Re: What format camcorder do you use at WDW?

Jennifer K. wrote:
I wish I could figure out if that stand alone player will convert my video the same way...here is my camcorder, also ordered from Sony Style dot com:

http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&productId=11039061

It's the HDR-HC7.

Care to help me, George or Rodney? I'm not techhie enough to figure out if that new stand-alone recorder will do the same true HD for my home videos, I don't see the letters AVCHD on my product description above. I do know I'm not blown away by the blu-ray disc we burned, was hoping it would look even better. As I said, my Sony laptop burns in MP2 format, as does their digital living system. Their one true burner has to be put into a tower and I don't have one that will work with it.

Your camcorder is in fact capable of recording in genuine HD format with 1080 lines of resolution. The difference between yours and George's is that yours uses the MPEG2 compression algorithm and George's uses the new AVCHD. Both images will be true HD quality, but yours will actually result in more data being stored on the tape because MPEG2 compression is not as efficient as AVCHD. But, just because it's less efficient does not mean it is of lower quality; the end result, the picture you see, is always uncompressed to be of about the same quality.

Video compression algorithms (called Codecs) simply look for redundant or "easily summarized" information in the video frames, and then instead of recording every pixel, they "summarize" that info into just a few pixels. It's sort of like the acronyms and abbreviations we use here on RADP. AVCHD would be like a version of RADP that uses many more acronyms than MPEG2. It doesn't chance the quality, it just packs more information into a smaller space which requires more computer power to handle.

Standard DVD's uses MPEG2 compression. There is also a compression called MPEG4, also called DIVX, that some DVD players also understand. However, to my knowledge, no DVD player will understand AVCHD, so video encoded with that won't be playable on standard DVD players. However, Blu-ray players do understand that codec so they will play it. What George is doing is writing to a standard DVD media (i.e. not worrying about using a BLu-Ray burner) but encoding the video with AVCD so it can handle an HD image that the Blu-ray player will read. There really is no way to write a DVD that is readable in a standard DVD player that will be of HD quality simply because standard DVD players don't understand anything other than 480 resolution. However, it is possible to use a computer to record HD video (720 or 1080 resolution) in various codecs - MPEG2, MPEG4, or AVCHD, DVI, or even "raw".

Now to your setup, you have an HD camcorder and a Blu-ray disc burner and a Blu-Ray disc player. I assume you connect your camcorder to your laptop with a Firewire cable? If so, it is simply sending over a datastream of the video from your DV tape. It may be in MPEG2 format or it may be in "DV" format. It doesn't matter. Your disc creation/burning software takes that data and encodes it using an algorithm that your Blu-ray palyer will understand. It may actually re-encode it to AVCHD, or it may leave it in MPEG2. If it doesn't take very long to "transcode" the video, then it's probably leaving it in MPEG2.

I know all of this can be confusing, but think of it this way. The media itself - DV tape, CD, DVD, or even Blu-Ray disx, has *nothing* to do with the resolution, quality or compression algorithm of your video. The media simply stores a stream of data. How that data is organized, i.e. its resolution and compression algorithm, is up to the device that creates the image on the media. Just because a particular piece of media will physically fit into a particular playback device does not mean that the player will understand the data on that media. A standard DVD player will "understand" MPEG2 video at 480 lines of resolution, and some will understand PEG4/DIVX at 480, but no "standard" DVD player will understand AVCHD or 720 or 1080 lines of resolution. BLu-ray, ont he other hand, will understand all combinations of MPEG2, MPEG4, AVCHD and 480, 720 and 1080 lines of resolution.

--

- RODNEY

Tentative Next WDW Vacation
Spring Break 2008
(200 Days To Go!)
.

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