HD Camcorders: all not 24p capable for archive direct to Blu-ray: thoughts?

[rjamesd05]

Puzzled as to why not all camcorder manufacturers don't offer a directly blu-ray compatible recording mode for 1080p H264.

At some point you'd want to be permanently archiving your recordings rather than filling up a memory card or hard disc. I regard these as temporary and vulnerable to being accidently wiped, corrupted or easily damaged or lost.

Better then to archive to more permanent and robust Blu-ray BD-R. Less subject to damage due to shock, can't get corrupted and not easily damaged if handled with care. OK there is debate about the lifespan of the chemicals in the disc used but I would feel more comfortable about not being able to accidently delete the data.

Plus you can make copies of your recordings on Blu-ray for sharing.

Why then, do several manufacturers not offer the standard Blu-ray 24p, 23.976p, 59.94i, 50i recording modes with their cameras. E.g. 24p = 24 progressive, 24 full frames at 1920 horizontal x 1080 vertical each per second.

(Blu-ray frame rates according to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc#Blu-ray_Disc_format_finalized )

So if your camera does not have these then prepare for having to use software re-encode your footage to 24p - re-encoding can take a long time.

Wouldn't it be easier to be able to just, for example, lift the 24p H264 footage from a camcorder, adjust the headers, containers, whatever and the file format as necessary, place in BDMV folder for burning blu-ray BUT keeping the original H264 MP4 data without re-encoding.

What a big misleading situation that the manufacturers have made. Plus most of them don't yet offer permanent storage solutions to accompany their camcorders. Except for Panasonic who offer a standalone blu-ray recorder.

By the way I don't work for Panasonic I have a Samsung R10 that records at 25p (not 24p).

Thoughts? Am I right? I'm prepared to be wrong - provided you can advise on my situation of having a 25p camera wanting to easily archive to blu-ray. Thanks in advance.

Would be nice if cameras carried a logo saying, e.g.: "24p: Direct-to-Blu-ray compatible"

[poisondeathray]

30i (or what they call 59.94i) is compatible, and you can record to media directly without re-encoding. You can even record to DVD5/9 media that many players will accept

24p is compatible as well, but many cameras will place it in a 30i container and I'm not aware of any lossless pulldown removal tool yet.

For PAL land, 25p can go direct to media as well. Try MultiAVCHD or TSMuxer.

[2Bdecided]

More relevant question: why doesn't BluRay have proper 25p?

As for recording in a format that can be dropped straight onto BluRay without re-encoding - ideally you start with a better quality format, since editing, effects, colour correction etc necessitate re-encoding which lowers quality.

Simple cut-and-paste editing can be achieved without re-compression - but for anything else, what consumers have now is barely good enough - BluRay compatible or not.

Cheers,
David.

[rjamesd05]

More relevant question: why doesn't BluRay have proper 25p?

No. Someone could ask the converse: If Blu-ray standard was 25p someone could ask "Why doesn't Blu-ray have proper 24p?"

The relevant question point is this, to elaborate as the per original post title:

Why don't video camera manufacturers provide a direct to Blu-ray recording mode (e.g. H264 24p) that doesn't require re-encoding/reprocessing/re-compression?

Yet again most haven't thought this through and released half solutions.

(Half solutions: Just as they did when, here in the UK, they released DVD-based and hard-disc-based TV programme recorders that didn't record Freeview/DVB-T digital terrestrial television directly, only analogue and SCART input. All that space on a hard disc and only 4 analogue TV channels capable? What a con! Now they have all woken up and there are some great TV recorders out there.)

As for recording in a format that can be dropped straight onto BluRay without re-encoding - ideally you start with a better quality format, since editing, effects, colour correction etc necessitate re-encoding which lowers quality.

For some folks this might not be required. Simply, they would want to capture their footage quickly, permanently, robustly and conveniently. My Dad is an example, most of the time he won't want to do anything with the footage (e.g. precious memories of my nephews and his grandchildren) but simply capture it. People don't have time.

