...
You guys should form a comedy act.
I can get you free tickets if you want to come see us perform, but to
get in you must know the secret password (hint: it's a four-letter
abbreviation that begins with the letter "M" and ends with the letter
"G").
Of course I have no "phobia" for MPEG.
I never said that you did. That's Ken's part of the act.
But I certainly do recall some comments that you once made about how
no one doing serious work could possibly be using a camcorder that
utilizes MPEG as its acquisition format, a statement which is very,
very untrue. I also recall some more recently made comments, somewhat
positive in nature, about your impressions after viewing Sony's XDCAM
HD demo (DVD) disc. Assuming that they didn't fake the footage, and
even if it was mostly or even entirely shot at the 35 Mbps rate, it's
also long-GOP MPEG-2. Of course, it had to be downconverted for use on
a DVD, so we never got to see it in all of its high def glory.
I use it every time I master or dub a DVD video disc.
Don't we all.
And even when I convert a file to put on my iPod.
MPEG-4 in that case, I assume.
I guess it depends on how you define "file system"
It certainly contains the basic elements sufficient for the
definition. (Else it wouldn't be practical.)
As per the generally accepted definition of the term, there is no file
system (and no files) on a Redbook audio CD. Saying that there is a
file system (and files) on a Redbook audio CD is almost like saying
that there are files (and a file system) on a 12-inch vinyl LP disc.
Write to Philips (or Sony) and see what they say, or check various Web
references.
Getting back to Ken's point about using an MPEG-2 editor such as one
of the Womble products, I really don't know why he mentioned that to
me since I *did not* comment upon his recommendation to the original
poster, who hasn't made a reappearance in this thread, by the way, so
we may never know the actual characteristics of his .avi file (he
should run GSpot), but what I wanted to say was that I almost always
edit uncompressed and therefore care very little about how the footage
was originally acquired.
I like uncompressed footage for editing purposes because I'm lazy and
that way I don't have to concern myself with the negative impact of
compression artifacts caused by any possible recompression taking
place during the editing/finishing process. Also, in a sense,
uncompressed footage is easier to edit in that the processor load is
lighter due to the fact that it doesn't have to decompress frames on
the fly (especially taxing with long-GOP MPEG-4 Part 10 H.264 AVC),
although I'll certainly grant that a fast and large hard disk I/O
subsystem is mandatory, especially for editing HD.
I take this same uncompressed approach to almost all of the media that
I deal with, whether audio, video, or still images. I generally
decompress any lossy compressed format that I receive to an
uncompressed form and edit the non-compressed file and don't create a
lossy compressed version unless and until I absolutely have to. In the
case of audio - say someone sends me an .mp3 file to work on - I
create an LPCM .wav file from it and work entirely on that. If I'm
given a .jpg image file to work with, I'll immediately open it and
save it out as a .bmp or .tif and work on that, etc.
With regard to the HDV format and its use of long-GOP MPEG-2 video
compression and MPEG-1 Layer II audio compression, I was initially
excited three years ago when I first read about the format (under $10K
HD for the masses), but was *severely* disappointed when I saw the
technical specs - the MPEG-2 video and the MPEG-1 Layer II audio -
because I had always considered those formats to be distribution
formats and not acquisition formats. Just because I created, and
continue to maintain, a (rather lengthy) Web page devoted the subject
of HDV doesn't mean that I am totally, completely, and absolutely in
love with the format.
Sony has at least two new HD camcorders coming out within the next
year, one of which will be a full-sized, over-the-shoulder HDV-format
product. This camcorder, which hasn't yet been assigned a model
number, will be a tri-mode DV/DVCAM/HDV product, have three CMOS
sensors (probably 1/3-inch but maybe 1/4-inch), will support the use
of standard (large-size) cassettes (276 minutes of recording time on a
single tape), and will probably have an HD-SDI output jack. Pricing
hasn't yet been disclosed, but it's expected that it will be
positioned as a DSR-250/DSR-250P replacement. I haven't touched one,
but I've seen photos and it appears to be designed as a professional
product in terms of control layout. It will probably turn out to be a
nice companion to Sony's pro-grade HVR-1500 HDV VCR.
The other HD camcorder that Sony will be coming out with in the next
year (supposedly this Fall, actually) is the so-called XDCAM EX
product. The under $8000 price tag looks interesting, but it's still
4:2:0 because it doesn't support Sony's new 4:2:2 50 Mbps codec that
will be included on some future XDCAM HD products (which will also
support the use of Sony's new dual layer Professional Disc). Instead,
it will support the usual XDCAM HD 18 Mbps VBR, 25 Mbps CBR (1080i
HDV-like), and 35 Mbps VBR 4:2:0 rates. If it did support the new 50
Mbps 4:2:2 codec, I'd almost buy one myself just for the heck of it.
Unlike the new HDV product mentioned above, it will not be a
full-sized, over-the-shoulder camcorder but instead more of a Handycam
type of product. It will use three 1/2-inch CCDs (not CMOS, or so I'm
told) sensors, have a fixed (non-interchangeable) manual Fujinon (not
Zeiss) 14x zoom lens, offer variable 1 to 60 fps rates for effects,
and will record to the new Sony/SanDisk SxS ExpressCard/34 flash
memory cards (two slots provided). It's expected to support
1080i59.94, 1080i50, 1080p29.97, 1080p25, 1080p23.976, 720p59.94, and
720p50 but not 1080p59.94, 1080p50, 720p29.97, 720p25, or 720p23.976.
I don't want to talk about AVCHD.
Don't know why I wrote most of the above, actually. Some sort of
stream of conscious thing I guess. Must be over-tired.
