Tastes Like Chicken

In days gone by there was two types of video – PAL and NTSC. That was it. There were different tapes, but the video that came out was basically all the same. Any machine with the right plugs could plug into any other.

High Defininition has changed that… What could have been an opportunity to do away with the confusion and frustrations between PAL and NTSC instead has achieved the exact opposite. In fact recently Scott from Editblog queried on Twitter, “Does anyone have a link to a list of all of the various HD formats and frame rates out there?” – No, I don’t think anyone does. I’ve certainly never seen one.  So I’m going to attempt to make one… There will be omissions – all the video formats and framerates*:

Standard Definition

• PAL
  Framerates: 25 fps
  Rasters: 720×576 (non-square pixels)
  Dominance: Upper Field (Lower Field in DV formats)
• NTSC
  Framerates: 29.97 fps
  Rasters: 720×480 & 720×486 (non-square pixels)
  Dominance: Lower Field
  Notes: 480-line in DV formats.

High Definition

All HD formats are upper-field dominant. For the formats below I will list their nominal specifications, and make notes to qualify those. These are only the base modes, some formats are capable of over- or under-cranking to produce different recorded framerates.

• DVCPRO HD
  Modes: 720p23.98, 720p25, 720p29.97, 720p50, 720p59.94, 1080i50, 1080i59.94, 1080p23.98, 1080p25, 1080p29.97
  Notes: In DVCPRO HD 720 modes are rasterised at 960×720. In 1080 the raster is 1280×1080 for 60Hz modes, and 1440×1080 for 50Hz modes. Video is sampled at 4:2:2.
• HDCAM
  Modes: 1035i59.94, 1080i50, 1080i59.94, 1080i60, 1080p23.98, 1080p24, 1080p25, 1080p29.97, 1080p30
  Notes: Raster size is 1440×1080 with 3:1:1 sampling. Progressive formats are actually “PsF” – a progressive image in an interlaced signal.
• HDCAM SR
  Modes: 1080i50, 1080i59.94, 1080i60, 1080p23.98, 1080p24, 1080p25, 1080p29.97, 1080p30, 720p59.94
  Notes: Raster is 1920×1080 for 1080 modes, with either 4:2:2 colour difference sampling, or full 4:4:4 RGB sampling.
• XDCAM HD
  Modes: 1080i50, 1080i59.94, 1080p23.98, 1080p25, 1080p29.97, 720p50, 720p59.94
  Notes: Raster in HD422 variant is 1920×1080, otherwise it is 1440×1080. 720 is only available in HD422 variant. Sampling is 4:2:0 in XDCAM HD, and 4:2:2 in XDCAM HD 422
• XDCAM EX
  Modes: 1080i50, 1080i59.94, 1080p23.98, 1080p25, 1080p29.97, 72op23.98, 720p25, 720p29.97, 720p50, 720p29.97
  Notes: Raster in HQ mode is 1920×1080, in SP mode it is 1440×1080. Sampling is 4:2:0
• HDV
  Modes: 1080i50, 1080i59.94, 1080p23.98, 1080p25, 1080p29.97, 720p23.98, 720p25, 720p29.97, 720p50, 720p59.94
  Notes: Raster in 1080 is 1440×1080, 4:2:0 sampling. 720 modes are only available in HDV Mode 2, which is incompatible with the 1080-version, Mode 1.
• AVCHD
  Modes: 1080i50, 1080i59.94, 1080p23.98, 1080p25, 1080p29.97, 720p23.98, 720p50, 720p60
  Notes: Raster can be 1920×1080 or 1440×1080 depending on implementation, sampling is 4:2:0. The format was jointly developed by Sony and Panasonic, but their implementations are incompatible with one another.
• AVC-INTRA
  Modes: 1080i50, 1080i59.94, 1080p23.98, 1080p25, 1080p29.97, 720p23.98, 720p25, 720p29.97, 720p50, 720p59.97
  Notes: 1080 raster is 1440×1080, 720 raster is 920×720, in 50Mb/s mode, with 4:2:0 sampling. In 100Mb/s mode they are full raster 4:2:2.

Summary

Where I haven’t mentioned a raster size specifically (usually for 720 modes) I believe they are full-raster.

At a fundamental level the following ‘baseband’ modes are available:

1080 Interlaced at 50Hz and 59.94Hz (providing 25 and 29.97fps).
1080 Progressive at 23.98, 25, 29.97, 50 and 59.94 fps.
720 Progressive at 23.98, 25, 29.97, 50 and 59.94 fps. Technically the 25 and 29.97 modes are not real modes and actually frame double into 50 and 59.94 modes typically.

HDCAM also implements a 1035 line mode.

Within these formats there are some variants also. DVCPRO HD can be a tricky case, with it’s Varicam system recording all modes in 59.94/60Hz modes.
Also, while I have specifically outlined it above, some formats also implement ’round number’ modes for the NTSC-rates (so 24, 30 and 60 instead of 23.98, 29.97 and 59.94).

There will be mistakes and ommisions in the above list, as it’s incredibly difficult to find accurate details on the capabilities of each format.

I count 73 variations in my list above, which doesn’t take into account formats where the same mode has multiple implementations with different characteristics (such as XDCAM EX’s SP and HQ settings).