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AVC-Intra is a type of video coding developed by
Panasonic formerly between 1935 and 2008 and the first incarnation of between 2008 and 2022, is a major Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation, headquartered in Kadoma, Osaka. It was founded by Kōnosuke Matsushita in 1918 as a lightbulb ...
, and then supported in products made by other companies. AVC-Intra is available in Panasonic's high definition broadcast products, such as, for example, their P2 card equipped broadcast cameras.


Technical details

Panasonic formerly between 1935 and 2008 and the first incarnation of between 2008 and 2022, is a major Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation, headquartered in Kadoma, Osaka. It was founded by Kōnosuke Matsushita in 1918 as a lightbulb ...
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
electronic news gathering Electronic news-gathering (ENG) or electronic journalism (EJ) is usage of electronic video and audio technologies by reporters to gather and present news instead of using film cameras. The term was coined during the rise of videotape techno ...
applications, permitting full resolution, 10-bit field capture of high quality HD imagery in one piece camera-recorders. AVC-Intra is compliant with the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC standard and Panasonic claims to follow the
SMPTE The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) (, rarely ), founded in 1916 as the Society of Motion Picture Engineers or SMPE, is a global professional association of engineers, technologists, and executives working in the m ...
RP 2027–2007 recommended practice specification. Analysis by the x264 project has shown that Panasonic does not comply with this specification AVC-Intra was intended for video professionals who have to store HD digital video for editing and archiving. 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 HDV is a format for recording of high-definition video on DV cassette tape. The format was originally developed by JVC and supported by Sony, Canon, and Sharp. The four companies formed the HDV Consortium in September 2003. Conceived as an af ...
(
MPEG2 MPEG-2 (a.k.a. H.222/H.262 as was defined by the ITU) is a standard for "the generic coding of moving pictures and associated audio information". It describes a combination of lossy video compression and lossy audio data compression methods, w ...
based) and
DVCPRO HD DV refers to a family of codecs and videotape, tape formats used for storing digital video, launched in 1995 by a consortium of camcorder, video camera manufacturers led by Sony and Panasonic. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, DV was strongly ...
( DV based) formats, allowing the codec in certain conditions to maintain better quality in half the storage space of DVCPRO HD. AVC-Intra defines two classes: * AVC-Intra 50: ** nominally 50 Mbit/s, size of each frame is fixed **
CABAC Context-adaptive binary arithmetic coding (CABAC) is a form of entropy encoding used in the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC and High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standards. It is a lossless compression technique, although the video coding standards in which it ...
entropy coding In information theory, an entropy coding (or entropy encoding) is any lossless data compression method that attempts to approach the lower bound declared by Shannon's source coding theorem, which states that any lossless data compression method ...
only. ** 1920 × 1080 formats are High 10 Intra Profile, Level 4 ** 1280 × 720 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. 1280 × 720 is scaled to 960x720) * AVC-Intra 100: ** nominally 100 Mbit/s, size of each frame is fixed **
CAVLC Context-adaptive variable-length coding (CAVLC) is a form of entropy coding used in H.264/MPEG-4 AVC video encoding. It is an inherently lossless compression technique, like almost all entropy-coders. In H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, it is used to encode r ...
entropy coding In information theory, an entropy coding (or entropy encoding) is any lossless data compression method that attempts to approach the lower bound declared by Shannon's source coding theorem, which states that any lossless data compression method ...
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: 1920 × 1080 (23.98p / 25p / 29.97p / 50i / 59.94i), 1280 × 720 (23.98p / 25p / 29.97p / 50p / 59.94p) * 10 bit luma and chroma Panasonic's implementation of AVC-Intra codec has following limitations: 8 × 8 transform only, 8 × 8 intra prediction only, 10 slices per picture, MBAFF for interlace material, custom quantization matrices for each class and each resolution.


AVC-Ultra

The Panasonic AVC-Ultra family defines an additional three new encoding parameters within the
MPEG-4 Part 10 Advanced Video Coding (AVC), also referred to as H.264 or MPEG-4 Part 10, is a video compression standard based on block-oriented, motion-compensated coding. It is by far the most commonly used format for the recording, compression, and distr ...
standard, utilizing up to the 4:4:4 Intra Predictive Profile, as well as an additional low bitrate proxy recording mode. The most efficient new parameter within AVC-Ultra is by Panasonic called, AVC-LongG. AVC-LongG enables compression of video resolutions up to 1920 × 1080 @ 23.97, 25 and 29.97p, with 10 bits of pixel depth at 4:2:2 color sampling, at data rates as low as 25 Mbit / sec. More over, the AVC-Intra Class 50/100 is now extended to Class 200 and Class 4:4:4. The Class 200 mode extends the bitrate to 226 Mbit / sec for 1080/23,97p, while the Class 4:4:4 extends the possible resolution from 720p to 4K with pixel depths at 10 and 12 bits. The bitrate settings for Class 4:4:4 varies between 200 and 440 Mbit / sec depending on the resolution, frame rate and bit depth. Both the Class 200 and the Class 4:4:4 are Intra-only coding modes. The AVC-Proxy mode enables extremely fast ENG content delivery and offline edits of 720p and 1080p video at bitrates varying between 800 Kbit to 3.5 Mbit / sec at 8 bits of pixel depth. More recent information about AVC-Ultra (including the new 10-bit and 12-bit Class4:4:4, Class2K4:2:2, Class2K4:4:4, Class4K4:2:2, and Class4K4:4:4) is available o
Panasonic's AVC-Ultra Page


