I was just wondering if there is a reason why cameras still don't offer 1080/60p? Even new Sony XDCAMs end at 1080/30p and then they go to 1080/60i.

No reason, as two Sanyo XACTI models, the VPC-FH1A and the VPC-HD2000A both offer 1080 60p. I have the slightly older FH1 and it offers 1080 60p. They have decent features for their price.

There is a reason, it's the processing power needed to transfer such a large amlunt of data. That's why you have 720/60P OR 1080/30P, they use roughly the same amount of data.
The other reason is that it's not a standard for HDTV, ie there is no 1080/60P broadcast, so the only reason to use it would be for slomo.
The Sony SRW9000 will do it with optional boards attached for about £100,000, or an F23 rig for twice that much or a Phantom HD will do 1080 right upto 1000fps at £100,000. Or you can get a Sanyo Xacti that'll obviously do exactly the same thing!
Steve

Steve, BD plays at 1080/60p.

The other reason is that it's not a standard for HDTV, ie there is no 1080/60P broadcast, so the only reason to use it would be for slomo.
It's true that none is currently broadcast, but it is seen as the ultimate goal for all broadcast *ACQUISITION* by such as the EBU, as it combines all the best features of current HD systems. It will seamlessly convert well to either 720p/50 or 1080i/25 for current transmission, and provide the optimum material for archive.

So from the EBUs perspective, if all acquisition is 1080p/50, then none of their members need feel disadvantaged, whether they transmit 720p/50 or 1080i/25. That's not currently true when origination for such as sports events will be 1080i/25 or 720p/50.

Steve, BD plays at 1080/60p.

No, that is not BD spec.

My understanding was it plays 1080/24 or 60p. The last number always pops out on my TV when I play BD.
Anyway, I was just buffaloed by the fact, that we are still stuck at 1080/30p.

One difficulty with acquiring 1080p60 footage is that it requires twice the bandwidth of 1080i60, 1080p30 or 720p60 to achieve roughly equivalent picture quality. It's not beyond our current level of technology, but is a bit more challenging. For example, for a camera to record 1080p60 images using H264 compression similar to AVCHD, and achieve the same picture quality as AVCHD at 24Mbps, the bitrate would need to be 48Mbps. That would rule out using inexpensive SDHC cards as the recording media. Recording to SxS or P2 media would work nicely though. Editing 1080p60 natively, recorded using H264 compression similar to AVCHD, would be impractical with today's mainstream CPUs though (even an overclocked i7).

At least the average bit rate of Sanyo's camcorders is still a bit higher being at a little over 24MBPS verses 21MBPS of AVCHD and I hear it can approach 28MBPS. I'm not sure if the codec of the Sanyo is better or worse than AVCHD. I do have a lot of respect for Sanyo going that far.

My understanding was it plays 1080/24 or 60p. The last number always pops out on my TV when I play BD.
Anyway, I was just buffaloed by the fact, that we are still stuck at 1080/30p.

Robert:

1080P30 is not a Blu-Ray standard either. The only progressive in the Blu-Ray Standard is 24P.

Currently no cable or satellite provider offers any progressive signal delivery of any kind. They claim it is coming, but requires MPG-4 adaption from the head end down.

When you see your HDTV is recieving a 1080P signal, it is always off the Blu-Ray/DVD player "upconversion" or a 24P Blu-Ray disc. The lists of Blu-Ray native movie formats is here: Blu-ray Movie Bitrates Here - Blu-ray Forum (http://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=3338)

A few high end cable/satellite STBs, usually with DVRs, will "upconvert" the 1080i MPG-2 signal to 1080P.

1080P60 is never anticipated to be a distribution format according to all the current literature. The bandwidth required is the same as UHD MPG-4, and UHD is anticipated to be the successor to HD rather than a high bandwidth HD.

I swear, when they sat down to work out the specs for the Blu-Ray format, making it as unwieldy and klunky as possible must have been right at the top of the priority list.

