OT: More NAB news. AVC-Ultra from Panasnoic.

[Michael Gissing]

Hmmm there is no mention of bit depth. I hope they aren’t considering H264 444 450 data rate at 8 Bit depth! Can H264 be 10 or 12 bit?

[Michael Gissing]

Should have read closer. It says 4K 12 bit – phew

[Jeremy Garchow]

AVC-Intra is already 10bit.

Perhaps the HD 422 versions of Ultra will be 10b and 444 will be 12.

4.5 times current AVCIntra data rates, but will still be able to record on current p2 cards (albeit with less record time).

I hope they release a camera to support it.

I was so excited I misspelled Panasonic. Now corrected.

Jeremy

[Walter Soyka]

Nice!

Who wants to sign my petition for adding alpha channel support? Delivering alpha as grayscale in a separate file makes me sad.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Jeremy Garchow]

No alpha = totally sad.

I’d sign.

[Andrew Richards]

[Walter Soyka] “Who wants to sign my petition for adding alpha channel support?”

Can (does) any sort of MPEG-4 support alpha? Is that just a limitation of the spec?

Best,
Andy

[Bill Davis]

[Jeremy Garchow] “I was so excited I misspelled Panasonic. Now corrected.

Jeremy”

You aren’t the first, Jeremy.

I remember my first grown up trip to NYC – and was walking by a typical electronic store in midtown Manhattan – and saw the very, very aggressive price on a Panasonic component I’d been thinking about buying. Was about to enter the store when I suddenly noticed that there was an extra “o” in the Panasoanic box graphics….

(grin)

“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Connor

[Walter Soyka]

[Andrew Richards] “Can (does) any sort of MPEG-4 support alpha? Is that just a limitation of the spec?”

Actually — yes it does, sort of.

The MPEG4 Simple Studio Profile supports auxiliary channels, which could be used for alpha or depth — and presumably even displacement, motion vectors, normals, etc.

I don’t think they’re mandatory, though. I also have no idea if the use of auxiliary channels has been codified or standardized by anyone, and I have no idea if any desktop software anywhere supports the Simple Studio Profile. The only actual use of MPEG-4 Simple Studio Profile that I’m aware of at all is HDCAM.

Regardless, if more people begin looking to MPEG-4 as an intermediate format, proper support for alpha transparency will be a must, and arbitrary multi-channel support a la OpenEXR would be cooler still.

But for today, adding alpha to AVC-Ultra (AVC-Ultra+?) would make me more than happy.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Derek Andonian]

Wow, AVC-Ultra sounds more exciting than I originally thought- For some reason I was thinking it was just a higher-bit-rate version of AVC-Intra with 3D capability. I didn’t know it went up to 4k.

An AF-100 type camera that uses this would be really sweet!

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