Before you buy that new HDV camcorder to go under the tree, you might want to take a look at this. Tore Nordahl over at Coax.tv says the format is dead in 2007. He goes on to explain that the new AVCHD codec is poised to slide into it's spot as the de facto HD camcorder standard.I did a little checking, and we here at DVGuru have not always said the nicest of things about the AVC format. For starters, no editing system currently supports it. Also, in what is apparently another attempt to leverage it's format, Sony has opted to create camcorders relying exclusively on Blu-ray technology.
AVC doesn't have to be difficult though. As Nordahl points out, the format is certainly not dependent on disk media, and in fact can be recorded onto a drive, or solid state memory like Panasonic's P2 cards. In fact, he cites several models on their way, which will do just that. As for editing support, we recently reported on an AVCHD converter. I also expect major editing apps to announce support in the next revision of their software.
Nordahl makes some great points, and explains that AVC offers many of the advantages of HDV, with fewer drawbacks. There's no denying that HDV uses some gnarly compression to fit itself onto a standard DV tape. Not only is AVCHD less compressed, it doesn't have to shoehorn itself into a cassette tape.
Before you write this off as some blogger talking junk, take a look at Nordahl's resume. The guy knows his stuff, and he has seen quite a few formats come and go. I personally think he makes sense, and there are a few things I have always questioned about HDV. At this point, I'm more than willing to give AVCHD a chance.
1. While I respect Mr Nordahl's opinion, on this he is just plain wrong. He clearly hasn't been talkign with the actual manufacturers. AVC-Intra is a solution for a problem Panasonic has with P2 media, not a direction the industry is taking (with no editing support btw) and AVCHD is a step down from HDV in quality and usuabliltiy, again with zero editing support in Pro applications (and probably none planned).
Just because it seems plausible (and you might want to see the death of HDV), when a format is as successful as HDV it's not going away. HDV, according to senior Sony executives at One World on HD yesterday, is "the most successful format ever" exceeding the growth path of DV/DVCAM. Sony alone have sold over 100,000 HDV camcorders. Panasonic have sold about 12,000 HVX200. Now we're into the second generation of MPEG-2 encoders the quality is going up and artifacting is becoming a less significant issue. And there's editing system support for it.
Philip
Posted at 12:48PM on Dec 14th 2006 by Philip Hodgetts