At least the average bit rate of Sanyo's camcorders is still a bit higher being at a little over 24MBPS verses 21MBPS of AVCHD and I hear it can approach 28MBPS. I'm not sure if the codec of the Sanyo is better or worse than AVCHD. I do have a lot of respect for Sanyo going that far.

Presumably you means 24Mbps, ie megabits per second? When using capital B in MBPS it implies megabytes per seconds (ie 8 times the data rate).
Steve

Blu-Ray is a crazy format and structure IMO. Of course I liked the HD-DVD format and am still bitter. They used the DVD formats, but in HD, but abandoned the former DVD structure entirely.

HD-DVD used DVD formats in HD, but expanded to include 1080P30, and used mostly the former DVD structure.

I see benefits and downsides to both of these, but where Blu-Ray totally screwed us was by leaving out 1080P30 (as it isn't a broadcast standard). That virtually guarantees that 1080P30 will never be a broadcast standard, as there is no 1080P30 material to broadcast.

One thing that has got me worked up is that I just bought a new HDTV and Blu-Ray player to replace a rear projection TV. It just brings the reality of lack of good HD quality broadcast signals back to my attention. And worse, there are no projections for when broadcast will ever move beyond low bandwidth 1080i.

the sanyo FH1 is a very strange beast.
it can run 1080p60 a 24mbps, but has only 720p30 at 12Mbps and no 720p60.
Why the hell could they not make everything a 24Mbps and why no 720p60 ?
at least 720p60 is BD compatible.
anyway i shoot 1080p60 and convert to 720p60.

I'm disappointed that Panasonic's TM300 and HS300 don't record 720p60 (or any flavor of 720p, or even any progressive format other than 1080p24, for that matter). If they did, I'd be seriously interested. With the limited recording formats (and 17Mbps as the highest recording bit-rate), the prices on those cameras will have to drop a whale of a lot for me to even consider them.

Spend a few hundred more for the HMC40, and you get just a whale of a lot more functional camera (that can record lots of formats at up to 24Mbps - and the 720p60 is absolutely the bomb!), you get a free copy of Edius Neo 2 (which really is quite nice for basic editing - especially with that new booster thingy for AVCHD that you can add for like 50 bucks), and now they are also giving away a Blu-Ray player along with the camera to boot. I sort of wonder why they are giving so much away with that camera. It's already arguably the camera that currently offers the most bang for the buck, even without the freebies. (I'm not suggesting Panny should stop showering us with goodies though!)

You forgot about the part that it's now under $1,900 in both Amazon and B&H.

I think it's because the camera gets a lot of bad publicity. The chip size sizes are good examples. People say that it should be 1/3" but I find that very strange because it's much smaller than camcorders with chips that size and it's also much cheaper. Another reason is because of Panasonic's own GH1 and the Canon 7D.

So the low light capabilities aren't as good as the other camcorders and cameras and you don't get as shallow Depth Filed as them but is something that takes extremely good daylight footage and something that is portable and easy to hold when your shooting videos not important any more? Every camera has it's benefits.

I actually want an HMC40 badly. My GH1 is perfect for low light low light situations and the HMC40 is perfect for good lighting situations. They really compliment each other.

