This is sort-of old new to anyone who watched the new iMac launch (http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/specialevent07/) a couple weeks ago, but I found it interesting that Jobs doesn't consider any of the current consumer HD cameras to actually be HD.

http://www.macobserver.com/article/2007/08/14.3.shtml

Is this just to fend off criticism that Apple has failed to implement any blue laser HD (i.e. blu-ray or HD-DVD) options?

Well, consumer "HD" camcorders use MPEG2 compression anyway. So you shouldn't expect true HD quality. They exist, if you want to spend a few more $1000....

Wasn't Jobs going crazy with Sony on the 2005 Macworld Expo in January that year? About HDV? Sigh...We've come so far telling people HDV is in fact HD, only to have a step back.

heath

"True HD." Hmmm. Around here, anything with higher resolution than DV is high definition. Prefixing "True" to "HD" only shows that a person is pushing an opinion.

"True HD" is just a buzz phrase that can be construed to include or exclude whatever suits you. If a corporate type is making a formal public statement like that, it is because the interests of the corporation are being served by the comments. On DVinfo, almost invariably when that term is used, it is in a "mine is better than yours" context.

Maybe Dave's speculation as to the specific motivation is on the mark; maybe there is some other reason for Jobs' comments. Don't know. Mr. Jobs is free to cast his stones; plenty of people cast stones at him and his company. Whatever. That's life in Big Corp. Now if he wants to post on DVinfo about the pro's and con's of different HD formats, then maybe his words are worth my time!

While I think that virtually any consumer would be able to discern the difference between a consumer SD and consumer HD camera given that they were being exhibited on identical HD-capable displays, I'm not too sure that they would have such an easy time picking out the differences between competing HD formats and cameras based on the picture quality. Perhaps an inexpensive 720p camera would look noticeably softer against a 1080i or p image, but it's possible that might even be preferable, depending on the subject matter. But the difference between 1920x1080 and 1440x1080...? I'd have to see that one in an A/B environment to judge for myself, and then sit in on a focus group to see if the majority of "civilians" could easily tell the difference, or care.

Considering how 98% of the population use camcorders, I find it hard to believe that the difference in resolution that Jobs speaks of is a primary concern. How many Joe Blows out there bother to edit their home movies, no matter how easy the software is becoming (although I took a spin through the new iMovie without reading any documentation and found it not particular intuitive), and what of the ferociously bad handheld work that the current generation of tinycams invites (as archaic as they now seem, the shoulder-mounted camcorders of the past had their advantages). I still marvel at tourists who trudge through a colorful district with camcorders held in front of them churning away for blocks at a time...is ANY of that footage watchable? and how many of those folks even bother to watch it when they get home?

For the other 2% (I don't know the numbers, I'm just guessing) who use these cameras for filmmaking, certainly it's nothing but a win-win if the manufacturers continue to come out with high resolution inexpensive cameras. I still marvel at the image my little HV20 produces for the money. But I don't think that's who Jobs had in mind with this.

As a consumer, little camcorders never did anything for me, but I regret not having a decent still camera for several years. I have very few photos from the past that would've been cool to have.

Anyway, on topic, I think that HD is basically here to stay with more great things on the way (2K, 4K, etc.).

heath

Comparing the output of 1920x1080 produced by a dSLR to that of any HD camcorder, the results from a camcorder is positively downright depressing. The venerable Z1 produces HD that looks like upscaled PD170 footage. I think we have a long ways to go before we get true HD footage at consumer prices.

Not knowing what his R and D department is showing him in the development labs but I know in ours HD is not "your " definition of HD....

Spec wise, yes HD is HD... development wise we get to play with more than
the specs... so his definition of HD will be different than you see in the store.

I was thinking about this a bit this morning... why would you need a camera that is 4K?

