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[Monday at NAB]
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Panasonic Promotes AVC Benefits
Expanded Use of MPEG-4 Format, Bigger P2 Card Highlight NAB Show Offerings
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by Tom Butts,
~ April 14, 2008
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TV TECHNOLOGY
The ease and versatility of solid-state media coupled with the efficiencies of AVC codecs will highlight the Panasonic booth at this year’s NAB Show.
Five years since the company introduced its P2 solid-state medium at NAB2003, the format has been adopted by more than 200 U.S. TV stations and 600 broadcast facilities worldwide. The latest, Meredith Broadcasting, announced in February that it was taking delivery over the next two years of up to 250 P2 HD camcorders as well as numerous P2 studio cameras to transition its 13 stations to high-definition news.
Just as important as the physical media is the AVC compression format that Panasonic has adopted. Based on MPEG-4/H.264 encoding, AVC takes several forms, but for its P2 professional format, Panasonic has adopted AVC-Intra, (based on AVC’s Intra-frame High Profile), which has about double the compression efficiency of MPEG-2. AVC-Intra provides 10-bit intraframe recording in two modes: master-quality AVC-Intra 100 and AVC-Intra 50 Mbps. It is being offered alongside DVCPRO HD/50 recording in P2 HD cameras such as the AJ-HPX3000 and AJ-HPX2000.
The company has also expanded its use of another flavor of AVC, AVCHD, which uses Long GOP High-Profile encoding to record to standard SD and SDHC memory cards.
Panasonic’s use of AVCHD has coincided with increased support for the format. Since it was introduced on the market less than two years ago, more than 30 companies have adopted it. The company sees its implementation of AVCHD as an expansion of the use of SD media from consumer technologies into both professional and institutional markets.
“We’re leveraging a consumer technology but we’re professionalizing it,” said Bob Harris, vice president of marketing strategy for Panasonic Broadcast.
The lines between professional and consumer technologies remain intact, however. While Panasonic is positioning part of its use of AVCHD as “second generation affordable HD” and as a competitor to HDV, P2, on the other hand, encompasses an entire professional workflow that the company is promoting as a “media production technology.”
64 GB OF STORAGE
For this year’s NAB Show, Panasonic will roll out a new 64 GB card for its P2 format, basically doubling capacity of the 32 GB card it introduced just last year. The AJ-P2C064 can store more than four hours of DVCPRO footage, more than two hours of DVCPRO50 or AVC-Intra 50, or 64 minutes of AVC-Intra 100 or DVCPRO HD. With five 64 GB cards installed, PanasonicÕs top-of-the-line AJ-HPX3000 1080p P2 HD camcorder can record almost five-and-a-half hours (320 minutes) of DVCPRO HD and more than 10 hours of DVCPRO 50.
Has Panasonic maxed out the recording capacity of its P2 cards? Company officials are leaving their options open.
“The core technology in the P2 card is SD technology, so as long as the consumer chips get bigger, we will have the opportunity to have a bigger card,” said Joe Facchini, director of product marketing for Panasonic Broadcast. “Whether or not it’s practical remains to be seen.” Facchini adds that the company will continue to offer 16 and 32 GB cards to its customers.
The 64 GB card is scheduled for delivery in fall 2008 at a price to be announced (the 32 GB card currently goes for just over $1,500).
Another new product in the P2 line is the portable AJ-HPM110, which Facchini describes as a “master-quality field recording and playback device.”
The solid-state recorder/player, a successor to the AJ-HPM100, handles a range of HD formats including 1080p, and is as much at home out in the field or mobile production unit as it is in the studio. It records in independent frame DVCPRO HD/50/25 and DV formats as well as 10-bit, master-quality, full raster 1920x1080 AVC-Intra (with optional board), and is designed to work with any professional camera system, from tape-based digital cameras to high-end cinema cameras. In addition to the features found on the AJ-HPM100, the HPM110 adds native 1080/24p recording, 1080/23.98/24PsF input/output, multiple frame rate recording, 24p pull-down removal and real-time playback of 720p variable frame rates (under- and overcranking).
FOCUS ON AVCHD
For cameras, much of Panasonic’s focus, at least prior to the NAB Show, is on its AVCHD line. As a follow up to the introduction of its popular DV-based AG-DVX100 camcorder in 2007, at this year’s show the company will roll out the AG-HMC150 handheld AVCHD camcorder. It features three native 16:9 progressive 1/3-inch CCD imagers with an optical image stabilization function for stable shooting and a 28mm Leica Dicomar wide-angle zoom lens. It offers 1080i/720p recording (including 24p) at up to 13 Mbps; an enhanced mode with a higher bit-rate recording is planned, according to Facchini.
Panasonic has also announced that it will ship its AG-HMC70, the industry’s first AVCHD shoulder-mount camcorder by April, for a suggested list price of $2,495.
Also new at the Panasonic booth is the AW-HE100, a multiformat HD/SD camera that features an integrated pan-tilt-zoom mechanism with a range of 350 degrees (pan) and 250 degrees (tilt). The compact, 14.3-pound system supports 1080i/720p/480i formats and targets a wide array of applications, from high-resolution distance learning and videoconferencing to broadcast and event staging.
The AK-HC1800 multipurpose HD camera also is being launched at the show. The compact camera system is equipped with 2.2-megapixel 3-CCDs for native 1080i video capture for high-level, high-definition production. It includes a 14-bit A/D converter with a 38-bit DSP for high-resolution images and a 12-axis color correction circuit that allows for fine adjustments of hue and saturation. Target applications include news studios, weather forecasting and sports.
A new LCD monitor also graces the Panasonic booth. The 17-inch BT-LH1760 offers wide-axis viewing and color reproduction and provides the motion handling and latency advantages formerly provided only in CRT monitors, according to company executives. The widescreen HD display uses a new In-Plane Switching (IPS) panel with 1280x768-pixel native resolution and features a 120Hz refresh rate, double that of standard 60Hz LCD monitors, allowing it to efficiently handle fast motion content.
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