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Quantify the difference between DVCProHD and H.264
Double the recording capacity huh? That’s cool but I’d like to know what people realy think about the quality compromise. I’ve been sold that the DVCPro100 is better than HDV. But how far back towards GOP HDV do we go with H.264. I’m willing to read up on my own on this if someone can refer me to a clear conversation of the difference and benefits.
Thanks,
Chris
Chris Baldwin
Shoulder High Productions
Media of the World; For the World!
https://www.shoulderhigh.com
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13 Replies
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What camera encodes to H264? H264 is a delivery codec for web/streaming. As far as I know no camera records to H264 to tape/solid state media.
Jeremy
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News coming out of NAB says that Panasonic will introduce the ability to record H264 as an option, sometime in 2007. No word on which products as far as I’ve heard.
Joe Murray
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Sorry … I forgot to attach that to my original post.
I won’t be at NAB until Wednesday so I can’t ask them directlt but perhaps we can come up with a few questions for me to report back on…
Any initial reaction to this annoucement?
Chris Baldwin
Shoulder High Productions
Media of the World; For the World!
https://www.shoulderhigh.com
newsletters@shoulderhigh.com -
“The optional AVC-Intra (H.264 compliant) support for the new P2 HD products will be available in April 2007.”
It sounds like it will be an option across the line of P2 products. That would be very cool. Too bad it’s a year away.
Joe Murray
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As Jeremy said, it’s a delivery codec. But we shouldn’t be too fast in saying it’ll never be used for acquisition as well
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I supose I’m still looking for the difference in quantitative measures between the HDV, H.264, and DVCPro100. I would hope Panasonic could provide us with some better specifics other than its nearly better and half the size. Can’t HDV’ers and HDXDCAM’ers say the say thing about either of these two formats? (“Well yes the DVCPro100 and H.264 are technichally better formats but they’re twice as big as us…You don’t need all that if…”)
I’m just looking for some actuall numbers and some footage and potentially some trusted descriptions of where each format excells and faulters.
Chris Baldwin
Shoulder High Productions
Media of the World; For the World!
https://www.shoulderhigh.com
newsletters@shoulderhigh.com -
You know there is another side of the coin here with an optional codec that delivers twice the storage. Isn’t anyone else concerned it will give Panasonic get out a jail for free card over the lagging roll out schedule and supply of their P2 media?
In my reading of many of these threads the big advantage of DVCProHD over HDV or HDXDCAM was the quality and robustness of the image. You paid a premium for P2 media that had enough redundancy that it could reliably capture 100Mbps HD footage. And it has also been my observation and direct experience that many consumers are holding off until the size of the P2 cards reaches at least 16gig and for the transfer speeds to at least double too.
The solution from Panasonic is compromise on the quality of the image we can capture? Well if H.264 is really as close in quality to DVProHD as the press releases suggest then great! What took you so long… but give me the data and means to make sure I can trust that statement.
Chris Baldwin
Shoulder High Productions
Media of the World; For the World!
https://www.shoulderhigh.com
newsletters@shoulderhigh.com -
I see, now that I’ve read that it seems that they are delivering a lower bandwidth codec for news so they can double their P2 storage in the field and broadcast from the truck. That’s what it look like to me.
Jeremy
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The best H.264 footage that you’ll see is on apple’s website. All the HD movie trailers are compressed with h.264. also, for a comparison, go to mainconcept.com and look at their encoding program. They have a bunch of pictures of quality differences. In one of your posts, you mention transfer time, are you referring to on a P2 store or in a computer? because Panasonic doesn’t really control the cardbus controllers of the world. The p2 card is futureproof for transfer speeds. When cardbus slots can transfer at 640mbit/sec then I’m sure that the cards will transfer faster.
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And the “typical Long GOP disadvantages” are … artifacting when put to heavy compositing and layering?
I suppose it’s just worrysome that in all the H.264 literature its mostly described as a delivery format developed by devilery techs.
Actually Apple has a pretty good Brief and FAQ on H.264
https://images.apple.com/quicktime/pdf/H264_Technology_Brief.pdf
But I would love to know if anyone has any experience with capturing in this format.
Chris Baldwin
Shoulder High Productions
Media of the World; For the World!
https://www.shoulderhigh.com
newsletters@shoulderhigh.com
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