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[ In Focus ] |
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AVC offerings could challenge HDV market
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by Wayne Cole
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HDV, originally conceived and delivered as a consumer format, was quickly adopted by independent filmmakers and some network broadcast shows as a substitute for film during a period of pronounced downward budget pressure on content producers. Realizing there was a market between consumer gear and HDCAM, manufacturers filled the gap with HDV camcorders in a variety of form factors.
Part of HDV’s popularity was due to the smart marketing decision to require HDV gear to also work with DV content and media. Over the past few years, indie filmmakers have flocked to these new HDV units, and they have been a popular choice for local TV stations that were upgrading news operations to HD.
A Different Direction
While JVC, Sony, Canon, and others forged ahead with HDV, Panasonic was out on a solid-state recording limb alone with its DVCPRO HD P2 solution, the AG-HVX200. Now, Panasonic is a major force behind another format that could challenge HDV, AVCHD.
Jointly developed with Sony, AVCHD is intended primarily for recording to solid-state media and 8cm DVDs. AVCHD (H.264 MPEG-4 Part 10) is at least twice as efficient as HDV (MPEG-2 Main Profile@High 1440 Level). Combine that with the increasing capacity and decreasing cost of these media and AVCHD gets a significant boost in cost-per-recorded-second.
Sony’s benefit is that Blu-ray players are supposedly able to play these “red laser” 8cm DVDs, and that gives them a boost in the HD optical disc wars. Panasonic’s main benefit will likely be in the SD and P2 memory markets.
At this point, there are two very different flavors of AVC that Panasonic has implemented. AVCHD uses the simpler long-GOP interframe (IBP frame) recording. The higher data rate I-frame only version, AVC-Intra, has bit rates of 50 and 100 Mbps using the Hi-10 and Hi-422 profiles of H.264, respectively. Because AVCHD is hosted on handheld 1/4-inch chip units and AVC-Intra on shoulder-mount 2/3-inch chip units, there is a market gap between them which, at present, only Panasonic serves.
There are two other new wrinkles to consider when pondering the meaning of AVCHD for HDV’s life expectancy. Virtually all AVCHD camcorders released to date record on some form of solid-state media. The second feature that may attract consumers is that most AVCHD cameras can record high-quality stills. The temptation is for consumers to get a single AVCHD camcorder knowing they can use it as both a digital still camera and an HD video camcorder.
For higher end professional units like the AJ-HPX2000 and the full-raster 1920x1080 AJ-HPX3000, Panasonic provided AVC-Intra recording at 50 Mbps or 100 Mbps. According to Panasonic, AVC-Intra 50 provides DVCPRO HD (50 Mbps) video quality at half the data rate, while AVC-Intra 100 provides near D-5 image quality at the DVCPRO HD data rate (100 Mbps).
What interests professionals most, however, is the intraframe (I-frame) recording. This means footage is acquired in a self-contained, frame-accurate format that requires less processing (with its inherent losses) and less processing horsepower in post. Plus, because it’s MXF wrapped, most MXF compliant editing systems need only add an AVC-based codec capable of decoding H.264 High 10 and High-422 profiles in order to implement “native” AVC-Intra editing.
Mum’s The Word
Ask any manufacturer how they intend to address the apparent competition in their own product lines and the best answer you’ll likely get is a shrug. Panasonic’s standard answer, for example, is that neither AVCHD nor AVC-Intra will replace DVCPRO HD. The company has a new mid-range 2/3-inch DVCPRO HD P2 shoulder mount camcorder, the AG-HPX500. But at a price of around $30,000 with lens, why you would choose the DVCPRO HD unit over the HPX2000, which is admittedly about 40-50 percent more expensive but can double the capacity of your P2 cards using AVC-Intra?
Another question that seems to remain unanswered is what AVC plans (if any) exist for those with budgets between the prosumer AVCHD camcorders and the AVC-Intra HPX2000. Will sales of the HVX200 slow as users wait for an AVC product in the same price range?
Meanwhile, manufacturers of HDV gear offer units whose chips capture the full 1440x1080 raster for 1080i or 1280x720 for 720p HDV. The resolution difference between these HDV units and the HVX200 has been cited in a number of “HD camcorder shootout” reports.
The natural answer for Panasonic would be a handheld, 1/3-inch, AVC-Intra/DVCPRO camcorder that delivers a 1920x1080 raster to the on-board AVC codec for recording to P2 or external FireWire hard drive. Even if such a unit was restricted to AVC-Intra 50, it could lay a serious beating on HDV and possibly challenge XDCAM HD. However, Panasonic is closed-lipped on the subject.
At the end of 2006, Sony presented a white paper defending MPEG-2 long-GOP HD recording for professional use against AVC and JPEG-2000, arguing that the experience factor behind MPEG-2 made it more reliable with higher quality output. The contention that these newer HD formats are not ready for professional use rang hollow then, and the echo is even louder now.
Reading between the lines, I can only assume that Sony is unwilling to move on from XDCAM HD and HDV in spite of having implemented AVCHD for Blu-ray disc devices and consumer camcorders. Canon has historically been slow to step up to new formats in its professional digital video camcorder lines. And because Matsushita (Panasonic’s parent company) owns a large portion of JVC, it’s unlikely that JVC will step up to “professional” AVC any time soon.
So Panasonic has an opportunity to grab ownership of the sub-$8,000 HD camcorder market and deal a serious if not fatal blow to HDV. Will Panasonic jump through the window before it closes -- even if it means that DVCPRO HD takes the hit?
Choosing to skip optical disc recording in favor of solid-state and choosing an I-frame only acquisition format over a long-GOP HD format shows that Panasonic is willing to take risks to advance pro video technology in a way that benefits users as well as the company. Dropping a quality, 1/3-inch, 3-CCD AVC-Intra camcorder into the HDV market space is not only consistent with past decisions, it could also boost P2’s market positives.
Wayne M. Cole, CCV, CLVI, and member of the AGCV Board of Advisors, is also the owner of IHP, a video production company located Santa Barbara, CA. Contact him at wcole@ihpweb.com.
MORE INFO
Canon usa.canon.com
JVC jvc.com/pro
Panasonic panasonic.com/broadcast
Sony sony.com/government
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