Third-party support

* Avid's
Media Composer Avid Media Composer is a film and video editing software application or non-linear editing system (NLE) developed by Avid Technology. Initially released in 1989 on Macintosh II as an offline editing system, the application has since evolved to ...
since v 3.5.0 provides support via Avid Media Access (AMA), a new plug-in architecture *
Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancestor, ' ...
's
Final Cut Pro Final Cut Pro is a series of non-linear video editing software programs first developed by Macromedia Inc. and later Apple Inc. The most recent version, Final Cut Pro 10.6.4, runs on Mac computers powered by macOS Big Sur 11.5.1 or later. The ...
7 provides native AVC-Intra decoding within a ProRes 422 timeline. *
Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancestor, ' ...
's
Final Cut Pro Final Cut Pro is a series of non-linear video editing software programs first developed by Macromedia Inc. and later Apple Inc. The most recent version, Final Cut Pro 10.6.4, runs on Mac computers powered by macOS Big Sur 11.5.1 or later. The ...
X provides native editing of AVC-Intra, including AVC-Intra 100 and AVC-Intra 50, as well as AVC-LongG, with support for import and playback without transcoding 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. *
EVS Broadcast Equipment EVS Broadcast Equipment SA is a Belgian company that manufactures live outside broadcast digital video production systems. Their XT-VIA production video servers enable the creation, editing, exchange and playout of audio and video feeds. Tape ...
has announced AVC-Intra 100 support for their XT , XT and XS server family *
MainConcept MainConcept GmbH is a software company founded in Germany by Markus Moenig and Thomas Zabel. They specialize in developing video/audio codecs and also applications and plug-ins related to video/audio encoding. They are a subsidiary of Endeavor ...
offer an AVC-Intra encoder and decoder as part of their Codec SDK * Harris Corporation announced AVC-Intra support for the NEXIO AMP line of video servers at NAB 2008 * Omneon announced AVC-Intra support for their Spectrum and MediaDeck products in 2007. *
Quantel Quantel was a company based in the United Kingdom and founded in 1973 that designed and manufactured digital production equipment for the broadcast television, video production and motion picture industries. They were headquartered in Newbury, ...
demonstrated AVC-Intra workflow at NAB 2007, and released to customers in 2008 with their V4 software. * Grass Valley has announced native support for AVC-Intra in
Edius Edius is a video editing software package for PC computers running Windows. Edius is a non-linear editor (NLE) that works with most modern video formats. The software is capable of 3D editing. The software comes bundled with a large collection ...
4.5 * Adobe's After Effects CS5 provides native AVC-Intra decoding. * Vanguard Software Solutions provides an H.264/AVC PC SDK capable of encoding at 100 Mbit/s in real-time *
FFmpeg FFmpeg is a free and open-source software project consisting of a suite of libraries and programs for handling video, audio, and other multimedia files and streams. At its core is the command-line ffmpeg tool itself, designed for processing of vid ...
and
Libav Libav is an abandoned free software project, forked from FFmpeg in 2011, that contains libraries and programs for handling multimedia data. History Fork from FFmpeg The Libav project was a fork of the FFmpeg project. It was announced on M ...
support decoding of both forms of AVC-Intra * ATEME AVC-I Contribution Encoders *
x264 x264 is a free and open-source software library and a command-line utility developed by VideoLAN for encoding video streams into the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC video coding format. It is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License. Histor ...
can encode AVC-Intra * Broadcast products based on SHINE Media Platform of GammaRED Engineering Several companies introduced AVC Intra codec semiconductor intellectual property cores. * CoreEL Technologies (http://www.coreel.com) provides AVC-Intra Class 50 and AVC-Intra Class 100 IP cores. * Tata Elxsi (http://www.tataelxsi.com) provides AVC-Intra & AVC-Ultra fully optimizable class 50 and 100 IP. * Vanguard Software Solutions provides AVC-Intra 50 and 100 encoder IP (up to AVC-Ultra: 1080p60 at 300 Mbit/s). * Nethra Imaging provides AVC-Intra 50 and 100 encoder IP.


References

{{Video storage formats Panasonic High-definition television MPEG-4 Video codecs Video compression