Blu-ray can provide a reasonably permanent, robust and convenient means of storing footage. And it's a standard for convenient sharing. It's the high-def standard that consumer players support so it is easily understood by people you want to share your recordings with.

Sure if you're working on a film project you'd want to do all kinds of editing, effecting etc. then I'd agree re-encoding would be required and it might be better to begin with a bettter format due to generation loss and artifacts added in processing/re-encoding/re-compressing.

What consumers have now is barely good enough - BluRay compatible or not.

Good enough for what? Subjective. I'd totally agree if we are comparing with high-end pro equipment. Also, consumer products will improve over time.

The fact remains that most manufacturers have not thought through a complete joined-up solution chain from recording to archiving.

The only one that has is Panasonic - with their standalone Blu-ray recorders that accept AVCHD on an SD/SDHC card for recording direct to Blu-ray
http://www.panasonic.co.uk/html/en_GB/2367318/module/general/compare/productsCategory....#anker_2367313

Unfortunately, these products don't accept any codec other than the Panasonic-Sony proprietary AVCHD. So H264 MPEG4AVC .MP4 as used by the Samsung R10 although a similar codec format - is not accepted.

Also, it might be that the Panasonic units accept different framerates as well as 24p, one of the Blu-ray standards, and at least they have tried to provide an end-to-end solution.

OK, alternatively, you can buy a fast PC, a Blu-ray burner PC peripheral and some software but lack of 24p natively in the camera will mean that re-encoding/processing/compression is required by the PC. Unnecessary and time-consuming if they had put 24p in the camera in the first place.

For PAL land, 25p can go direct to media as well. Try MultiAVCHD or TSMuxer.

Thanks but how can 25p be put directly onto a Blu-ray disc (which requires 24p as standard)?
One of the following would have to happen:
- some elegant processing/re-encoding/re-compressing would be needed to "squeeze" 25 frames into 24p. Some sort of clever "blending". Acceptable but time consuming - not what I want.
- drop one of the frames of the 25. Crude, may spoil the footage. Unacceptable.
- put 24 out of the 25 frames into one second of Blu-ray, the last 25 frame goes into the next second and so on. Result: slightly slower playback, new duration = 25/24 x original duration. Again, not true to the original. Unacceptable.

30i (or what they call 59.94i) is compatible, and you can record to media directly without re-encoding.

Again, these aren't 24p so how can they be directly used in a blu-ray recording without processing/re-encoding/re-compressing to make 24p?

Have you actually tried it?

24p is compatible as well

Of course - 24p is a Blu-ray standard.
This should go direct onto a blu-ray disc. Okay, some repackaging and headers need changing, but the actual video data need not be re-processed/re-encoded/re-compressed.

[2Bdecided]

More relevant question: why doesn't BluRay have proper 25p?

No. Someone could ask the converse: If Blu-ray standard was 25p someone could ask "Why doesn't Blu-ray have proper 24p?"

And of course it could and should do both. 30p too.

For the other questions - yes, having the option to record in a BluRay ready encoded format would be highly useful.

Not much use for most if you restricted it to 24p though - normal people want to shoot 1080i50 or 1080i60 (or p50 and p60 when possible - also not BluRay compatible!).

24p is mostly for "arty" types. Most home movies would be a disaster at 24p. You can't plan the shots, avoid most panning, force shallow depth of field etc etc when you're filming your toddler running around.


By "not good enough" I meant simply that if your target is BluRay, and you start with something compatible, then by the time you've done a little colour correction, added some titles, added some cross fades, and re-encoded, then the compression artefacts are going to become visible on some content.

Cheers,
David.

[creamyhorror]

24p is mostly for "arty" types. Most home movies would be a disaster at 24p. You can't plan the shots, avoid most panning, force shallow depth of field etc etc when you're filming your toddler running around.

