Part two

This second part jumps to raw input material - usually of primary importance in our thoughts, BUT remember, likely to be compromised by the end view constraints anyway.

Basic (but often forgotten) fact - camera manufacturers want the best recording format - not necessarily the best editing format.

Highest bitrate is best quality, biggest filesize, maybe most compression needed.

So AVCHD is a great recording format, adopted by Sony,Canon and Panasonic, high compression, great quality BUT uses complete image information only in select rather than all frames (important implications for editing!). Based on AVC/H.264 MPEG-4 codec. Max bit rate 25Mbps for good cameras.

AVC used by Sanyo and Samsung. Bit rate c.12-16Mbps. Based on AVC/H.264 MPEG-4 codec.

Both can produce SD as well as HD in 720p, 1080i and 1080p.

HDV (tape based format) is based on MPG2, records to 1440x1080, expanded to 1920x1080 for playback. Max bitrate 25Mbps.

All can have proprietary implementations with little quirks.

Aiming for the best then, can our camera produce in 1080p 60fps? I haven't got a full list and it changes all the time. My Sanyo HD1010 produces as follows :-
1080i 60 fields/sec
1080p 30fps
720p 60 and 30fps
640x480 60 and 30fps
448x336 300fps
320x240 30fps
it produces AVC files

So what format should we choose - the best is always the best - but might not be necessary, might take a lot of editing, might be viewed on an ipod sized screen, etc etc. There is no right answer but there are horses for courses and the right choice might make life less stressful?

Further details:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/video-primer.shtml Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. (see below)
Confucius
AMD Phenom IIX6 1055T, win10, 5 internal drives, 7 usb drives, struggling power supply.