What are the benefits of HDV over AVCHD?

HDV is tape based...AVCHD is not. AVCHD is only recorded to Compact Flash cards and hard drives...no tape. HDV can be captured natively, AVCHD requires that you transcode it to ProRes or AIC...no native support. HDV can be captured on non-intel machines...AVCHD requires and Intel.

Now there are benefits of AVCHD over HDV.

-No deck or camera required to import footage
-Faster import into system...even with transcoding.
-MPEG-4 based codec, not old MPEG-2...but they are both GOP formats.

Shane

You import the footage via the LOG AND TRANSFER option in FCP. That is where the transcode takes place, and that is where you tell FCP if you want ProREs or AIC.

No clue on the exact timing. I saw an Octo 3.0 mac transcode a 10 min shot to ProRes in 4 min. So...I guess with a little math you might say 24 min for an hour...but then again, there are different formats of AVCHD. Different data rates. Panasonic alone has 4...ranging from 6MB/s to 21MB/s. I saw the 9MB/s one transcoded.

Shane

Sorry, never edited with the footage.

Shane

Hi Himalaya...

I have pasted the url for the wikipedia entry for AVCHD: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVCHD

As can be seen there are problems with file size.

In my honest opinion there is no place for AVCHD.

The main problem is the transcoding, and secondly the archiving of the footage.

With AVCHD based recorders space is limited. Hard drives/ dvd's and compact cards.

The cost per minute is far more than with tape. Tape stock is cheap durable and easy to come by.

Just my 2cents worth.

Justin.. Durban.. South Africa

Once the footage is transcoded, it's just ProRes (or AIC), so no different than editing that...

(which means no problems)

Patrick

There are comments on camcorderinfo.com in the various camera reviews regarding AVCHD: mostly they still say that HDV produces better images with fewer compression artifacts, especially trailing "ghosts" on quick motion or panning. Right now it's AVCHD at about 17mbs vs HDV at 25mbs: more bits usually equals better quality, but YMMV as the AVCHD codec gets better.

Note that some AVCHD is now "true HD" at 1920x1080, rather than some older AVCHD and all HDV at 1440x1080 squeezed formats. The "true HD" may seem better at first glance, but they are compressing even more bits into 17mbs. You should shoot footage similar to what your project will be like and view them off the camera using good HD monitors and judge the quality for yourself.

Disk space considerations: yes, you need to comvert AVCHD to either AIC or ProRes 422, and the space for either is about the same. I like ProRes 422; HDV can be edited natively, but you pay a performance penalty both in responsiveness during editing, real time effect previewing, and after editing for "conforming" for export for use in DVD SP, for example. So, even with HDV, I import to ProRes 422, to improve editing performance and to eliminate the "conforming" step. My G5 Quad imports HDV to ProRes 422 (NOT HQ, but I shoot and import at 1080p30; 1080i60 will work the same, I just like 30p) in real time. Some machine may fall behind, so try it out.

Eddie O

Hi Himalaya

I hear you when you say you do not want tape changes... what are you going to do when you "fill up" a hard drive and cannot record further...

Would it not be better to loose a minute or two of action than all of the action when the camera is full?

Tape changes can be very quick and easy.. not so with AVCHD camera's.

AVCHD should remain in the province of non professional's.

Justin.. Durban.. South Africa

Check the web sites for the AVCHD cameras you want to know about: they should list the durations at their various resolutions.For example, Sny's SR12 (120GB) gives you 14.5 hours of recording time, about 8.5 gigabytes per hour (compared to 13 gigabytes/hour for HDV).

Eddie O

Message was edited by: Edward A. Oates

Swapping an SD card out and getting back to shooting is actually quicker than tape

There's no transport mechanism time to deal with either.

Speaking from experience...

Patrick