What has changed about editing mpg2 ?

[Bob Costa]

When I was looking for my first vidcam, I got lots of advice to not buy a DVD Camera. I was told that since DVDCam stores everything in mpg2 format directly on the disk, it would make later editing difficult or impossible.

Doesn't that situation still exist, or has that rule been suspended for HDV? And if it no longer applies is that because of Moore's law, changes in the laws of physics, or the Camcorder marketing departments?

[David Newman]

The same thinking still applies, although MPEG editing was never impossible, simply trickier than intraframe based compression. There definitely is a Moore's Law factor, given that SD MPEG editing is now quite reasonable in performance, although it is still no match for the perform for DV editing. The same is happening today with HDV. Native MPEG2 of 1080i requires a fast dual processor workstation for real-time (2 streams), whereas the same PC running another codec like CineForm HD or Canopus HQ will offer double the performance. There will be more MPEG2 editing support over time, but today it is incompatible with most tools, particularly compositors and effects packages.

I predict that HDV native editing will not become as unibiquistious as DV, because of the MPEG factor, performance and quality concerns will drive professionals to adopt a range of solutions from uncompressed, lossless (HUFFYUV, Sheer), and visually lossless (Avid DNxHD, CineForm HD, Canopus HQ, JPEG2000, etc.) Native will be somewhat common for pro-sumer markets once standard PCs get faster (dual core CPUs will help.)