happy with it, October 10, 2005

I have been using this camcorder for almost two weeks now. And here are my impressions:

PROS:

A) This is a tiny camcorder and I can easily carry it in my pocket everyday.

B) It records directly on a 20GB harddrive. This is probably the most amazing feature of this camera. It has the following amazing benefits:

(1) A huge recording space

(2) Random access to recorded videos when browsing

(through a thumblist of videos)

(3) Super fast transfer onto your computer through USB 2.0.

(4) No tapes, no CDs, no DVDs to worry about while recording video.

(5) Facilitates easy archiving/organizing . For example, all the recorded files on the camera’s harddrive have “creation date”s as a part of their file information. When the camera is connected to your computer, you can sort all files by date and easily separate all recordings by date to different folders by simply selecting and dragging. (This is extra, but if you want to index and be able to search your video files, say with google desktop, simply enter a list of keywords in the file name about the contents of the file.)

(6) The harddrive on your camera can double as additional portable storage media- this is unlikely but If you wanted you could even install linux on it and carry with you an operating system on your camera.

C) Video quality is good for a consumer level video camera. The sound quality recorded through the internal microphone is good: i can hear the lectures I record very clearly and there is no annoying noise generated by the camera.

D) The charger that comes with this camera is very small. So you can carry that around as well and worry less about running out of battery.

CONS:

A) No mic jacks.

B) manual focus and light adjustments are done through menus.

C) The editing software that comes with it is limited.

D) The battery life is a mere hour(but you can buy a 3 hour battery for 70-80 dollars).

As with all camcorders, the still images shot with this camera are not at the level of quality you can get from a good still camera. It produces reasonable snapshots in well lit situations.

The video files recorded by this camera have a “.MOD” extension in their name. I replace “.MOD” with “.MPG” and most of my standard video viewing software automatically recognize the files.

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Great little camera, but night shooting a little grainy., November 24, 2005

I really like the long record time of this camera. I bought this camera for my trip to Europe, and it was great. It’s small, yet powerful. I could record off and on for days before having to dump the movies on my laptop. I would suggest getting a second battery, preferably the 3 hour. The 5 hour is almost the size of the camcorder itself, and made it heavier.

It was hard to find a case that is small enough for it, yet big enough to hold extra stuff like batteries. I bought the: CASE LOGIC TSC-4BLUE Sport Compact Camcorder Case. It doesn’t even look like a camcorder case, which I also like.

The software that comes with it takes some getting used to, but I think it works well.

Night recording is a little grainy, but not too bad. I love that it has a wide screen option. The stability software works well; the hand shaking is greatly reduced.

I don’t like the quality of the still pictures it takes, but I have a separate 8mp camera.

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works ok but…, December 12, 2005

By 

David John Hemmer (Buffalo, NY) – See all my reviews

  

This camera is easy to operate but when it comes to getting the footage on the camera turned into a DVD it is not so easy. I am a fairly comfortable and experienced computer user but not an expert. The software included has very inadequate instructions. For example it says “never plug the camera into the computer while the camera is turned on”. Later it says “don’t ever turn the camera on or off with it plugged into the computer”. Hmmm, this makes it awfully hard to transfer files! An email to JVC customer service received no reply!

Then the files come in multiple folders with odd names and extensions. The default file names are actually hexadecimal numbers! Good lord! How about using date and time instead?

It’s not clear if I can just save the .MOD files and delete the rest or not. Then when I burn files to DVD’s they invariably have skips, even though when I play them on my computer they look great. Maybe this isn’t the camera’s fault, maybe my DVD’s are cheap. Regardless i may find myself playing the camera back onto my TV and recording simultaneously onto VHS tapes if I can’t figure it all out!! At this point I have lots of nice videos on my hard drive with weird names and no DVD’s that I can play on my TV!

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Nice convergence 5mp digital camera and video cam in one, June 4, 2005

By 

Robert W. Bjoraker “Robert W. Bjoraker, Jr.” (Green Bay, WI) – See all my reviews

  

Had this digicam for about 24 hours and here are my first impressions:

I own a Panasonic SV AV100 which saves mpeg2 video and mpg4 to a SD card. It did it well and I was pleased with it, but the low resolution digital camera function was surpassed by some wireless phones. I wanted a device that took high resolution photos and digital mpeg2 video saved to a memory card that could be immediately loaded to PC and burnt to DVD. The JVC GZ-MC100 and MC200 took 2mp pictures and saved mpeg2 video to a 4 gb microdrive or SD card, but had poor low light performance – worse than my little Panasonic. So, it was with some anxiety that I shelled out 95 for the GZ-MC500.

