A guy over on another forum recently asked Adobe why they don't include a basic HD codec in PPro. Their product development dudes replied, and one part of their reply included this statement:

"When the new Sony, Sharp and other HDV devices begin to ship later this year or early next year they will actually support the standardized format for HDV. The current JVC camera, and hence CineForm, do not currently use this format. Until the new devices are in the market we found it would be unwise to use valuable development time to support a leading edge non-standard version of HDV. The HDV format that is standard is far more interesting to Adobe in the long run."

So ... um ... what's that all about, I'm wondering???

Invite him over here to clarify :)

I looked at Premiere 6.5 (sorry, that's what this company I'm freelancing for uses) and it said it doesn't have any HD codecs.

David Newman will be able to answer that one!

heath

Correct.

Neither 6.x nor Pro has any HDV codec support.

Technically the quoted statement is in error. It actually tries to suggest that JVC (and through compatibility CineForm) does not support the HDV standard. This is completely wrong. The HDV standard has two classes, one for 720p HD and one for 1080i HD, the JVC camera is completely compliant with the first standard. It is not a requirement for an HDV camera to support both. The CineForm Aspect HD software does support both and will already allow real-time editing of 1080i content -- we are all waiting on cameras that support 1080i HDV.

The idea of a standardized HD codec is also flawed. HDV uses DVB/MPEG2 transport streams, that is a broadcasting standard, yet it is a pain to edit -- slow and very poor multi-generation characteristics. Although we will see more native DVB/MPEG2-TS editing in the future as PCs get faster, professionals will avoid this more than the high-end market avoided DV. Therefore it is unsuitable for an standardized HD codec, particularly as HD is a super-set of HDV. Similarly Apple introduced their approach to standardize HD based of an extension of DVC PRO. This is a Panasonic only format, although other camera manufacturers are welcome to adopt it they are very unlikely, as is it not very good quality. The resolution and bit-rates are significantly lower than completing HD compression systems like HDCAM and D5. Plus it is an 8bit codec, and much of HD is now 10bit. Like most acquisition formats the multi-generation characteristics are poor. Today the only standardized codec (if you call it that) is uncompressed -- which has other significants issues such as machine and disk costs and lack of multi-stream real-time. Expect and changing market place as every vendor is taking a different approach. Pinnacle is going with long GOP MPEG2 with PCI-express acceleration, Apple DVCPRO HD (for now anyway), Avid has introduced a new format for up to 10bit visually lossless compression, same approach is being used by CineForm.

I wrote a white paper on much of this stuff which you can download from here: http://www.cineform.com/technology/NewWorkflowWhitePaper.pdf

David - thanks for that very clear explanation, and the link. Appreciated!