Canon To Introduce New HD Video Format…And Camera

For the past few years, Canon has delivered many innovations in both the consumer video market and DSLR video market.  But their professional video cameras have pretty much been left untouched.  That’s about to change.

They are currently developing a new, professional HD video camera.  It will be file based (meaning no tapes).  And the interesting part is, they have also developed a new video codec for this camera (a codec encodes and decodes video).

Why is it interesting? Well, it’s because in the world of video and codecs, there are two big ones.  First there is MPEG-2.  This is an older codec.  All video you see on DVD is MPEG-2.  Tape based video cameras usually shoot MPEG-2 video.  It’s very easy to work with in video editing software.

And then there is MP4.  This is the newest codec.  It’s also referred to as H.264.  All video you see on Blu-Ray is MP4.  Almost all new video cameras use MP4.  It produces fantastic images at very small file sizes.  But it can also be a nightmare to edit this footage.

Which leads us back to Canon and their new codec.  It’s MPEG-2.  Specifically, a new, Canon version of MPEG-2.  It can be used to create full HD, 1920×1080 videos.  It uses 4:2:2 color sampling.  That means, technically, it produces colors more brilliantly than MP4.   And it can record at data rates of up to 50mbps.  That’s over twice the quality of AVCHD video.

Ultimately, all of this means it will produce nicer looking video, without tapes, and without any of the headaches associated with MP4/H.264 video (hopefully).  There’s no word yet on when Canon’s new camera will be available or what the price will be…but they are already working with Apple, Adobe and other’s to make sure popular video editing software will support it.