Sony Handycam AVCHD Technology Handbook

AVCHD™ Technology Handbook

AVCHD™ format.

Long ago, televisions could only be used to watch broadcasts.

Then Sony helped transform the home entertainment landscape by

inventing, co-inventing and spearheading a slew of innovations, including

DVD players, videogames and the world’s first consumer camcorder.

Today, it’s no surprise that the boom in High Definition has inspired

Sony to create HD video disc players, HD videogames and HD camcorders.

Now Sony is proud to introduce the world’s first consumer camcorder to

capture High Definition onto a built-in hard disk drive and the world’s

first to record HD onto a 3-inch (8-cm) DVD!* Welcome to the AVCHD format.

AVCHD™ format. While the HDV

tapes, the market was open for a system that recorded HD onto random-access nonlinear

media such as 3-inch (8-cm) DVDs, hard disks and flash memory cards. It was for this

reason that Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. (Panasonic) and Sony Corporation created

the AVCHD format.

™

format records high definition onto MiniDV cassette

AVCHD™ format benefits.

Full HD 1080 picture. While the AVCHD format can support a variety of video

standards, Sony has chosen Full HD 1080, with 1440 pixels horizontal x 1080 pixels vertical.

The result is a picture with five times as much detail as Standard Definition video.

Dolby® Digital surround sound. To enhance the you-are-there realism of your home

video sound tracks, the AVCHD system supports Dolby Digital 5.1-channel surround

sound. Because this is the same surround sound system used in DVDs and HDTV

broadcasting, the sound is compatible with millions of existing home theater systems.

Instant Access. While tape is an excellent recording medium, finding a specific clip

on a tape means time-consuming fast forward and rewind. Shooting onto tape can also

mean accidentally recording over your precious memories. AVCHD media is different.

Thumbnail pictures let you access a recorded scene instantly, simply by pointing and

clicking. And nonlinear recording means you never need to “cue” a tape to the blank area.

The camcorder finds the next unrecorded area automatically.

Efficient MPEG-4 AVC / H.264 compression. This is more than twice as efficient

as conventional, MPEG-2 compression. So you get a spectacular Full HD 1080 picture,

while using similar bitrates and getting similar recording times to a Standard

Definition camcorder!

Playback on compatible Blu-ray Disc™ players and PLAYSTATION®3 consoles.

In addition to playing back in the camcorder, DVDs recorded in the AVCHD format will

also play back on the new generation of Sony Blu-ray Disc players. The High Definition

successor to DVD, Blu-ray Disc is supported by the overwhelming majority of consumer

electronics companies, most movie studios and many of the top names in PCs. Blu-ray

Disc technology is also built into the PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system,

which will also play AVCHD format camcorder DVDs. (Playback on all home Blu-ray Disc

players and PLAYSTATION®3 consoles is not guaranteed.)

PC friendly. DVD and hard disk are extremely well suited for playback, backup and

editing on a compatible PC. For example, you can backup the hard drive camcorder to

your PC, connecting via USB 2.0 interface. (Not all products with USB 2.0 connector may

communicate with each other due to chipset variations.) PC playback of AVCHD hard

drive or DVD content is also possible using the application software supplied with the

camcorder. And many third-party editing software companies have already expressed

their interest in supporting the AVCHD format in the same way they have supported the

HDV format.

AVCHD™ format specifications.

For maximum flexibility, the AVCHD format supports both 1080- and
720-line High Definition as well as Standard Definition video.

AVCHD, HD Mode AVCHD, SD Mode HDV 1080 (for comparison)

Picture Format 1080/60i 720/60p 480/60i 576/50i 1080/60i

1080/50i 720/50p 1080/50i

1080/24p 720/24p 1080/24p (option)

Number of Pixels 1920 x 1080 1280 x 720 720 x 480 720 x 576 1440 x 1080

1440 x 1080

Aspect Ratio 16:9 4:3 or 16:9 16:9

Video Compression MPEG-4 AVC / H.264 MPEG-2

Luminance Sampling Frequency 74.25 MHz 13.5 MHz 55.6875 MHz

Sampling Format 4:2:0 4:2:0

Bits per sample 8 bit (Y, Cb and Cr) 8 bit

Audio Format Dolby Digital (AC-3) Linear PCM MPEG-1 / Audio Layer II

Audio Bit Rate 64 to 640 kbps 1.5 Mbps (2 channel) 384 kbps (fixed)

Audio Mode 1 to 5.1 channel 1 to 7.1 channel Stereo 2 channel

MPEG-2 transport stream

Video Bitrate after Compression Up to 20 Mbps variable Max 25 Mbps (fixed)

Picture format: The number of scanning lines, followed by the number of interlaced fields or

progressive frames per second, followed by the designation “i” for interlaced scanning or “p”

for progressive scanning.

Number of pixels: Horizontal x vertical.

Aspect ratio: Ratio of picture width to picture height.

Luminance sampling frequency: The number of digital video samples per second for the black-and-

white (luminance or “Y ”) channel , measured in megahertz (millions of cycles per second).

Sampling format: Refers to the structure of the three video channels: Y (luminance), Cb (blue color

difference, Y-B), and Cr (red color difference, Y-R).

Bits per sample: The number of bits devoted to each digital video sample.

Bitrate: The recorded data rates for audio and video, measured in bits per second. “kbps” stands for

kilobits per second. “Mbps” stands for megabits per second.