I bought it hoping that the new 3CCD video chip would not only give better color video and good 5mp jpeg pictures, but that JVC would have taken the time to improve low light performance… and they did.

In bright light the automatic videocam performance of the camera is really good. Indoors without any light on and bright sunlight coming in the window, the video remained sharp with pretty good color saturation and no graininess to my eye when played back on TV directly from camera. The MC500 seems to really be working much, much better in low light conditions than the MC100/200s before it. At night with room lights on, I took more videos and although there was some dimming of the picture, the video was still bright and not grainy. Color still looked good though there was some loss of color saturation in those conditions. In a completely dark room, forget about it since there is no infrared function. But I did not care about that. Much better in low light than my Panasonic SV-AV100 overall. Microphone picked up voices/sounds in stereo very well.

The interface is intuitive and easy to navigate for me.

The camera bottom heats up while recording to microdrive and I never recorded more than 5 minutes of video but the heat build up was quite noticeable. Unlike my Panasonic, there is no remote control which is quite disappointing in a 00 digicam that is begging for immediate video playback to TV directly from camera.

In summary, I am both relieved at the camera’s good low light performance and very happy with the camera’s mpeg2 video quality and very happy with the 5mp jpeg picture performance. I would give this camera 4.5 stars out of five taking off 1/2 point for lack of remote control.

Go to this site and use translate option on google toolbar to read text or just download the duck video and jpegs to see this camera’s quality. Rename video .mod extension to .mpg to view in WMP. Remember this is 720 x 480 mpg2

(…)

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Depends on your purpose…, January 6, 2006

By 

Oral Inaler (Sweden) – See all my reviews

  

This small thing is so unique that your satisfaction level will only depend on what you need from a camcorder.

Firstly, everyone says this bug is not “that good” with low light. I can not agree with this, there are a few settings in the menu, and you can get really good results under low light. If you leave it at “auto” mode though, they’re right. It sometimes sucks!

It also has issues with the other meaning of “light”… Weight is so low. Combined with its narrow-angled default lens, that lightness causes too much shake in the picture. But that can be solved by installing a wider lens. I don’t like to turn on its digital image stabilizer, since it gives the picture an artificial effect, but it can work for you.

Another problem I experienced is: Your computer will see the camera as a hard disk. So when it’s plugged, your computer will not recognize your other external hard disks. I had a huge external USB hard disk to store videos, but I can not transfer video files from camera to that disk directly, coz the computer does not allow both of them at the same time. First you must transfer from camera to your main internal disk, than you must plug the big external disk and move files to that one.

Still image quality is really bad for 5 megapixels. That’s so clear.

But still I do not regret I bought this camcorder. The pain of capturing videos, splitting them, etc. are gone forever. You just drag & drop the files. And they already come splitted, because Everio takes every shot as another file. In other words, everytime you press the record/stop button, you create another video file. That’s sooo useful.

I tried the included software. That video editing software is really primary, it will bore you after learning the basics. But you can get real stuff from Adobe instead. They offer trial versions of Premiere on the site.

Finally, buy this camcorder if you care about:

1) Easier editing

2) Size and Weight

3) 3 CCD (Not a big difference though)

And do not buy if you care about:

1) Need long battery life

2) Will make 1-piece long shootings, like sport matches, conferences, etc.

3) Have Parkinson disease

4) Will use more for still pix, than video

Since editing is my priority, I rate it with four stars, but your rating will only depend on your purpose.

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Very difficult choice, especially with such high cost, December 10, 2005

I must say that amount of excitement and thrill I had with extremely high degree of anticipated satisfaction while I was getting this item packed, it didn’t make it to my satisfaction in reality owing to vedio quality I’m getting for such a high price.

Good things:

1. Very compact, easy to carry

2. If someone is not too much fuss about quality, both video and still picture in one device which is great

3. Digital to digital transfer, saves heaps of time and pain for transfer from camera to PC. I have bought a portable hard disk of 40 GB capacity so that on trip I can transfer from camera to it without needing to carry my laptop everywhere

4. One of the very nice things I liked is ability to record just voice. Especially voice quality is pretty good so it is much appreciated feature.

Bad:

1. Video quality is good but not so good as one would expect with 3 CCD, digital storage and so much price. Final picture looks like as if a high quality recording with a dirty lense.

