Matsushita Electric Industrial and Sony Corporation announced specifications for a new recording format for HD cameras. The AVCHD format will allow the recording and playback of HD 1080i and 720p digital images using 8 cm DVD media. The format employs a codec for MPEG-4/H.264 video compression and Dolby Digital (AC-3) or Linear PCM audio codec. This will allow the development of new compact cameras with high-quality video and audio.
MPEG-4/H.264 encoding is twice as efficient as MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 encoding.
