AVC-Intra
AVC-Intra [1] is a type of video coding developed by Panasonic that is fully compliant with [2] the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC standard and additionally follows the SMPTE RP 2027-2007[3] recommended practice specification. AVC-Intra is available in a number of Panasonic's high definition broadcast products, such as, for example, their P2 card equipped broadcast cameras.[4] It is now also supported in various products made by other companies.
Panasonic announced AVC-Intra codec support in April 2007. The use of AVC-Intra provides production quality HD video at bit rates more normally associated with ENG (Electronic news gathering) applications, permitting full resolution, 10 bit field capture of high quality HD imagery in one piece camera-recorders.
AVC-Intra is intended to serve needs of video professionals who have to store HD digital video on digital storage media for editing and archiving purposes. It defines 10-bit intra-frame only compression, which is easy for editing and preserves maximum video quality. The technology significantly outperforms the older HDV (MPEG2 based) and DVCPRO HD (DV based) formats, allowing the codec to maintain better quality in half the storage space.[citation needed]
Technical details
There are three classes;
- AVC-Intra 50:
- nominally 50 Mbit/s, size of each frame is fixed
- CABAC entropy coding only.
- 1920x1080 formats are High 10 Intra Profile, Level 4
- 1280x720 formats are High 10 Intra Profile, Level 3.2
- 4:2:0 chrominance sampling
- frames are horizontally scaled by 3/4 (1920x1080 is scaled to 1440x1080. 1280x720 is scaled to 960x720)
- AVC-Intra 100:
- nominally 100 Mbit/s, size of each frame is fixed
- CAVLC entropy coding only.
- All formats are High 4:2:2 Intra Profile, Level 4.1
- 4:2:2 chrominance sampling
- frames are not scaled
Common to both classes;
- Frame rates: 1920x1080 (23.98p / 25p / 29.97p / 50i / 59.94i), 1280x720 (23.98p / 25p / 29.97p / 50p / 59.94p)
- 10 bit luma and chroma
Panasonic implementation [5] of AVC-Intra codec has following limitations: 8x8 transform only, 8x8 intra prediction only, 10 slices per picture.
- AVC-Ultra:
- announced in 2009 [6]
- adding support for 3D
- new HD formats supported:
- 1920x1080 (50p / 59.94p) 4:2:2 10bit
- 1920x1080 (24p) and 2K (24p) 4:4:4 12bit
- higher bitrate - up to 200 Mbps
Third Party Support
- Avid's Media Composer 3.5.0 provides support via Avid Media Access (AMA), a new plug-in architecture[7]
- Apple's Final Cut Pro 7 provides native AVC-Intra decoding within a ProRes 422 timeline.
- MXF4mac offers an AVC-Intra codec for QuickTime that allows to export AVC-Intra and to set up native AVC-Intra timelines in Final Cut Pro.[8]
- MainConcept offer an AVC-Intra encoder and decoder as part of their Codec SDK[9]
- Harris Corporation announced AVC-Intra support for the NEXIO AMP line of video servers at NAB 2008
- Omneon Inc has announced AVC-Intra support for their Spectrum and MediaDeck products[10]
- Quantel demonstrated AVC-Intra workflow at NAB 2007[11], and released to customers[12] in 2008 with their V4 software.[13]
- Grass Valley has announced native support for AVC-Intra in EDIUS 4.5[14]
- Adobe's After Effects CS5 provides native AVC-Intra decoding. [15]
- Vanguard Software Solutions provides an H.264/AVC SDK capable of encoding at 100Mbps in real-time[16][17]
Third Party Implementation (IP Cores)
Several companies have introduced AVC Intra codec IP Core to the market.[18]
- Jointwave provides AVC-Intra 50 and AVC-Intra 100 encoder IP.
- Vanguard Software Solutions provides AVC-Intra 50 and 100 encoder IP.
References
- ^ "AVC-Intra (H.264 Intra) Compression, Technical Overview" (PDF). Retrieved 2008-01-29.
- ^ "AVC-Intra FAQ" (PDF). Retrieved 2008-01-29.
- ^ "SMPTE RP 2027-2007, "AVC Intra-Frame Coding Specification for SSM Card Applications"".
- ^ "AJ-HPX2000 brochure" (PDF). Retrieved 2008-01-29.
- ^ "AVC-Intra Technical Overview by Panasonic Broadcast (french)" (PDF). Retrieved 2009-12-24.
- ^ "AVC-Ultra Online". Retrieved 2009-12-24.
- ^ "Avid Announces Surge of Third-Party Integrations at NAB '09".
- ^ "MXF4mac AVC-Intra QT".
- ^ "MainConcept Codec SDK components".
- ^ "Omneon Server support for Panasonic's Advanced AVC-Intra HD format".
- ^ "Quantel demonstrates AVC-Intra".
- ^ "Schweizer Fernsehen and tv productioncenter zürich (tpc) choose Quantel".
- ^ "V4 - for Enterprise sQ and Newsbox HD".
- ^ "Thomson's Grass Valley Boosts EDIUS Capabilities and User Interface".
- ^ "Supported import formats".
- ^ "H.264/AVC Professional SDKs". Vanguard Software Solutions. Retrieved 28 Aug 2010.
- ^ "FPGA AVC-I Encoder" (PDF). Vanguard Software Solutions. Retrieved 28 Aug 2010.
- ^ "AVC-Intra Codec Search Result". Retrieved 2009-10-08.