2. There is no manual view finder. so if sun is on on your back, you can’t see a thing in digital view finder

3. Operation of record and stop button is not very ergonomic. I get strain my hand

4. Gets heated up very quickly.

5. Button to switch between still and video is pathetic. I never able to get it in right position

6. I’m surprised that JVC forced to adopt to Cyberlink editing software by creating .mod files. I hate it to bottom of my heart. I have to first open files in cyberlink software, create an AVI file which I then import into another video editing software like movie maker or Sony Vegas. This is extremely painful since it is time consuming and I suspect I’m loosing quality also.

7. Even though still picture resolution is 5 mega pixel, I don’t get is quite as good I use to get in Sony 5 mega pixel even after using tripod.

8. Battery life is not very good.

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Indoor picture quality not sufficient., May 11, 2006

First the good: this camera is small and very convenient in MANY ways and you don’t have the cost of tapes or mini CD’s. And if you are a little computer savvy, the file format issue that people are always complaining about really isn’t that big of a deal. I have Pinnacle Studio Plus 9.x (ie, with all the latest online updates to that version) and it handles the files just fine once you rename the file extension from .mod to .mpg. I’ve seen a lot of reviews here and elsewhere on the Internet that Adobe Elements Premiere 2.0 also handles the files just fine. I think ULead and a few others might as well. If you aren’t that computer savvy (and don’t necessarily want to be), then you may want to consider another camera just for this reason alone (unless perhaps you buy JVC’s external DVD burner drive and are happy with mostly unedited clips).

However, I have learned my lesson by putting too much trust in Amazon’s online reviews and discounting what is said in official reviews too much sometimes. I don’t think any of the reviews here mention this camera’s poor indoor (low-med light) picture quality… so I figured the official reviews of it I found elsewhere online were just being too picky. PC Magazine does a good job of describing the poor (especially low to medium light) picture quality in their Oct 17, 2005 review of this camera (you can find it by searching PCMag.com – search on “GZ-MG30″). I’m sure there are many other reviews noting the picture quality issue as well.

I am giving this a 2 rating (really s/b about 2.5, no option for that) because I feel the low to medium light picture quality issue is enough to sink this camera for many people… especially at this price (I paid 0). If it was only 0, then I would have given it 3 stars (for overall price/value). If you will be using it almost exclusively outdoors, then I could probably give it a begrudging 4 stars.

For my all-around purposes, I am dissatisfied with this camera and wish I could return it. If you don’t have good video quality, then nothing else really matters, does it? For some people, this camera might be just fine, but for the rest, I hope this review saves you from a costly mistake.

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Good product, bad recording format, January 7, 2006

By 

James G. Henderson “jimghenderson” (IA United States) – See all my reviews

  

The image quality, small form-factor, small size, large hard drive, and battery life make this a winner. However, the .mod files are a pain in the butt. The only thing that you can view these with is the PowerDVD viewer. In order to convert these files to AVI or MPEG I had to by something called Power Producer, and let the computer work for an hour to convert a large file to MPEG. That’s just wrong. The camara should have an option to compress to MPEG. This is similar to what the early Kodak digital camaras, such as the DC-120, did in saving images to the proprietary .kdc format. A royal pain.

Hopefully generation 2 will have MPEG conversion built in.

Anyhow, better and easier than converting from tape. A buy if you need a camcorder now.

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JVC Everio Hard Disk Camcorder, February 9, 2006

I waited a while before writing my review to really experience this camera. I have to say I love it. I went through some trial and error in the beginning but I really am enjoying the camera. I am not a professional videographer so this camera is fine for me. I have been taping all my son’s basketball games and after a few times, I finally found a sports mode which works great. The camera is a perfect size. The convenience of not using tapes is incredible. I would suggest downloading your film often. It takes 11 minutes to download about an hour worth of filming. Since the camera can hold over 30 hours of information, I would not suggest downloading all the material at once. I have not used the software that came with the camera. After reading other reviews on the internet, I decided to get Adobe Premier Elements 2.0 which I am very satisfied with. The camera records in .MOD format so you need this software to convert it to MPEG. Yes, it takes a while for the process to complete, but once it is done, it is ready to be burned onto a DVD. You can also save the MPEG file to watch your entire movie on the computer in Windows Media Player. I would strongly suggest having at least a gig of ram and alot of hard drive if you plan on filming alot and keeping the footage on your computer. Even though this is the first hard disk camera, I am very happy with it for my use. Anyone that wants to record family events, games, etc., and is computer literate, this camera is for you. Would I recommend it to a professional videographer? No. The film quality is the same as a mini-dv or hi-8 recorder. The menu buttons are small, but easy to use and simplified. If anyone has this camera and has some good tips for me, please email me [...].

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