Cheapest all key frame HD?

[David Grove]

What is the most economical HD format that is intraframe compression only?

Thank you.

DG

[Robert M Wright]

Originally Posted by David Grove

What is the most economical HD format that is intraframe compression only?

Thank you.

DG

Do you mean freeware (no cost) codecs?

If so, you could try using X264 or XVID, setting either one to I frames only.

[David Grove]

Sorry for my lack of clarity.

I meant I wondered if I wanted an HD camcorder that produced a video bitstream that was all intra-frame compressed (like DV is in SD), what format(s) would I be considering? For example, DVCPRO HD is one such format, right?

Thank you.

DG

[John Bosco Jr.]

Originally Posted by David Grove

Sorry for my lack of clarity.

I meant I wondered if I wanted an HD camcorder that produced a video bitstream that was all intra-frame compressed (like DV is in SD), what format(s) would I be considering? For example, DVCPRO HD is one such format, right?

Thank you.

DG

There are only 3 that I know of: DVCProHD (which you have mentioned), AVC-Intra (Panasonic's new codec based on the MPEG 4, H.264 standard), and JPEG2000 (Grass Valley's choice in their Infinity digital camera. JPEG2000 is not similar to the others, though, as it is based on DWT {wavelet} not DCT. It is said that the mathematical process of DWT compression eliminates blocking artifacts and shows picture degradation as a more pleasing slight softening of the image)

Of course, don't confuse AVC-Intra with AVCHD as the latter is interframe compression, even though both are based on the MPEG 4, H.264 standard.

One other note... AVC-Intra and JPEG2000 need a super fast computer to edit natively.

Hope this helps. Maybe someone else knows of other HD camcorders that employ intraframe compression.

[Glenn Chan]

Red, SI could also be on that list. (There are likely a whole other number of cameras as well... including HDCAM.)

2- In practice, I don't think it's useful to arbitrarily rule out cameras based on a single spec (which is a extremely poor way of predicting performance anyways).

If you are interested in a clean artifact-free image, then don't look at a single spec. It is only a very small part of the puzzle. There are a number of other factors that make a significant difference... IMO you're better off looking at the end results and testing the camera for whatever you're interested in.