The HMC40, at under $1900 is priced between higher end consumer camcorders and lower end prosumer camcorders (much closer in price to the higher end consumer camcorders, when you factor in the freebies that come along with it). The low light performance is also somewhat in-between, in that it's stellar compared to consumer camcorders and somewhat weak compared to most prosumer camcorders (but not all). The HMC40 isn't really as weak in low light as folks might think. The gain is surprisingly clean, which makes a real-world usage difference (12dB on the HMC40 is a whale of a lot cleaner than 12dB on an XH-A1, for example). The HMC40 shoots every HD format commonly available on other camcorders (more flexible than most camcorders, in that regard - and they all work quite well, nothing clunky like Cineframe 24 on a Z1). It doesn't shoot SD though (and honestly, I don't give a rat's ass - I never shoot in SD anymore anyways!). The controls on the camera are a little different than a more conventional prosumer camcorder, but on the whole seem pretty well thought out, considering the amount of real-estate available for buttons and switches on such a small camera, and quite functional from a real-world usage perspective (with some unconventional stuff, like the touch screen focus thingy, that can be surprisingly useful). The HMC40 is ultra portable, compared to most prosumer camcorders, and I find it very comfortable to shoot with. The HMC40 does have weaknesses (for example, no ability to use/control gain unless the aperture is wide open), like every camera does, but on the whole, I'll stand by my assessment, that for general purposes, the HMC40 offers the most bang for the buck, of any camcorder on the market currently. In many situations, the HMC40 can certainly hold it's own with more expensive camcorders, and produce equal (or better) picture quality results.

Steve, BD plays at 1080/60p.

Actually, the "1080/60p" playback is NOT native to BD. The official BD specs limit 1080p support on disc to 1080/24p and (according to a not-yet-published update to the BD specs) 1080/25p. Thus, what you're actually seeing in the so-called "1080/60p" mode is either 1080/60i material that's been deinterlaced to 1080/60p in the player's hardware or 1080/24p material that's been played back on a BD player with 24p output disabled (as it would have been if your TV set does not accept native 24p signals unless converted to 60p). And not all BD players do a good job of deinterlacing 1080i material: Some BD players simply output only 540 lines of total vertical resolution when playing back 1080i videos.

BTW, as far as I can tell, the free Blu-Ray player with an HMC40 deal is only available from B&H. I don't see any mention of it at Amazon.

For example, for a camera to record 1080p60 images using H264 compression similar to AVCHD, and achieve the same picture quality as AVCHD at 24Mbps, the bitrate would need to be 48Mbps. That would rule out using inexpensive SDHC cards as the recording media.

Just require more expensive SDHC cards such as Sandisk Extreme III SDHC or even cheaper Transcend class 6.

Class-6 isn't really fast enough. You'd need roughly Class-8 or faster.

For example, for a camera to record 1080p60 images using H264 compression similar to AVCHD, and achieve the same picture quality as AVCHD at 24Mbps, the bitrate would need to be 48Mbps. That would rule out using inexpensive SDHC cards as the recording media.
No, that's not true. You're assuming that twice the raw data rate must mean twice the coded data rate, and that won't be the case.

The extra frames will have a high correlation with the basic 30 frames each second that they will interleave with, and that's easy for a coder to take advantage of. (It may keep a GOP interval of 1/2 second, but then have 30 frames between I frames, for example. The differences between I frames will then be exactly the same as for 30p.)

Some BD players simply output only 540 lines of total vertical resolution when playing back 1080i videos.

And they do this by dropping half the fields and upscaling the rest. This results in a slightly choppy, blurry, flickering mess since that would have resulted in 1920x540p video with half the picture completely missing. This is exactly why I retired a Toshiba XD-E500 upconverting DVD player after only a few weeks of use because it flunked the deinterlacing test in the very same manner when it was connected via HDMI (an effective 720x240p image from interlaced, video-based DVDs with small text being broken to the point of illegibility and lots of flicker).

I have all my players set to interlace output as the TV's do a better job of scaling and deinterlacing especially my 240hz Sony. Especially bad is deinterlacing and upscaling SD to 30p. Since all the TV's are 60p by default( NTSC) I dont see why the progressive output shouldn't be 60p as some high end players do this.OPPO BDP-83 Blu-ray Disc Player (http://www.oppodigital.com/blu-ray-bdp-83/)

Ron Evans

I have all my players set to interlace output as the TV's do a better job of scaling and deinterlacing especially my 240hz Sony. Especially bad is deinterlacing and upscaling SD to 30p. Since all the TV's are 60p by default( NTSC) I dont see why the progressive output shouldn't be 60p as some high end players do this.OPPO BDP-83 Blu-ray Disc Player (http://www.oppodigital.com/blu-ray-bdp-83/)

