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Re: HVX in Australia/PAL land – Here are the Details excluding the official Press Release
This thread is from DV Info, but I’d like to answer it here, because Chris Hurd banned me from DV Info for arguing Jan Crittenden about would their customers want more than 8bit colors.
If this is not OK, just tell me, so I won’t do it again.[Barry Green] “Regarding 24p in PAL countries: HD is not PAL, that’s true. The same frame size is consistent across all territories.
However, broadcast rates are not the same. In ex-PAL countries, when your broadcasters adopt broadcast transmission standards, they’re going to adopt 50hz to maintain backward compatibility with PAL. In the US, 720p is broadcast as 24, 30, or 60 progressive frames per second. We cannot broadcast 50p, and it’s doubtful the televisions could display 50p.
In Europe, they haven’t settled on their standard, but it will likely include 720/25p and 720/50p. No provision for broadcasting/displaying 24p or 30p or 60p.
So if Panasonic builds in 24p, you wouldn’t be able to display it on any television set. You could edit it and master it and make an HD-DVD of it for ex-NTSC territories, yes, but you couldn’t really do anything with it in your own countries.
Regarding frame rates: yes the 50p version will support 25p and 50p, but it will also have several other frame rates, Varicam-style frame rates. Probably at least as slow as 4fps. Those frame rates haven’t been specified yet, but we know they’re coming.”
Situation for HD in Europe is not so clear.
EBU is leaning to recommend only progressive scan, which is the only logical way today, because all HD displays that are going to be sold will be digital displays with progressive scanning.
So situation is quite different compared to USA one decade ago, when HD formats over there were decided.
Then it was still widely believed that crt based displays would be common format also for HD.But EBU’s recommendation might also include 1080p.
They are still thinking, but this would be futurewise, because all “living room” sized displays will be 1080p within year or two.
So why make recomendations that will be outdated right away?
Also new disk based content (blu-ray & hd-dvd) will be based on 1080p.Lot of content, at least for start will nevertheless be 1080i. But very good argument for 1080p distribution is, that it’s much better to make deinterlace at tv stations with broadcast quality equipment than in homes with consumer quality equipment.
But if we extend this idea, why even 50p? World is full of 24p, 30p and 60p material, why still hang with 50Hz and bring one more format to this readily too complicated format soup?
Two arguments are because of archive PAL material and easier down conversion to PAL.
But already lots of programs are converted to 50i from ntsc based frame rates and making conversion from downconverting HD (which will be more and more progressive scanning formats) to PAL would mean less quality problems than there is now.
So just like making the deinterlacing at station, frame rate conversion to PAL could be done there.Global content providers would save huge amounts of money for not having to make separate masters of their programs to Europe.
Other thing is, will tv stations care to follow EBU’s recomendations. Already BSkyB has announced that it will start transmit both 720p and 1080i. And both channels that are transimitting HD already (HD1 & HD2, formerly Euro1080) use 1080i. There has been lots of “official” or “open” formats in digital tv in Europe (dvb, mhp, etc.), but so far eg. major cable companies have adopted quite an proprietary flawors of all formats just to keep competitors away from their receivers, so there is no guarantees that unanimous format will ever rise. Even with analog systems we had secam and pal with half a dozen different flawors with different sound systems etc.
There has been opininions that 1080p uses too much bandwidth, but it compresses more efficiently than interlaced material and situation is rapidly changing when mp4 AVC is emerging. BSkyB has announced that it will use AVC.
HD receivers will be able to show all kind of material. Global CE manufacturers will be making same models to be used everywhere.
It’s just more economical. Receivers are changing to kind of embedded pc’s with internal hdd’s etc. So they will be like “every in, every out”. There will be no problems like some display can’t show 24p. Receivers will handle the scaling and possible frame rate conversions, just like pc’s are doing today. So same reciver can take in 480i, 480p, 576i, 576p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p, 23.976.p, 24p, 25p, 29.97p, 30p, 50i, 50p, 59.94i, 59.94p, 60i, 60p, mp2, AVC, dvb, atsc or whatever and output it to displays native format no matter what resolution (1280×720, 1280×768, 1366×768, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1600, 4k) or refresh rate (60Hz, 72Hz, 75Hz, etc.).
Just like with computers today; nobody bothers to change their tft-displays out of their native resolution or refresh rates when they are playbacking different materials with their software video players.So my opinion right now is that HD in Europe can be anything in the future and nobody can surely predict if there ever will be “one format to rule them all”.
So how does this all relates to HVX?
Well, I think it would be very unwise at the moment for Panasonic to release a camera model that has only 25 and 50 fps and not having also 24, 30 and 60 fps in 1080.
The camera might became useless in a couple of years.
50i might become obsolete right away.
And if hvx has enough of these “varicam rates”, there’s already 25 and 50 with 720p in “ntsc” model.
So the only thing that “ntsc” version would lack is 1080p25.
And the “pal” version would lack all the other 1080 framerates.
Both models would be physically identical, because ccd’s are having same resolution.
