If a camcorder says its "full HD 1920x1080" is that the same as 1080p?

Question

Is it some kind of 1080i or is it compressed?

The one I'm looking at is this Hitachi that will come out soon:

http://av.hitachi.com/camcorder/blu-ray/index.html

Answer 1

1080P indicates that the frames are progressive, rather than interlaced. Interlaced video, while traditionally viewed as better for sports, only updates parts of the frames giving a preceived higher framerate. Progressive updates the entire frame at once, similar to a traditional camera where an entire picture is taken. For this, many people prefer progressive video because it give the picture a more filmesque appearance. However, progressive video has several drawbacks, including latency when shooting high-speed motion, such as sporting events or a "jumpiness" when panning a frame too fast.

Progressive shooting for the consumer is a relatively new feature and I'm sure would be advertised as such with your new camera. If it does not say progressive, assume that it is not. However, to most users, progressive vs. interlaced footage is a non-issue. The full HD indicates simply that the picture is not upconverted from standard definition, but is actually captured in HD which provides greater resolution and detail. Technically, HD is always compressed if it is written to tape, and when written to disc, it is compressed again. Unfortunately, blue ray or HDDVD burners are a bit away from the masses.

In summary, it is probably not progressive, but that probably shouldn't mattter. The resolution is the exact same between progressive and interlaced, just the framerate is different.

Answer 2

Full HD 1920x1080 could mean a lot of things. It's a marketing message, not some measure of quality. For the most part, all the camcorders that say they record 1920x1080 are all recording 1440x1080 video and stretching the image to 1920x1080 for playback. While some of the camcorders are starting to have progressive recording modes, like the Canon HV20's 24p mode, for the most part the consumer HD camcorders record video as some form of 1080i.

Here's more on the Full HD topic:
http://www.jakeludington.com/life/2007/what-is-full-hd-1080/


All consumer HD camcorders use some kind of compression on the video. HDV camcorders typically use MPEG-2 compression. AVCHD camcorders use a version of h.264 compression.

Answer 3

HD is a television term, either 720 or 1080 vertical lines with 16:9 aspect ratio. The frame rate most common for 720 is 60p, but for 1080 it can be 60i, 30p or 24p. The number of pixels is fixed. Almost all HD is MPEG2 compressed which has temporal (multiframe) compression.