JVC GY-HMZ1U ProHD 3D Camcorder

[Carlton Bright]

Hi Chad,
It sounds like you are not happy with the camera in general.
It took a while to get into the swing of it, but here is 2 minutes of footage with the JVC (the GS-TD1) and some of the footage is with the Cyclopital base-extender, and a few macro lenses too.

JVC 3D camera & The CYCLOPITAL Extender (2 min) on Vimeo

The camera reminds me of the WWII "Jeep" or the 1960's VW Bug..you add to it, etc.

[Prech Marton]

What do you guys recommend for recording nice 3D nature footage?
TD1/Z1U is not sharp enough, TD10/NX3D1 has lot of noise in lowlight,
TD20 base is very small, Pana Z10000 is out of the budget..
Why Canon don't release a good, affordable cam? Because they don't have 3DTV-s?

[Chad Dyle]

I ride in a Mardi Gras parade (Thoth) each year and usually bring a camera to two to play with during our stops. I decided to give the JVC another shot. These are the settings I used:

Manual
Scene Select Off
Focus Auto
Brightness Adjust Auto
Shutter Speed Auto
Aperture Priority Manual
White Balance Auto
Backlight Comp Off
Zebra 70-80%
Cinema Off
Touch Priority AE/AF Off
DIS +1
Gain Up Off
Wind Cut Off
Grid Off
Time Lapse Off
System Select 24p
User Button Setting controlled Aperture
3D Sound On
Mic Level On
Mic Level Setting 0


With these settings the camera should autofocus and allow me to adjust the Aperture by using the User button. I had it set to 5.6 most of the time, which is as high as it would go. After converting the footage, it just doesn't look that sharp. Am I doing something wrong here? Is this camera defective? I can understand getting the grainy look when shooting low light, but this was outside. I have uploaded one of the files for you to look at and give me your thoughts.

www.dylefilms.com/Files/MardiGras.mp4

I would appreciate any help/suggestions that you can offer.

Thank you,

Chad Dyle
Dyle Films - Wedding/Event Videography

[Bruce Schultz]

I'm looking through this thread after a few off weeks and I'd like to chime in and say that as an owner of 4 different 3D cameras ( Panasonic 3DA1, Sony NX3D1, Sony TD10, and an F3 mirror rig) my experiences with the NX3D1 in 24P and TD10 in 60i are more pleasing than what's been described here about the JVC and Panasonic cameras. The posts that point out that both Sony 3D cameras exhibit noise at low light levels are correct, however, in decently or well lit as well as exterior settings the performance is very acceptable and maintain good degrees of sharpness. It also appears to be easier to split and edit the MVC footage out of the Sony's vs others.

[Chad Dyle]

Bruce,

I have heard from others that have had good luck with this camera. I have contacted JVC to see what my options are. Did you have a chance to look at the clip I linked? That is the look that I get, no matter if the camera is in Auto or Manual. Hopefully I will hear back from JVC with some thoughts/ideas. I'm also not sure how popular this camera is right now. I haven't found a lot of info on other forums.

-Chad

[Paul Newman]

Chad,

I just checked your clip, wow, its really noisy, especially for daylight. Also it has very bad encoder artifacts too - and it appears quite soft.

I only have my Sony TD10 to compare this with in the 3D camera range, but I'm used to my EX1 in basic quality terms, and I must say whilst the TD10 does suffer a little from low light noise, it continues to surprise me with its overall image quality.

Anything which is noisy is easily treated with NeatVideo plugin, which cleans up noisy material extremely well.

Is the JVC recording at its highest bit rate? I know this sounds stupid, but it looks like 7mbs rather that say 28mbs avchd.

Hope you sort it out

Paul :-)

[Carlton Bright]

Chad,
Perhaps that camera is indeed defective.
The footage looks like the GAIN is always on and cannot be turned off, and does not get overridden by adaquate light or something,
That is just a hunch.
C-

Maybe you can do an A-B comparison with an Identical model?

[Chad Dyle]

Paul: The only thing I'm doing to the clips is using the JVC program to split them. Anything else is all done in camera. I have the Neat plug-in and it is amazing. I just don't want to think that I have to use it on everything the camera captures.

Carlton: I'm still waiting to hear back from JVC on the camera. The Gain has on/off and I always keep it on off, even in Auto. I don't know of any camera out there that won't jack up the Gain as far as it can. I'm going to try to 2D/3D stuff later and see what happens.

Thanks for the help.

[Carlton Bright]

The camera appears to use gain even though you have it switched off.
It could be a defective camera.

As a seperate issue, how does the squeezed AVCHD look?

[Chad Dyle]

Carlton,

The camera seemed to work best in direct daylight when we were at the Pumpkin patch for Halloween. I put a few clips together and threw it up on our 3D projector. I was happy with the quality. The only issue is the gain problem.

[Carlton Bright]

Ah, well the graininess of the Mardi Gras footage has the look of a camera with its gain is permanantly on, whether the gain switch is on or off, or in low light or in bright sun light.
Just tossing that out as a thought-
Good luck with the camera.
C-

[Chad Dyle]

JVC contacted me yesterday and I forwarded them the footage. I'll keep you all updated on what happens.

-Chad

[Chad Dyle]

I'm still waiting to hear back from JVC. The support rep that contacted me hasn't been able to download one of my clips from my ftp site, direct email or the upload link that JVC sent me. Maybe it isn't the camera after all, maybe my computer just hates me. I'm starting to get a little aggravated with the support team and making a direct call doesn't seem to work either.

[Chad Dyle]

If there are any users of the GY-HMZ1U out there, would you be kind enough to email me the L/R splitter software that came with the camera? My iMac died and I can't find the disc. I need to get some footage off of it that I shot this past weekend. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Chad Dyle

[Jim Harp]

Hello all, I'm new here and greatly appreciate all the information. My main interest in 3D has been still photography, particularly medium-format film. I do have a W3 which I've shot some video on.

The GY-HMZ1U is currently available at B&H for $969, (!!!) only $120 more than the "non-pro" GS-TD1. At that price I couldn't resist it. I shot some test footage at a carnival last night using the AVCHD mode. I'm very impressed with the quality of the images in low light as seen on my LG42LM6200 TV.

One comment - why don't manufacturers put levels on the top of these devices?