Hey guys, I've been looking around at hd camcorders and I see these numbers thrown around a lot but people often take different sides on it. I've read people say that 1440 is a reason to stay away from a camera, that 1440 looks better at a certain bitrate than 1920, that 1920 is a marketing term and that 1920 looks better than 1440. This has given me a little bit of a headache as I haven't really found a detailed comparison on this that I could understand.

Can anyone help me out by shedding some light or by pointing me in the right direction?

Thanks a lot guys.

I'll bump this back to the top, because I'm confused by this, too. Of course, I'll still be confused as to which cameras actually record at 1440 and/or 1920, but that's another question for another day. Thanks.

When the HV20 records to tape, it records as 1440x1080. The pixels are in a 1.33 ratio, so it's still a 16:9 widescreen image when the pixels are stretched. You can get 1920x1080 out of the HV20 (probably natively) by exporting live from the HDMI port. You can view this on your TV, or to actually capture this stream, you'll need a high-end video card (Blackmagic Intensity). So the HV20 has a sensor capable of resolving images at a 1920x1080 resolution, but most users aren't going to be able to take advantage of that full 1920x1080 resolution.

So is 1440x1080 a bad thing? Theoretically it's not as good of resolution as you would get by recording 1920x1080, which some camcorders claim to do. However, those camcorders are using the AVCHD codec and compressing all those pixels down to a 10-15MB/sec stream, compared to a 25MB/sec stream captured to tape by the HV20. In other words, those 1920x1080 camcorders are probably tossing out a lot more data to achieve that super-tight compression, compared to the HV20. So in practice, the HV20's picture contains more data and appears higher resolution than those 1920x1080 camcorders. Read some reviews about which camcorders produce the best picture quality, or even better, try to test out multiple camcorders yourself at the store. It would be nice if you could rely on numbers printed on the box, but unfortunately it's not that easy when it comes to camcorders.

I have heard that the AVCHD codec accepts up to 1080 x 1920 as an input but encodes for recording at a maximum of 1080 x 1440 pixels. Can anyone confirm this?

The AVCHD stream from my Panasonic HDC-SD3 in its highest quality mode decodes to 1920x1080 pixels. This camera also has two lower quality modes that operate at 1440x1080 pixels. Ron, you might be thinking of HDV where a max resolution of 1440x1080 is apparently a requirement of the HDV spec.

Personally, I'd like to see 1440x1080 be eliminated from future products. HDV was designed when many people were still using CRT displays for HDTV and the non-square (anamorphic) pixels of this format weren't such a big deal. But now that fixed pixel 1080p displays are common, one would want to use a 1920x1080 source for the best resolution due to the 1:1 pixel mapping. In contrast, a 1440x1080 source needs to be horizontally scaled to a width of 1920 pixels to be displayed properly on a fixed pixel 1080p display. The two resolutions are close enough that some visual information is inevitably blurred away as the result of the scaling, so the advantage of using 1920x1080 is greater than just another 480 pixels per line.

With that said, most consumer HD camcorders can't really resolve more than about 600-700 lines in each axis, so the adverse effects of this scaling may not be perceptible in many cases.

It's interesting to note that Sony's HDCAM used for Phantom Menace, etc... is a 1440 format - it's upsampled to 1920 only on playback.

Personally I'd like to see the claim of 1920x1080 removed from all AVCHD camcorders unless some form of high compression results may vary disclaimer is applied to the packaging....there are too many people out there who haven't done the homework to make an informed decision when purchasing an AVCHD or HDV camcorder. Sotfware editing too is of grave concern when considering AVCHD.

This helps a little but but doesn't solve it all. Are all camcorders that are 1440x1080 recording on 1.33 pixels? Are the pixels for sure 1:1.33? Are the sensors in a physically widescreen format? Or are they compressing them to take advantage of the lenses?

Below is a link to my exact question which I was going to repeat hear until I found this page. dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=129380

With memory cards up to 16GB (SD) and 32GB (CF) already and within 2 years we'll be at 32GB and 64GB respectively, I think the need to compress to low bandwidth with gradually disappear and full HD (1920x1080) will be finaly realized. Look down the road say 6-8 years and memory cards will be at, perhaps 512GB or even 1TB so even at 100MB/sec you could have hours of recording.


Brian

The resolution difference between 1440x1080 and 1920x1080 is so small that I think it's a moot point.

When the HV20 records to tape, it records as 1440x1080. The pixels are in a 1.33 ratio, so it's still a 16:9 widescreen image when the pixels are stretched. You can get 1920x1080 out of the HV20 (probably natively) by exporting live from the HDMI port. You can view this on your TV, or to actually capture this stream, you'll need a high-end video card (Blackmagic Intensity). So the HV20 has a sensor capable of resolving images at a 1920x1080 resolution, but most users aren't going to be able to take advantage of that full 1920x1080 resolution.

So is 1440x1080 a bad thing? Theoretically it's not as good of resolution as you would get by recording 1920x1080, which some camcorders claim to do. However, those camcorders are using the AVCHD codec and compressing all those pixels down to a 10-15MB/sec stream, compared to a 25MB/sec stream captured to tape by the HV20. In other words, those 1920x1080 camcorders are probably tossing out a lot more data to achieve that super-tight compression, compared to the HV20. So in practice, the HV20's picture contains more data and appears higher resolution than those 1920x1080 camcorders. Read some reviews about which camcorders produce the best picture quality, or even better, try to test out multiple camcorders yourself at the store. It would be nice if you could rely on numbers printed on the box, but unfortunately it's not that easy when it comes to camcorders.
I keep seeing inaccurate comparisons of HDV and AVCHD in this thread and in others. AVCHD, which uses MPEG4, is a much more efficient in compression that HDV, which uses the older, MPEG2 compression format. AVCHD is at least twice as efficient as HDV. At twice the efficiency, a simple math exercise would show that with its 18 Mbps encoding, AVCHD is 28 percent more efficient on the storage side, and that would still allow AVCHD to produce about a 70 percent increase in picture quality over HDV.

I keep seeing inaccurate comparisons of HDV and AVCHD in this thread and in others. AVCHD, which uses MPEG4, is a much more efficient in compression that HDV, which uses the older, MPEG2 compression format. AVCHD is at least twice as efficient as HDV. At twice the efficiency, a simple math exercise would show that with its 18 Mbps encoding, AVCHD is 28 percent more efficient on the storage side, and that would still allow AVCHD to produce about a 70 percent increase in picture quality over HDV.
well exept for the sr 11 12 no hdd or avchd cam has been reported as having as good picture qual as hdv,panning has been the week link with them picture wise.

I keep seeing inaccurate comparisons of HDV and AVCHD in this thread and in others. AVCHD, which uses MPEG4, is a much more efficient in compression that HDV, which uses the older, MPEG2 compression format. AVCHD is at least twice as efficient as HDV. At twice the efficiency, a simple math exercise would show that with its 18 Mbps encoding, AVCHD is 28 percent more efficient on the storage side, and that would still allow AVCHD to produce about a 70 percent increase in picture quality over HDV.

accepts A) no camcorder is recording at 18mbps... the highest is the HF10. B) at 17mbps it is just reaching the picture quality level of HDV 25mbps. C) have fun trying to edit that avchd footage. It brings my Core 2 Duo 2GB rig to a crawl.

Actually keep in mind that the new cameras use variable bitrate recording. So when they say they do 16 or 17mbps, there will be many times the actual rate is higher.