On the other hand, my particular Sony BD player does not automatically switch between 60i and 24p; this must be done manually. Unfortunately, most BD players also require such manual selection. Few BD players automatically switch between 60i and 24p for HD content. As a result, content encoded in 24p must be interpolated to 60i (since nearly all commercial BD's which are mastered in 1080p are mastered in native 24p rather than 24p encoded in a 60i stream) when most BD players (including my Sony) are set to output 1080i. This results in noticeable judder even on a 240Hz or 600Hz set and may also reduce image quality when native 24p content is played. A few BD players - namely from Panasonic, plus selected models from some other brands - do have an auto mode which works like this: When the output is set to 1080/60i and the 24p mode is set to AUTO, the player will output interlaced if the Blu-Ray disc is encoded interlaced or 24 fps progressive if the BD is encoded in 24p.

Unfortunately, very few current BD players can output a 24p stream when playing back film-sourced standard-definition DVDs. Most, including all of the BD players sold in most mass-market superstores, actually perform the 2-3 pulldown removal and then interpolate that result to 60p when the output is set to any progressive mode (this once again results in noticeable judder) or simply upscale the output while still leaving it interlaced if the player is set to output 1080i (this will produce artifacts in the displayed image unless the player does an especially good job at upscaling interlaced content).

As for the native 24p output, just because an HDTV set can accept a native 24p signal (such as my current 720p 60Hz Samsung LCD) does not mean that it can properly display such content. In fact, the refresh rate of the HDTV set should be a multiple of 24Hz in order to properly display this content (60Hz does not divide evenly by 24Hz).

Yes for 24p one has to make sure the player auto switches. I don't have any 24p video so isn't an issue for me.

Ron Evans

I've just seen on a German website, that Panasonic is going to release HDC-SD 707, TM 700, HS 700.... all of these cameras are able to capture 1080p50 AVCHD at 28 Megabit/s:

VIDEOAKTIV - Panasonic-Topmodelle 2010: HDC-SD 707, TM 700, HS 700 (http://www.videoaktiv.de/201002103473/News/Camcorder/Panasonic-Topmodelle-2010-HDC-SD-707-TM-700-HS-700.html)

So when this amateur camcorder are able to do this I really hope to see this option for camcorders in the Ex1 class and also for some shouldercams... hopefully on NAB we will know more.

No reason, as two Sanyo XACTI models, the VPC-FH1A and the VPC-HD2000A both offer 1080 60p. I have the slightly older FH1 and it offers 1080 60p. They have decent features for their price.

I own the VPC-FH1A and occasionally use it at 60P. It's a very nice little camera. My primary complaint with the camera is the digital image stabilization is a miserable failure.

**** Panasonic just acquired Sanyo (Dec 2009) and has recently incorporated the Sanyo 60P HD technology into their just announced HD handheld camera. These new cams claim to have new OIS so I will be checking them out asap.

Panasonic Introduces Low-Light-Optimized 1080p Camcorders - PCWorld (http://www.pcworld.com/article/188972/panasonic_introduces_lowlightoptimized_1080p_camcorders.html)

Ignore this. I accidentally posted a reply and meant to post original post. Sorry.

I own the VPC-FH1A and occasionally use it at 60P. It's a very nice little camera. My primary complaint with the camera is the digital image stabilization is a miserable failure.

**** Panasonic just acquired Sanyo (Dec 2009) and has recently incorporated the Sanyo 60P HD technology into their just announced HD handheld camera. These new cams claim to have new OIS so I will be checking them out asap.

