shooting in AVCHD or MVC

[Carlton Bright]

The JVC GS-TD1 allows you to record in AVCHD or MVC.
What are the deciding reasons to shoot in AVCHD or MVC, and in the long view, will either one prevail in the 3D field?
Thank you,
Dcb

[Sareesh Sudhakaran]

Originally Posted by Carlton Bright

...
What are the deciding reasons to shoot in AVCHD or MVC, and in the long view, will either one prevail in the 3D field?
Thank you,
Dcb

For 3D, under MVC mode the camera records each stream in full HD resolution (1920x1080), while in AVCHD mode, it records each stream as 960x1080.

If you are recording to blu-ray, JVC recommends MVC. If you are recording to DVD, then JVC recommends recording AVCHD, according to this press release: JVC's GS-TD1 3D camcorder now available for $1,700 -- Engadget

Both MVC and AVCHD are variants of H.264. MVC is supposedly backward compatible with H.264-AVCHD.

Long story short, shoot in MVC for best quality. In the long run, both formats will be replaced when H.264 becomes obsolete.

[Pavel Houda]

MVC is basically AVC extended for (in case of 3D) the other (right lens). The I-frames are only on the left side so the compression is better. In case of 3D BD, since they picked MVC as the compression format, it will stay. The only inconvenience would be little longer time to decode right only stream, if one needs it for some reason. It is pretty strong compressions, so I doubt it would be ever used for pro-production.

[Wolfgang Schmid]

I wonder why I edit my MVC files from my TD10 but also from my Z10K, if they are not foreseen for post-production! :)

Beside that, fact is that you loose with sbs-half 50% of the resolution. Fact is also, that it may depend on your editing software - the MVC files from the TD10 cannot be edited in Vegas for example. But I would not like to loose 50% of the resolution in the first place. You can edit MVC-files from the TD1 in Cyberlinks PD10, in Magix Pro X4 but also in the upcoming Edius 6.5.

[Carlton Bright]

All three of these posts have been informative, thanks much.

The difference in resolution makes the MVC a desired choice, but the ability to edit is a present factor.

My present projects require shooting many hours of 3D footage, for a few minutes of a final video.
The ratio is about 60 or 90 to 1... and I feel it is critical to to look at all the footage stereoptically before the final edit.
Although the AVCHD is squeezed, you can get a sense of the footage without unsqueezing and re-sizing, but even that is
far from desired.

So this question follows:
Concerning the editing software that can edit MVC:
can you import it and immediately free-view the footage?
If so, the cost and learning curve to switch from FCP to another editing program may be worth it.
(and would BOOTCAMP be able to handle it, or is a native PC computer required?

[Bruce Schultz]

Wolfgang, I think that Sony Vegas has supported the TD10 since version 10d and the NX3D1 since version 10e. Now they are at version 11 so I'm pretty sure they are both still supported.

I've done resolution tests on NX3D1 & Z10000 looking for compression artifacts and/or resolution loss from in the Right eye data stream without seeing anything significantly different between L & R eye data streams. If you were using MVC footage for 2D then you will always be using the Left eye data stream in AVCHD mode. The Right eye stream is a delta stream which only records the differences between it and the Left eye in order to squeeze both into a single file. On decompression they are both at 1920 x 1080 and according to my tests, identical in resolution.

Nothing I've found on the OS X system edits 3D MVC natively, on Windows Edius 6 and Sony Vegas 11 do an adequate job. To work on OS X I have to split the eyes into separate files in Windows and then mux to Cineform for use in FCP 7.0.3. Haven't had any luck trying stereo editing in Premiere Pro CS5. There are other programs mentioned above also but I can't speak to them because I've not used any of them.

[Wolfgang Schmid]

Sure Bruce, but we are talking here about the JVC TD1. And the MVC code from that camcorder is still not supported in 3D in Vegas 11. So if somebody really wishes to edit TD1 footage in Vegas, he is forced to shoot in sbs-half - what is a drop of 50% resolution quality compared to MVC. I would take another editor for that purpose.

For pure 2D shooting I would prefer to shoot in 1080 50p (PAL) or 1080 60p (NTSC) as offered both by the Z10K or the Sony TD10 (I do not know it that is offered by the JVC TD1 too, but I hope so).

[Neil Richards]

Just putting my "OSX" editing flow together for the Z10000 (which is MVC) and decided to install Parallels 7, Win7 and Edius 3D beta and I have to say it was all very straightforward.

I'm very impressed with Parallels 7, which is very slick and allows you to run Edius or any Windows app as if it's just another OSX window. It's better than the last time I used it (version 4 I think). One of the Grass Valley tech people told me a couple of days ago that Parallels 7 had been tweaked to improve it's handling of stereo 3D video.

I'm also (reluctantly) impressed with Windows 7, which seems pretty sensible and reasonably solid so far.

I'm currently at the stage of exploring Edius, I've got some Z10000 clips in play and am messing about with the user interface figuring it all out. User interface is not a million miles away from FCP and I must admit I'm already in love with the native timeline editing. I'd planned to just use it to export left/right files from the Z10k to FCP but I may just stick with it.