(Well, there is little to add more: 576i/p and 4:2:0 for miniDV…)
So blocking different framerates with different models would be just software thing and this would take away all the wonderful possibilities to crank the framerates in 1080 mode.So I STRONGLY recommend Panasonic to make one “international” model to make us all happy!
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13 Replies
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I agree that an international model, if possible would be best. These days, especially with HD, I don’t see a need for models that don’t handle all possible international frame rates.
However, I doubt that Europe, and 50hz countries in general would adopt NTSC frame rates. NTSC is less used than PAL around the world, so, indeed, if there was to be any change, it should be NTSC that adopts PAL frame rates. One reason why nobody in PAL-land would adopt NTSC is because the fractional 29.978fps frame rate and all the daftness with drop-frame and non-drop frame is something that is laughed at, as is 7.5IRE analogue setup. Sure broadcasters can standards convert, but it should be the NTSC broadcasters who fit themselves in with the rest of the world, not the other way around.
or…
what is likely to happen is that NTSC stays as is, as does PAL, and neither accomodate the other in any real way.
As for arguing – lets keep discussions to facts, not people, and lets always agree that although you might not agree with someone’s facts or their interpretation of facts, or conclusions based upon them, that they are to be respected and discussed in a friendly manner.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
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I always try to discuss and argue only about the subject or the facts, never against persons.
Maybe I’ve got a bit rough to give my opinions, because spending too much time in (Finnish) usenet news.
There you really have to take your stand… Or maybe it’s a language issue… or cultural (if you have seen any Aki Kaurism -
High definition is pretty likely to be 50Hz in Europe…
As already mentioned, it needs to be compatible with PAL legacy so that SD programmes can easily be upconverted for HD broadcasts and vice-versa… and more critically for HD and SD simulcasting.
It would be almost impossible to carry a 25p or 50i frame rate inside a 60Hz stream… so logic suggests than most broadcasters would choose 50Hz HDTV.
On the other hand, I wouldn’t be surprised if one or two channels adoped 60Hz because of the number of American… ahem… “documentaries” shown over here (“When Buildings Fall Down” and “Conspiracy Theories from Hell” etc.). International broadcasters like Discovery, for example.
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It might be a good time, but it’s not going to happen. Europe and PAL land may say to the USA that they’ve botched their introduction of HD, and that they should adopt the superior European format. With the intro of HD, remember, the USA could have gone from 29.97fps back to 30fps if they’d wanted, just like Japan sensibly ditched 7.5IRE setup in the 80s.
But basically, the archive programming argument is the big one. And that’s going to mean that HD in PAL land is 50hz based.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
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Ntsc <-> pal conversions are made all the time with international programs, so technology on that will only get better. And uprezzed 4:3 PAL will look anyway so ugly in 16:9 HD, that framerate conversion does not make the quality much worse.
On the other hand, what’s keeping broadcaster’s to change framerate by program basis?
Receivers will handle all flawors. -
Also, with SD PAL, you get the extra 90 lines of vertical resolution.
I, for one, as an American, would LOVE it if the USA ditched 7.5 IRE setup and 29.97 framerates and adopted PAL. It’s too bad America can’t just “adopt” PAL since our electricity is based on 60 hertz cycles and not 50.
Graeme,
When CRT completely dies, is it possible that we could go finally there?
jeremiah black
dual 2 gig G5
2.5 gigs of RAM
Decklink Extreme capture card -
Video equipment has been independent from AC electricity Hz for quite some decades.
Or did you mean that tubes would flicker? -
It’s got nothing to do with electricity these days. I have a multi-standard PAL /NTSC TV running on 60hz mains. That was an issue in the dim dark past, but not today. The only thing that stops it now is archive material.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects for FCP
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Toke, you’re right that broadcasters do NTSC – PAL conversions, but these cost money (equipment, consumables, time, etc) and only constitute a relatively small proportion of the broadcast hours. No broadcaster is voluntarily going to adopt a system that is going to cost them more money (because ALL their programming needs to be converted) just for the sake of conforming to a US standard… Not least because Australia has already demonstrated that 50Hz HDTV is perfectly workable.
Switching framerates would not work. For starters at home your TV would loose sync briefly while the switch was made. At the broadcasters end it would be a nightmare! TV stations and broadcast centers have masses of frame rate specific equipment that is timed together – VTRs, video servers, monitors, mixers, DVEs, encoders, clocks, distribution amps, etc. etc. would all go haywire (and likely fall over) every time you made a switch.
I worked for a TV news studio for 7 years. When our blackburst generator went on the blink it cause no end of problems. I can’t imagine that any engineer would relish the idea of switching framerates every hour or so.
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Well, if average European commercial channel has now 50% of American programs, switching to American frame rates would not make any additional costs.
I don’t believe switching between different framereates would be a big problem, if it’s demanded from receivers to handle them.
Already here in Finland AR changes when going to commercial brake, programs have different audio languages, different dvb subtitling, teletext subtitling, mhp services etc.
Programs are played out from servers where they are stored in file format. Pure digital stream is then statistically multiplexed and transmitted within dvb signal.
Now where would the problem with changing frame rates be?
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