Hi all, I'm a bit new to this whole hd format world and I have a question that I'm not sure of. Essentially if I get a backup of a movie in avchd format, is this considered the same or worse quality of my backup in h.264 format? The reason for the avchd format is so that I can play it on my ps3. Also as a second question, when using tsmuxer to remux my h.264 files in ps3 usable format, I have to change the avc level from 5.1 to 4.1. Does this cause a drop in quality (either visually or audibly) as well? Thanks for any info on this.
h264 is a codec, like mgeg2 or vc1. AVCHD is just the disc structure that contains a codec... in your case h264. I'm willing to be it is the exact same file in question. So the quality will be the same. In regards to 5.1 to 4.1, this does not effect the quality at all.
Odin, thank you so much. I understand the difference now. Avchd is essentially the container holding the movie into a usable form my ps3 understands (I'm going out on a leap and say it's comparable to x.264 - with my limited understanding). If I want to play it on my xbox or other player that doesn't understand avchd, I need to extract the file and put it in a different container, even though the underlying movie is still good quality. So my next question is (and I'm not even sure if I'm allowed asking it) why are movies being released in different formats such as h.264, vc-1 and ps3avchd (which from your answer means someone just saved a ps3 owner the time to convert it into a usable format)? Is it because there is no set standard yet? (I'm guessing h.264 is going to be the new standard)
Sort of, a container would be MP4, MKV, or AVI... or in this case M2TS is used for AVCHD/Blu-ray. That file with whatever codec is inside it, h264, VC1, or mpeg2 would be all part of the "AVCHD" or Blu-ray structure... which is "BDMV" and "Certificate" folders (similar to the DVD structure, Audio_TS and Video_TS folders). What makes it AVCHD is the fact that the BDMV and Certificate folders are burned to a DVD, instead of a BD... and the AVCHD structure is slightly different from Blu-ray, although almost identical. If your AVCHD does contain the h264 codec it will not play on the xbox as-is, it would need to be converted to VC1 and remuxed to the wmv container. There are "standards" for AVCHD/BD, they are h264, VC1, and mpeg2. h264 being the most efficient codec, so technically yeah, h264 could become the preferred codec... even though VC1 (a close 2nd) and mpeg2 (inferior to the other two) could still be used.