And then I remember a sales guy asking me why I'd need a still camera capable of 22m pixel, he said, you can only print so big... and I replied,
its not the size of the paper, its the ability to crop the pic down to where
you want the pic... its like, take the pic, if you have enough resolution in
the orignal, you can pan/zoom and crop as you please and the quality stays the same....

so, why would you want a video camera at say 4k... or even 8K....

Because you can take some 4k or 8K footage and put it down on the edit line and pan/zoom and crop where ever you want and the quality when placed on a 1920x1080 project is perfect... so you could actually use a single camera and place say four of the same instance of footage on the time line, zoom/pan each individually and there would be no way of telling if you had one camera shooting or four cameras shooting...

The definition of HD is going to change.......... Steve may be seing it in a different way than some of us......

Ray:

These are good points regarding 4k, 8K etc. although again, for the large percentage of the population that will never put their camcorder on a tripod, I wonder how valuable it will be for them to be able to crop into their images (and will they bother to do it), i.e. chasing a moving target! I imagine we will shortly get to a place on a software level where the user can place a marker over the point of interest in the frame and have the computer do the tracking for you, perhaps even erasing unwanted zooms (by counter-zooming) etc. OK, just in the course of writing this I can see the advantages. Good lord, things are changing fast...!

I could have desperately used a 4K camera this past week when I needed to shoot simultaneous cameras with wide and tight focal lengths with the talent looking down the barrel of both, which required a massive shooting rig (see this thread (http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=101579&highlight=seinfeld)). It would have been preposterously wonderful to simply shoot the wide and extract the tight later in post. And it's just months away...

High Definition is whatever you want it to be, and usually it's what someone is selling rather than what they have. HDV is HD for practical purposes, however, it's not HD if your definition of HD is the SMPTE production standard of 1920 x 1080 resolution, on the other hand, HDV is close enough for most people. Let's not forget about color depth and dynamic range. Oh, let's do, and avoid a can of worms. Maybe Jobs would like to see camcorders that produce Apple Cinema Display worthy images. HDV is not quite there. Maybe he's planting a seed for Red. Or Baby Red. Maybe he's got something else in mind. Who knows?

Jobs doesn't consider any of the current consumer HD cameras to actually be HD.

My personal definition of "actual HD" is 5760x3240 RGB RAW with no moire/AA filter resized to 1920x1080, 60p, 16-bit, lossless compression; but I happily settle for 850+ lines of actual resolution in a 1440x1080 format with moire, 10-bit color, and artifacts, like the HV20.

Some of the "HD" cameras have only 550 or so actual lines of resolution, yet they soak up an entire 1920x1080 data stream on the solid state device. It's a waste.

Some of the "HD" cameras have only 550 or so actual lines of resolution, yet they soak up an entire 1920x1080 data stream on the solid state device. It's a waste.

I think that was the point of the Apple note. A lot of these cams rasterize a 1080i stream, but the CCDs are only resolving, say 600 or 700 lines at best.

I've seen an amazing amount of detail in some motion graphics rendered out at 1080p...became clear to me that even an F900 doesn't really fill up the bitmap.

It's all a huge, heinous plot by hard drive makers to sell more hard drives.

So Apple should make their own 2k camera! iFocus
(as long as they use lenses made by someone else)

“True HD” is a loosely held term (much like “broadcast quality”). IMO when people say “True HD” they are talking about cameras that have full ‘on chip’ resolution (as in they don’t rely on tricks or over sharpening). They are talking about cameras that can go through layers of effects and manipulation without a degraded image (as in something you can use in a professional environment). God Bless Steve Jobs for being honest. I could go into why people push ‘hd’ handycams as ‘professional’ solutions, but my post will probably be deleted (sad).

Bah to Jobs.

The problem isn't really with the imaging systems, it's with the codecs. I've seen HV20 footage blow the socks off XL-A1 and HVX200 footage in terms of resolution and lens aberrations.

What consumers should be demanding is higher bit-rates, 1.0 pixel aspect ratios and 4:2:2 subsampling or RAW at a minimum. The extent to which this will clean up the image quality is astounding. Instead, we're getting more and more cameras with LOWER bitrates and the crummy AVC-HD codec.