I have little knowledge of filmmaking, so maybe you could clarify some things for me? Does 24p look that much worse during panning? I know it's going to be less fluid, but how much worse? And why is 24p inherently worse than 30p given a camera's inability to achieve shallow depth of field?

[2Bdecided]

24p (or 25p) looks a little worse during panning than 30p, and dramatically worse than 50i or 60i. Shutter speed is very important, but can only help so much.

Shallow depth of field lets you put the background nicely out of focus - so on a tracking shot, the camera moves with the person/car/whatever (so there's no stutter), and the background is so blurred that it seems to stutter far less than it would do if it was (nearly) in focus.

Cheers,
David.

[creamyhorror]

Thanks for the response. I understand what depth of field means, but I'm not sure how 24p stops you from forcing shallow DoF.

[ron spencer]

this is why I have chosen to stick with DV....easy to archive, easy to edit, and easy to convert to DVD, which is what most people want to do as most people have DVD. I know tons of people with these high def camcorders...their files just sit on the shelf. Pity really. Blu Ray for burning is just not there right now, and neither is the hardware. AVCHD is a mess...totally (for the average person). Alot of people have the time to play with DV, but not AVCHD. Are there any h264 camcoders? HDV is so much better for editing....and archiving. Pity there is but one consumer video camera that does this; Canon HC40 I think.

[creamyhorror]

AVC is the same thing as H.264. AVCHD is a subset of AVC, referring to specific HD resolutions and framerates.

The trouble is that AVCHD camcorders:

1) need better encoding chipsets, because the current ones (mainly Ambarella) by and large are lousy to mediocre by most accounts;

2) don't provide a sufficient workflow for people intending to import footage into editors. They should be bundling an intermediate codec and converter app with their cameras.

Fortunately most people can handle (2) with a bit of effort spent on learning how to convert it themselves, but it's effort that shouldn't have been necessary in the first place.

[2Bdecided]

Thanks for the response. I understand what depth of field means, but I'm not sure how 24p stops you from forcing shallow DoF.

Sorry, I wasn't at all clear - 24p isn't the problem - what I meant was that it's difficult or impossible to force a shallow depth of field on most consumer camcorders - you need a large sensor (they don't have these) - or a 35mm adapter (issues: clumsy, loss of light, manual focus etc etc) - or to stand very far back from the subject and zoom all the way in (nice trick, but hardly practical most of the time).

I'm not going to do this when I'm filming my toddler running around.

Cheers,
David.

[2Bdecided]

this is why I have chosen to stick with DV....easy to archive, easy to edit, and easy to convert to DVD, which is what most people want to do as most people have DVD. I know tons of people with these high def camcorders...their files just sit on the shelf.

I think most home movies just sit on the shelf, unedited, whatever the format!

However, the HV20,30,40 series from Canon will downconvert HDV>DV in the camera in real time on playback (capture > PC), so if you want to have DV for ease-of-use now, and HD for the future, it's trivial to do this.

People are forgetting how difficult DV was to work with to start with - e.g. you could barely fit one tape + the edit on a typical HDD at the time! HDV is far easier to work with in 2009 than DV was 1999! AVCHD in 2009 is probably a comparable challenge to DV in 1999.

Cheers,
David.

[creamyhorror]

Thanks for the response. I understand what depth of field means, but I'm not sure how 24p stops you from forcing shallow DoF.

Sorry, I wasn't at all clear - 24p isn't the problem - what I meant was that it's difficult or impossible to force a shallow depth of field on most consumer camcorders - you need a large sensor (they don't have these) - or a 35mm adapter (issues: clumsy, loss of light, manual focus etc etc) - or to stand very far back from the subject and zoom all the way in (nice trick, but hardly practical most of the time).

Yep, I misread your statement a little myself. What I mean is, while you can't achieve shallow DoF easily on most consumer camcorders, does switching from 30p to 24p actually worsen the output somehow? I just wasn't seeing why 24p would be a disaster because of the lack of shallow DoF. But I guess it may not.