HDV or AVCHD ???

Hi!
I did a little web research looking for a pro comparison of the two codecs. Unfortunately for me, the best comparison is made by Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDV ).

The most interesting detail in this comparison is the phrase saying: "Using MPEG-2 video enables HDV to achieve a higher compression ratio than recording formats without interframe compression, but constant data rate limits the video quality in scenes with lots of detail, rapid movement or other complex activity like flashing lights. Such scenes may exhibit visible artifacts such as blockiness or blurring, depending on the amount of movement and on the algorithm employed in the encoder. On contrary, when using a tapeless recording standard such as XDCAM or AVCHD it is possible to increase or decrease the data rate depending on complexity of a scene, thereby preserving quality of a busy scene while saving recording space on a low-detail scene."

Then it says that HDV codec is more a consumer codec(with 5k cameras? like Sony Z5U)

I am really considering to buy a Z5U and I wonder if it is worth it or not. Should I go for a Panasonic AVCHD?

Now I am using an ordinary DV PAL consumer camera and I could easily see the motion artifacts even for relatively low speed and high contrast objects. Is this possible to happen with Z5U? I do not wanna spend 5k to see motion artifacts.

The H264 codec does have a little blockiness when it is in motion.
However when the scene is in motion the average viewer cant see the blockiness. Ive seen xdcam footage on a movie projection (at a film festival) and I didn't notice the compression---- I have not seen HDV on a bigscreen though, not to say its never been done though.

As for camera it depends more on how you want to use it.... are you traveling a lot? do you want to make shorts? Do you want to keep tapes?

If you are looking at the Z5U then look at the FX1000. Video quaility is the same for both. Same sensor/optics/compresion ect. It all depends if you want XLR, camera sync and a more native MRC1K support. The Z5U also supports DVCAM mode which is 33% more faster than minidv. You get more data to the tape but less time on the tape. DVcam is not HDV so won thelp you there.


A quality AVCHD will have more resolution then the miniDV cameras like the Z5U and FX1000. It all depends on the content. I think the FX1000 does action and motion better. But for most of the stock footage I have seen on this site both will or would work about the same as long as its a quality camera.

That said. Many put tape down bacause its got to be read in at real time. Whell bringing in 32GB from dlash media is not instantanoius. Also you have to have whooping powerfull machine to handle AVCHD and even then it takes much longer to transcode and encode.

Most Editors work with HDV nativly so there is no loss from the capture to the edit. Many will even keep the unchanged sections of your video intact. (I have not had good luck with that)

As for working with AVCHD all are not equal. I had a Canon HF100 and its AVCHD format would not work with my CS3. However my Canon 5D mark II does.

Personaly you cant go wrong with the Z5U or the FX1000. The cool thing about the FX1000 is you can take off the Lens Hood/Cap and remove the large rubber eye shield and the camera size drops down quite a bit. The Z5U is both longer and wider because of the microphone module thingy.

Something else thats real important. With tape formats you have a reliable built-in archival system. You can even copy from tape to tape without loosing any thing. Quality tapes that are treated well will last a very long time.

Thank you both for your response. I intend to use camera mostly for stock, partially for kind of indie short / documentaries and I am interested in shooting fast moving objects.
I am very interested in solid recording and in having as many manual controls as possible. I do not care that much on archiving. My main concern is how HDV behaves regarding moving objects.

Go over to Vime and search for the camera you are interested in. In my case I searched on just about every camera in the $1000 - $5000. Look at the vimeo clip just to see whats in the vid. The go down to the lower right and down load the uploaded file. This way you can see the raw uploaded footage. If you see one or two that are choppy keep searching as they may have done a bad job encodeing the file.

After all my searching I chose a FX1000 as the quaility did not look any different than the Z5U and use the FX1000 ahs 100% manual mode just like the Z5U (same exact controls) in all honasty the FX1000 videos looked better overall than the Z5U but thats probably because there are many more of them.

IF you purchase the FX1000 take the $2000 you would have saved and purchase the accessories you are going to need.

Here are all my videos. Most of them are tests of one sort or another.
http://www.vimeo.com/user1130141/videos

When testing videos the player is important as some will be choppy cause they cant keep up with the video. If using the quicktime player make sure you get the latest.

Thank you msimpson for the info. I took a look on Vimeo and found amazing info.