Honestly, how hard would it be to implement a consumer-level camera with a 1920x1080 RAW or 4:2:2 wavelet based codec like Cineform's? I'd take the HV20 sensor and lens combination, add in a manual shutter, aperture, gain and focus ring, record to an on-board 100 GB hard drive or flash at an appropriate bit-rate. Boy would I be a happy camper.

-Steve

And then I remember a sales guy asking me why I'd need a still camera capable of 22m pixel, he said, you can only print so big... and I replied,
its not the size of the paper, its the ability to crop the pic down to where
you want the pic... its like, take the pic, if you have enough resolution in
the orignal, you can pan/zoom and crop as you please and the quality stays the same....



You answered the sales persons question well. It useful to add that a 22MPhotosite camera is still a 22MPhotosite/4=5.5 MPixel to 22MPhotosite/2= 11 MPixel camera given the Bayer sensor. Today's HD displays deliver about 2MPixels. It's likely that, within our lifetimes, we will see a 16 MPixel TV standards. And, it would be nice to view our portfolio in full resolution on those mega displays.

On the other hand, higher pixel density translates to smaller photosites. Do you really want that many pixels if you have to trade them for dynamic range ?

It's likely that, within our lifetimes, we will see a 16 MPixel TV standards.
Ugh. What a ridiculous waste of bandwidth that would be. Seriously - broadcast HD isn't even close to "1920x1080" when you start to consider all the macro-blocking and chroma subsampling.

I think you'd be amazed by an uncompressed 4:4:4 1920x1080 image played back in real time. There's really only so much information you can absorb at once, and the amount of storage for that amount of data is just plain silly.

-Steve

I think you'd be amazed by an uncompressed 4:4:4 1920x1080 image played back in real time. There's really only so much information you can absorb at once, and the amount of storage for that amount of data is just plain silly.

And the amount of storage we gobble up today would have seemed silly by the standards of 20 years ago. What's the resolution of film? How many grains on a frame? That's the holy grail of video. That's what technology is striving for.

20 years from now, the amount of storage we use to day will seem primitive and what you deem as silly will be the norm.

-gb-

I could have swore that Jobs answered that question to fend off questions about iTV being just only 720p?

Heck, Jobs was even "dismissing" DVD as a format for sharing your home movies.

Instead, he encouraged putting higher than SD quality on the web..with no worries about whether it is Blu-Ray or HD DVD.

I wouldn't take much offense at what he said..

But Apple is sometimes "crazy" ahead of time.

I remember when the first blueberry iMac came out...no floppy drive! [It didn't have a cd burner either and I thought he was crazy..but guess what..he was right!]

Maybe he really thinks that our broadband high speed network is going improve exponentially in the next 5 years?

Jobs doesn't consider any of the current consumer HD cameras to actually be HD.Maybe he said that because he's sitting on a RED reservation? Just guessin'

I could go into why people push ‘hd’ handycams as ‘professional’ solutions, but my post will probably be deleted (sad).Sorry, not deleted. But it's the *people* who are professional solutions, not the gear.

So Apple should make their own 2k camera! iFocus
(as long as they use lenses made by someone else)

Perfect.

The Red 4k iChat AV option!

I don't want a camera on my cel phone. I want a cel phone on my camera.

I just pictured someone using a RED in full 4k resolution as their iChat camera. HAR HAR!

heath

I found it interesting that Jobs doesn't consider any of the current consumer HD cameras to actually be HD.

Yawn. Wake me when the iPhone is a real phone and not just a glorified iPod... ;-)

Honestly, how hard would it be to implement a consumer-level camera with a 1920x1080 RAW or 4:2:2 wavelet based codec like Cineform's? I'd take the HV20 sensor and lens combination, add in a manual shutter, aperture, gain and focus ring, record to an on-board 100 GB hard drive or flash at an appropriate bit-rate. Boy would I be a happy camper.

