HDMI Question
 

HI guys. OK I am waiting for my new HM100u (Back ordered from Full Compass). I will be using this in my studio and filming mostly green screen work. In the past I have hooked my camera up with the firewire port directly into my PC and then captured the stream with Sony Vegas 9.0. Everything worked great. It also allowed me to quickly show my clients how they looked and we could make changes as needed.

So the JVC HM100u doesn't have a firewire port to stream from but It does have an HDMI port & I have a blackmajic HDMI card in my PC. So My question is does the HDMI port provide the same video quality as what is stored on the SD cards. Full HD at 35 mbps etc etc? If so then I will just capture the HDMI video stream with Vegas like I did before. If not then I will be forced to transfer the video files from the card.

Any help or suggestions are appreciated. Thank you Looking forward to getting my videocam!

HDMI-Recording
 

Stephen,
yes, you can hook up the HM100 to the Blackmagic HDMI-port. The signal at the HDMI interface is uncompressed HD with 4:2:2 colorspace. So it is not the compressed 35 Mbit/s MPEG-stream which is recorded to the SDHC-cards.

If you make green screen shots, the uncompressed 4:2:2 signal is by far better than th compressed MPEG stream (which is 4:2:0 color coded).

You will need a powerful computer and a fast harddisk (even better a RAID 0 set) for recording uncompressed HD.

An alternative would be to use Cineform NeoHD software, which allows to capture in Cineform HDCodec fomat via the Decklink card. Bitrate is then lower than uncompressed video. I do not know whether Vegas is natively enabled for recording via Decklink in a mode other than uncompressed.

Joachim

Thank you
 

Thanks Joachim.

I have a fast PC. I got lucky & had access to a demo GY-HM100u for a couple of hours. I hooked it up to my Blackmajic HDMI port and figured out the Vegas settings to grab the stream. Everything seemed to work fine except it dropped a frame every now & then. Nothing I can't live with. I just wasn't sure if the HDMI stream was better quality video than what was recorded on the SD cards. I shoot short 30 second to 3 minute videos in front of my green screen so I should be OK with disk space.

By your response, I'm assuming that I should always use the HDMI stream if quality is paramount & Disk space & speed are not an issue?

HDMI-Recording
 

Yes, HDMI-output of the HM100 is the native video as seen by the camcorder before being encoded to MPEG 2. It is the highest quality you can get with the camcorder. For Blue/green-screening the 4:2:2 color sampling is edeal.
Joachim

Thanks
 

Great. That's what I wanted to know. I appreciate your input. Now I just need the camera delivered. Still on back order. Merry Christmas!

Hi there Stephen, I'm in the market to buy hm100. I went Full Compass and they did not advertise the price? Seems like there having a special, what did you pay. Thanks Matt.

Full Compass Price
 

They have it for $2436.75 plus $25.00 for Shipping & Handling. This was the best price I found from a reputable place. They were on back order the last 4 weeks but just now came in. Mine shipped yesterday & I am pumped to get it. I wouldn't wait to order it if I were you.

wow that is a killer price! B&h has it for around 2700 and change. Are you going for the extended warranty? Thanks for info!!

Warranties
 

I think B & H & many others have it for $2795 so you save over $350 at Full Compass. I couldn't pass it up. I'm just going with the standard warranty that comes with it. I don't believe in extended warranties. They are just money makers for the seller (other wise they wouldn't be doing it right?).

Yeah I think I will be ordering from them. I would go with the extended warranty for a few reasons, the main one is when and if I ever sell the camera its always easier to sell anything with a warranty. So a 300 investment today will help me sell a used camera 2 years down the road.