Sony's new Webbie HD camera MP4

JVC didn't develop this codec Sony did, JVC licensed the EX 35Mbps encoder from Sony's EX series cameras, but JVC wraps it with a .mov quicktime wrapper, something that Sony just couldn't bring them selves to do.
http://www.sony.co.uk/biz/view/ShowContent.action?site=bizenGB&contentId=1220875364293&parentFlexibleHub=1217404941193

Mpeg-2 is very much alive and transcoding isn't actually necessary, but when it is, Pro Rez is great.

FYI Mpeg-2 can be cranked up beyond 200Mbps all i-frame 4:2:2, however at these higher rates the Long GOP is extremely efficient.
Z1

Not really: Audio and Video Compression for High Definition. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVCHD

I'll read your latest post and see if I can answer anymore in there.

-Brian

I've also got the 'Webbie' and have been trying to get it to work in FCP 5.1.4...

First off, regarding the quality of the video: it's got a lot of compression and it shows. Those wave-like distortions show up with moving images really quickly. Low-light shooting is worthless. Well-lit scenes without too much movement are pretty good for the $'s.

Ok, as far as I can figure out (FCP noob), the FCP sequence settings need to be as follows (CMD-0):
Frame Size: HD 1440 x 1080
Pixel Aspect Ratio: Same as above
Field Dominance: Upper (Odd)
Timebase: 29,97 note, you can't change this when there is any video in your timeline
QT Video Settings: H.264
Audio Settings: 48 kHz
Depth: 24-bits (it should be 32-bits because that's what the Webbie outputs but FCP doesn't seem to support it, so you always need to render the audio before you edit it, but that's pretty fast)

With the above settings, I can edit reasonably well BUT adding video transitions and rendering those, result in a codec error. A friend of mine tried the same in FCP 6 and it did render. I suspect my codec needs to be updated. I've tried that but so far without success... (tips?)

I've also tried iMovie '09 and it seems to work reasonably well.

Oh, because of the high compression it's pretty CPU / GPU (?) intensive and rather slow to edit. Perhaps transcoding, editing, encoding would make the editing process a bit smoother, haven't tried.

[deleted]

Message was edited by: Jorma

Oh, by the way... it's a 1080i (not p) camera, aspect ratio is 1440x1080 (rectangular pixels, ratio 1.33x1 --> 1920 wide) and the data rate is about 5500 kbits/s.

Another thing to note is that for some weird reason the angle when shooting in 720 is quite a bit wider than when shooting in 1080.

MPEG videos (wither MPEG-2 or MPEG-4) are inherently un-editable. This camera is a consumer level camera. Most consumers do not edit their videos, they just play back whatever they shot in total. so for them this camera makes a lot of sense. Shoot your video, then directly post it on the web.

However, people that use FCP want to edit what they shot. For them this camera is horrible. Because MPEG video is un-editable, you have to convert it to an editable format (i.e, QuickTime) using MPEG Streamclip. This results in a generation loss in quality, especially when you compress the video again back to MPEG. Think of photo copying a photo copy.

So, in short, if you do not want to edit video, then this camera is great. If you want to edit video, then buy something that does not compress your video to a MPEG format.