-Steve

Yes! CineformRAW 4:2:2 must be standart for semipro/pro.
HDV and AVCHD 4:2:0 8 bit only for consumer camcorders and cellphones.

We need ask this solution (CineformRAW 4:2:2) every day from greedy monsters:
Sony, Canon, JVC, Panasonic, Samsung...

TrueHD=CineformRAW for tapeless camcorders with cmos image sensor at least 1/3".

We need a camcorder like HV20 with ability to record CineformRAW onto HDD/SSD at $1,5-2K

TrueHD=CineformRAW is possible NOW!!!
Talk about every day on every forums if you want result!!!
Do not support with your wallet these greedy monsters, but
support Cineform and Elphel: our good friends and talented developers
David Newman and Andrew Phillipov!!!

P.S. We want to see collaboration between Cineform and Elphel:)

I was thinking of leaving an comment on that webpage, about supporting low cost Digital Cinema Camera attempts here, but realised he was talking from an completely different angle. Still, for the most quality for bandwidth, Cineform's RAW achieves that, I have advocated about this in the past. An 720p25 image is probably going to be around 24mb/s with editable visual lossless, and resultant accuracy closer to 4:4:4 than 4:2:0 is (personal opinion). I could probably get this into an cigarette sized camera. Cineform stands to earn many times more than it does now, from an camera/video standard like this. CineformRAW can be used on existing video, by simply converting the video format to bayer.

CineformRAW can be used on existing video, by simply converting the video format to bayer.

CineformRAW is 5:1 compressed BayerRAW from sensor.
You want use CineformRAW to convert mpeg2/h264 4:2:0 back to Bayer RAW ?
Result is GiGo (Garbage In - Garbage Out), imo:)

Wait, I want my money back... class action -- lets all sue!!!

Ok joking aside, I compare my consumercam SD video to my HDV and it's night and day. While I could agree the compression makes it not as good as the commercial grade HD (e.g. Discovery HD), it also doesn't require a mortgage to get awesome quality. It's in the good-enough category for me.

CineformRAW is 5:1 compressed BayerRAW from sensor.
You want use CineformRAW to convert mpeg2/h264 4:2:0 back to Bayer RAW ?
Result is GiGo (Garbage In - Garbage Out), imo:)

It can be more compression. The figure I quoted would be around 6:1-8:1, I forget what the refined Raw format eventually achieved. Because of the way color and intensity flow in nature, and our eyes perceive them, that makes them predictable, and makes debayering more accurate. So, it is not garbage, you can start with uncompressed/low compressed 4:2:0, 4:2:2 and achieve good compression and restorability. In the end you should be able to achieve an visually lossless image in less space than 4:2:x because of the smaller size of bayer. It wont achieve better than the source material (unless 4:2:0-4:4:4 conversion can be practical to use as source). I mention it so that it can be used as an more universal format.

I think Job's jab is more likely a marketing ploy than a technical one.

Job's idea of "true HD" is probably whatever format the Apple-branded HD TVs will use if or when introduced, you know, the ones with iTV built-in.

While I could agree the compression makes it not as good as the commercial grade HD (e.g. Discovery HD), it also doesn't require a mortgage to get awesome quality.

Also note that several popular Discovery HD shows use at least some HDV footage, and I've heard that the entire third season of "Deadliest Catch" was shot that way.

Steve should keep in mind that the Apple TV is only 720p.

iMac, iPod, iPhone, can "iCamera" be far behind? If Apple remains true to their pattern, they will come out with the first consumer video camera with real HD imaging and auto-focus and auto-exposure that works. The technology exists, but video camera makers have yet to implement good auto-focus and good auto-exposure the way Canon and Nikon have in their D-SLR cameras, it's just a processing power (and the cost thereof) issue. It's just a matter of time before someone comes out with a really good point and shoot video camera that produces spectacular images. Will Apple be the vendor to do it? They seem to be on a roll...