Panasonic Introduces Low-Light-Optimized 1080p Camcorders - PCWorld (http://www.pcworld.com/article/188972/panasonic_introduces_lowlightoptimized_1080p_camcorders.html)
You could download 1080p60 native clips from the Panasonic HDC-HS700 posted on Vimeo.
Panasonic HDC-TM700 1080/60p JR Shinonoi Station on Vimeo
Panasonic HDC-TM700 1080/60p JAPAN Train on Vimeo

You'll find much more native 1920x1080 60p clips in this thread for you to download.
Panasonic HDC-HS700 & HDC-TM700 1080p60 cams - Page 5 - AVS Forum (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1225613&page=5)

Like I been saying in many places, Nero 9 ShowTime will play the files on a decent Windows computer. The Sony PlayStation 3 will also play the files.

The files from Vimeo download very fast but the files from firestorage.jp are very slow to download.

This might be of interest to you. It's speeds up your downloads if the server on the other end is slow. It works for most files.
Free Download Manager - absolutely free download accelerator and manager (http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/)

3 days left to get the files from Vimeo, get it while you can cause 1 week after upload, it will turn into a low quality MP4 file.

Even with hardware acceleration for H.264, my GTX 275 (which is a really beefy video card) only gets 45 frames per second at a Video Engine Load of 90%. Turning it off is worse, getting only 30 frames running off of the CPU. (this is Windows Media Player and Media Player Classic)

However, interestingly, Loading the file in Vegas Pro 9 and running it in "Preview (Half)" gets full framerate on my Quad Core...

Also, I find one post in the AVS forum (from Midnight Tboy) points out that directly copying the files from the camera without processing it through the bundled software might not make it work in certain media players, and I assume, editors too.

YouTube - [HD] Precision Tuned (293awhp) Subaru WRX 1/4 Mile (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXq3a2cpIFk&feature=pyv&ad=4658138965&kw=hd)

Joe, that is not true 1080p60, that's 1080i60 as the guy was using a Canon. Canon is all 1080i right now.

Also, delivering 1080p60 on a service that only does 30p does not illustrate the smooth motion that is associate with 60p. The TM700 samples when downloaded are true 60p.

Here's a little note about playing the TM700 footage on a PS3. The framerate is NOT 60p, it is 45p as the PS3 can't catch up to the demand to decode the footage. Plus, the 5.1 sound isn't decodable on the PS3. (this is playing back non-raw files processed through the import software, maybe it's different playing directly from a AVCHD formatted memory card, IDK...)

Jack, you are correct, I see another video were he said he used his Canon HF S10.

Where does it say that the PS3 plays it back at 45 frames per second? I understand the PS3 struggles with the files from Sanyo's camcorders. At least the files from the TM700 plays back at real time.

Anyway, I think the actual native files are MTS and if you transfer it to the computer using the software, it's T2TS.

I love the look of 60p. I care not about what the network broadcasters are doing they are dinosaurs in my eyes who need to go extinct.

To the future and beyond!

Christopher, although I also hate the fact that the networks are sticking to interlaced footage for now, it's not really their fault. Telecommunications bandwidth limitations and the whole cable infrastructure in many countries just isn't capable of streaming 1080p/25, much less 1080p/60. In the future I also hope 60p will be the standard, but it won't happen too soon. At least broadcasters seem to be moving slowly towards progressive formats in general now.

1280x720P60 or P50 is part of the Bluray spec Blu-ray Disc - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluray#Blu-ray_Disc_format_finalized). 1280x720P60 is also use by several networks and transmitted over cable ( at least my cable) Mainly used for sports etc and specialty channels. I agree its not 1080 but it is progressive and classed as HD.

Ron Evans

There are 1080p50/60 camera's out there, however they are mostly multicam camera's and probably out of the price range for most. Camera's such as the LDK-8000 Elite Worldcam can do it but so far there has been no real demand for it.

However the 1080p50/60 is a recent addition to the Grass Valley range.. only that particular camera has it. The slow motion variants aren't out yet in 1080p flavor. However we can hope that in a few year 1080p50/60 will become standard :)