Quicktime vs. AVCHD

Today I accidenty encoded the same video in Quicktime and in AVCHD. When I went to look at the files I noticed a tremendous quality difference between the two files.

AVCHD looks amazingly better than Quicktime for the exact same source file. I went and rechecked the specs for video on this site and AVCHD is not included.

So I wanted to ask any of you out there if there re any better settings I can use when encoding to quicktie. I am currently using Sony Vegas Pro 9.0

Also, have any of you noticed noise being introduced into your videos when encoding into a quicktime mov file?

AVCHD is essentially an "advanced" version of H.264 with a very high data rate. I encoded a .MOV file using the AVCHD settings and got a gorgeous result. I then uploaded the file to Pond5 and the system was able to create a preview clip and properly identified the codec as H.264. But I never attempted to submit it.

So, from a technical aspect, Pond5 does support H.264/ACVHD encoded into .MOV files. The question they need to answer is.. Will they accept it if submitted?

Thank you very much for the comments. I am going to try that right now.

And will people be discouraged from downloading it because of the highly compressed format and their systems might not like that too much... which would force them to install NEOSCENE (Jake 5% referral).

Or, will they prefer that there is more data for them to work with and the files look much better?

I'm hoping that Pond5 hurries up with their re-encoding for buyers. Once they allow the buyer to encode the clip server side to whatever their needs are, then we can start uploading MOV encoded AVCHD files which I think will bring more professionals to Pond5 (if Pond5 gets there first).

If you use H.264 right now, it might be better not to use any format preset but decompress the original format (rendering out uncompressed video) and then reencode with H.264 at quality 100%, with audio uncompressed PCM wav or removed.

As fas as I understand these codec thingies (not really an expert), H.264 is applied in a variety of different architectures with respect to audio and video, which means that AVCHD (limited to 24 mbps and probably having some other special characterstics) should not be the same as AVC or the DSLR H.264. "Normal" H.264 should be more universal than special camera formats, although the bitrates will be higher than those of AVCHD at good quality, but still much less than mjpeg or pjpeg.

I´m just deducting this from HDV. Every Windows NLE understands normal mpeg2, but none understands Apple HDV although it is mpeg2 based as well. Otoh, Apple does not understand Win m2t because of the audio encoding it uses...

Well, if anyone knows it better, please correct me.

I would appreciate if more people did use "normal" H.264 as an alternative for mjpeg or pjpeg if these files get very big. I have an HDV shot that has 840 MB in mjpeg Q95%, and 230 MB at H.264 Q100%, both looking exactly the same. But I don´t want to be the only one using "exotic" formats. Finally, I uploaded this one as HDV native plus a DV 16:9 version. It´s in the queue.

Cheers,
Stefan

I have heard AVCHD is a much more compressed format than HDV. Therefore it artifacts more severely in situations such as fields of grass, waterfalls, moving objects. True or not? Why are we in a situation where producers of cameras are COMPRESSING formats when storage media is cheaper and cheaper? Nuts!

AVCHD on most cameras at 14 mbps can artifact in some situations, but AVCHD at full 24 mbps is very crisp.

And the problem for agencies like Pond5 is not so much storage as it is usability by buyers. Many buyers can't use HDV, ProRES or other exotic formats so they have us use codecs that are 90%+ guaranteed to be on every system.

Once an agency adds the ability to re-encode a clip to the buyers needs, then we will have the freedom of uploading clips using the best quality and compression to balance between looking good and manageable upload times. Right now it's a race between Pond5 and another site as to who will get there first.

Maybe reading is article will shed some light on the subject.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVCHD

Nice link Jason, thanks.