How does the AVCHD stack up to the the XDCAM?
Not even close.

Over the next few months, you'll hear a *lot* of hype about various flavors of AVC at various bitrates. Keep a bag of salt handy.
There are those who have already bought into the hype of AVCbeing better than HDV at half-bitrate, and as an owner of several AVCHD and several HDV camcorders in even the same class...it's BS. However, AVCHD does look very, very good. The codec at higher bitrates is quite capable, unless it's pranked with. But it'll take very high bitrates to be remotely close to XDCAM. Like around 140Mbps

It seems that AVCHD is only being used to reduce the bitrate, not to improve the image quality. I'm only looking to improve quality, so AVCHD at the HDV bitrate of 25Mb/s would be an improvement over MPEG2. 16Mb/s AVCHD is not a quality improvement over HDV.

Exactly. 15/16/17Mbps isn't an improvement over HDV. 25Mbps, sure. But start getting too high, you blow the ability of the media currently available to store it unless you spatially compress.
In a new book we've got coming at NAB, I show AVC at various bitrates in comparisons. It's not what the hype suggests it is.

Sony need to fix their noise and digital artifacts before releasing any new cameras. Even the EX1 has that same image degradation present in the earlier models such as the FX1, HC1 etc. Compare the footage with anything shot on a Canon HV10 or HV20 and you'll see the difference.

I find that HDV and AVC both have their pros/cons (as with most other things). To me the HDV clearly looks better, especially during the faster pans and camera motions. AVCHD tends to break up a bit more in these cases.

On the other side of the coin, there seems to be much more latitude in adjusting bitrates with avchd. It doesn't take too much playing around with hdv bitrates to start affecting quality.

But you STILL can't smart render avchd. It's a full re-encode every time you run it through an editor.... a pretty big show stopper.... for me anyway.

I've just edited a 23 minute 1080i video with AVCHD footage from my $800 CX7. I did this on a very old 1.9 GHz Pentium 4 with 1 GB of ram and Vegas 8.0a. The footage may not look as good as HDV but for me, at that price point and with the advantage of tape-less, disk-less storage on 8 GB Memory Sticks, it's a dream.

Yes rendering is painfully slow - 12.5 hours for 23 minutes in my case. But editing with GearShift is a wiz and the quality of the final product just runs circles around my old TRV-900 footage. I rendered to .m2ts and it plays perfectly on my PS3 into a 65" Sharp LCD with full 5.1 audio.

I think AVCHD is where things are headed and I certainly think that solid state storage is the future. I paid $100 for the 8 GB Memory Stick. 8 GB chips will come down to the price of a 3-4 Starbucks Lattes in a couple of years when Sony moves up from the just released 16 GB to 32 GB Memory Sticks.

So don't write off AVCHD. It's pretty darn good. I'm quite happy with it.

I don't know where you're getting that information from. We've shot waterfalls and breaking surf full frame on the EX1 and going through it frame by frame we've yet to find any artifacts. We're trying pretty hard to break the HQ codec and so far not having any joy at all, damn Sony why do they make our life so difficult, there has to be a way.
As for noise, really not finding much of that in the EX1 either although I do keep the gain down. Under some monitoring situations the lower res of Canon cameras produces less artifacts and I've seen people wrongly assume they're seeing noise or artifacts.

Bob.

So don't write off AVCHD. It's pretty darn good. I'm quite happy with it.

Back up the bus...no one is "writing off AVCHD." As said nearly 2 years ago, AVCHD is the next big format. It has a lot of room to grow, but the current crop of AVCHD camcorders, all under 17Mbps, are not the HDV-killers that others are saying AVCHD offers.
I have 2 CX7's and use them fairly regularly (along wth the custom cages for crash we had built), and like them for what they are. Given a straight across, same exact subject shoot of the CX7 and the HC7 (same lens, same preprocessing), anyone would take the CX7 first.
Improve the encode or crank up the bitrate on the CX7, it would be preferential, most likely.
the workflow from the CX7 is definitely preferable to HDV, but loss of picture quality for ease of workflow is a no-go for me.
Avene, owning both Canons models you mention, owning each of the Sony camcorders you mention, I can't help but wonder if you've got a problem with your monitor. The Canons are great cameras, but they are not more nor less noise/artifact free than Sony, Panasonic, or JVC, IMO.

For now AVCHD is just a consumer format, right? Will higher bit rate AVCHD replace XDCAM and Pro HD formats or will it stay a low bitrate solution just for consumer cameras competing only with .m2t HDV?

"Given a straight across, same exact subject shoot of the CX7 and the HC7 (same lens, same preprocessing), anyone would take the CX7 first."

Spot -- did you mean to say that "anyone would take the HC7 first"? Your earlier comments seemed to indicate that at current bit rates (in AVCHD handycams), that HDV outperforms AVCHD.

Tim L

(double post...)

Sorry, yes. I mean the HC, not CX7.
Michael, AVCHD is predominantly a consumer format. Panasonic has AVC Intra, which is fundamentally the same as AVCHD, but they're removing the GOP structure by using Intra frames only, at exceptionally high bitrates of 50 and 100Mbps.
So while AVCHD in name is a consumer-only format, it has more potential room for growth than any format we've ever seen in our industry. We'll see AVCHD and JPEG 2000/J2K blow up big over the next three years, IMO.

The lone HDV update, the HC-9, is more or less a black HC7 - The few blogs I've read have stated go find a bargain HC7 (I found two during the holidays).

I figure that there'll be some type of prosumer camera with some of the EX-1 features at a more reasonable price point late this year.

Cliff Etzel - Solo Video Journalist
bluprojekt

So how long before the EX1 (XDCAM HD) is obsolete and the equivalent replacement camera runs AVCHD? When will we get away from GOP to a true progressive single frame? Is it so long that EX1 buyers will have a state of the art camera for at least three years?

Wondering as I'm about to buy an EX1 and wondering if anything similar is around the corner. (Discounted EX1s at NAB?)

I'd drop the money today on an SR12 if it was COMPLETELY progressive (from capture to encoding to saving to disk, I want a camera that does NOTHING interlaced!)

I never thought that it would matter, but I have been noticing interlacing with the HVR-A1, which otherwise captures some great looking footage.

Oh well, the money is probably better spent elsewhere, or not spent at all...