| Example products |
Sony Handycam HDR-FX1
Canon XL H1
Sony Handycam HDR-HC7
Canon XH G1
|
Sony Handycam HDR-UX7
Sony Handycam HDR-SR1
Sony Handycam HDR-CX7
Panasonic HDC-DX1
Panasonic HDC-SD1
|
Panasonic AG-HVX200 |
| Recording format |
HDV
Note: The HDV format specification supports both 720p and 1080i recording, but camcorders can generally record only one or the other--usually 1080i. |
Sony/Panasonic AVCHD |
Panasonic DVCPro HD (a.k.a. DVCPro 100) |
| Supported media types |
Tape |
Flash, DVD, hard disk |
Tape, Flash (Panasonic P2), external hard drive |
| Format details |
MPEG-2 inter- and intraframe compressed to fit on a standard MiniDV tape and use the same bit rate.
Max bit rate: 25Mbps
Capture resolution: 1,440x1,080/1,280x720
Encoding resolution: 1,920x1,080/1,280x720
Color sampling: 4:2:0
Variable frame rate: no |
An HD version of the MPEG-4 Advanced Visual Codec--not to be confused with MPEG HD--which uses the H.264 compression scheme.
Max bit rate: 24Mbps
Capture resolution: 1,920x1,080/1,280x720
Encoding resolution: 1,920x1,080/1,280x720
Color sampling: 4:2:0
Variable frame rate: yes |
MPEG-2 inter- and intraframe compressed to fit on a standard DVCPro tape and stream at the same bit rate.
Max bit rate: 100Mbps
Capture resolution: 1,920x1,080/1,280x720
Encoding resolution: 1,280x1,080/960x720
Color sampling: 4:2:2
Variable frame rate: yes |
| Hardware issues |
Same limitations as all tape formats: must be converted to files for editing or connected directly to TV. |
HD video of DVD-based models are incompatible with older players and will likely have some growing pains with respect to new ones. In theory, they should be compatible with Blu-ray and future players with explicit AVCHD support built in. |
None |
| Video-editing issues |
Can be slow and tedious to work with because of time required to download to computer. |
Software supporting AVCHD video editing has only recently appeared on the market, and the highly compressed video stream requires quite a bit of hardware horsepower for real-time editing. |
As you might imagine, the video files produced can be huge and therefore cumbersome to capture and edit. |
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