AVCHD (Audio and video Compression for High Definition or Advanced Video Codec High Definition) is a high-definition and standard-definition recording format for use in digital tapeless camcorders.
In May 2006 Panasonic and Sony jointly announced AVCHD as a tapeless high definition recording format. It is said that AVCHD is just a transition format before blur-ray disk camcorder face to world. Whatever which format will be used to support blue-ray, one more thing is clear, high definition video is more and more universal and not limited to professional field. The AVCHD file extention is .mts in camcorder and .m2ts after import to computer.
AVCHD (AVC-HD, AVC HD) video is recorded using the MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 video compression codec. Audio is stored in either compressed form (Dolby AC-3), or uncompressed form (multichannel PCM).
The format was based on existing Blu-ray Disc specification, the structure is derived from the Blu-ray Disc specification, but AVCHD can not play on a blu-ray disk. AVCHD specification allows using several kinds of recording media, in particular recordable DVD discs, SD/SDHC memory cards, memory cards and hard disk drives. AVCHD specification allows for both high definition and standard definition recording. For high definition, all major variations are supported, including 720p, 1080i and 1080p.
Recorded AVCHD video can be played back in variety of ways:
1.directly from a camcorder on a HDTV, through HDMI or component-video cable;
2.burned onto writable Blu-ray disc, then played on a Blu-ray Disc player or on a LAYSTATION 3 gaming console;
3.recorded on a solid-state memory card (SDHC, Memory Stick), then played from many Blu-ray Disc players, on select Panasonic HDTV sets and on a PLAYSTATION 3 gaming console; 4.burned onto DVD disc, then played from most Blu-ray Disc players;
5.on a computer, playing from the camcorder connected via USB as an external storage device (with requisite software such as media player with AVC decoder installed);
6.on a computer, playing directly from recorded media using a DVD drive or a memory card reader (with requisite software such as media player with AVC decoder installed).
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