past, present and future, and HDV being an excellent format of the past. The relative market share and new camcorder releases bear this out tremendously. Both use virtually identical optics, sensors, and signal processors, and differ primarily in the way they store the image. Professional users who make very demanding use of these equipments will use much more competent versions of mpeg2 which replaces HDV, since HDV is too limited in bit rate, color gamut, and processing penalties, or will use h./264 AVC. It is altogether clear that the DSLR and larger sensor format high definition camera makers have already dropped mpeg2/HDV entirely, and are fully committed to AVC/h.264. Pick up a Nikon, Canon, Sony, DSLR and you will also see they are totally h.264/AVC.