New JVC 3ccd ...World's Smallest
 

New JVC Everio GZ-MC500: World's Smallest 3CCD

http://www.i4u.com/article2827.html

Wow, that thing is tiny. If I could afford to throw away cash like that, I'd buy one and keep it on me all the time.

Can't wait to see what real world testing has to say about this model.

Does 3CCD's mean inherently better low-light abilities (assuming chip size/pixel count is the same as the other two models)?

3CCD will mean better color reproduction. Now, I haven't heard anyone ever say this, but I believe 3CCD inherently means worse low-light performance, since the light is being split three ways for the CCDs. The minimum lux rating on the Panasonic 3CCD cameras is fairly high, 12lux?

You might be right.

I think, now, that only the 1-chippers with color filters suffered a low-light ability hit compared to 3-chippers (i.e. Optura Xi).

You guys do realise this camcorder is tapeless and records straight to hard-drive? It's awesome and a sign of what's to come.

I'd buy this if it didn't record MPEG2
 

This is so perfect for what I need except the recording to MPEG2. You can't edit easily with it. I hope they make one that records to DV or HDV. Better yet, I hope Sony makes something like this that records to HDV.

that thing is awesome. Take that cam and a laptop with editing software and you can pack your documentary gear into a small backpack!

Brandon - you are absolutely right.

It does not matter if you have the worlds greatest SuperHDV camera, if it is standing on a shelf, because it is to difficult to carry with you. I think that we gonna se an explosive growth in videoblogs and documentaries due to these solid state cameras.

I loaned a MC200 for several weeks, and it went with me everwhere. Using a program like Ulead DVDFactory made DVD creation a snap. I tried transcoding the MPEG2 video to DV and the results was absolutely usable.

Too bad that JVC uses a stange variation of AC3 encoding, thats not playing back in all programs.

interesting camera
 

This little camera is very intriguing to me, so much i had to register just to comment.

According to the JVC australia sight its sensor is 1280x720 but your only option for output is 720x480 60/50i mpeg2

http://www.jvc-australia.com/everio_web/spec/index.html

i for one would like to see 1280x720 30p

but really.... 854x480 60p along with 655x480 60p, now that would be very, very interesting.

Couple in a HDMI connector and you have a very compelling solution for providing digital content to wide screen projectors.

And what do you use to play the content, of course the camera itself but how about all of those media PC's popping up?

JVC hint hint.....

David

Its cute, but I'd have absolutely no use for it whatsoever. I can see backpackers etc having a like for it, but I doubt it could stand the rough environment at all, and shooting stablily with something so small... lack of manual controls (due to no room to put the buttons!) and just generally hard to use...

A good concept, a nice "we can do this", but there's no way in a million years I'd even consider buying it.

Why not convert it to an easily editable format? HDCAM isn't easily editable - it's almost 6 times the data of 25 Mbit/s DV. Most editors don't edit straight on that but rather a lower res proxy. HDCAM SR is 440ish Mbit/s. Not easily editable (yes, for entirely different reasons than HDV - remainder is the same).

If something does what you need to have done, learn to work the way it operates to best do what it does :-)

Also, HDV is an mpeg2 format.

But HDV is a standard supported by several video editors (FCP, Vegas, Avid soon)

i don't understand the problem, mpeg2 is supported by these editors, at least the first two.

These editors can export to MPEG2 but they can't edit in the MPEG2 format. If you have an MPEG2 file you have to convert it to something usable before editing it.

I can't imagine buying this camera for a few reasons. First, it's too small. Whenever I go out on a film shoot I commonly have to bring extra support equipment for my little 4 pound camera, so imagine something that small. Another reason is no viewfinder. Ever try to shoot with no viewfinder on a sunny day? The final reason is simple: You only have one drive. The max you can shoot at any good datarate will be about 1-1.5 hours on that drive, maybe 2 if you have ultra-compression. Once you've shot it out, it's over. You can't do anything more until you transfer all that out to a computer. That's a huge downside for me. I commonly travel 8-10 hours by car to get to my film shoots, where I'm often around no computers (and sometimes no power), so I'd have a hell of a time trying to work with one of these.

How big are the CCD's on this little guy?

1/4th inch?

I Wonder if it'll have manual controls..maybe via remote control?

Chris,
I believe that Pinnacle EDITION , Canopus Edius, Ulead and Womble will all edit in native MPEG2 ( including HDV m2t files for most).

Ron Evans

I don't think the professional market is the intended target with this product.

As I understand these things, for same size chips, the three chiper should get both better color AND better low light performance. A single chipper has trios of sensors each with its own color filter for that spot. So the red receptor covers, at best 30% of the chip. With a three chipper, there are dichroic beam splitters that pass just the right color to each chip, (only red light to the red chip, other colors to theirs, no absorption to speak of) ... and then the receptor can cover nearly the entire area of the chip, say, 90%.

Its easy to dismiss this as having "only" a 2 or 4 gig CF card for a drive...but as soon as these get in the marketplace, you will upload the chip into your 40 or 60 gig "media player" and move on. Perhaps you upload one while recording on another. Lets not forget that an entire mini-DV tape and its fragile drive only has a raw, uncompressed capacity of about 13 gigs. Chips will gobble up that diaparity in just a few years.

http://www.jvc.co.uk/article.php?id=100365&catid=2

More JVC hard drive cameras.

JVC made a huge mistake by not including a "DV" mode using standard DV compression......for now all the modes use a "DVD" type mode which means mpeg-2 compression........these camcorder companies have to realise that the average "prosumer" will likely want to edit the videos and should include a DV type codec for standard pc/mac editing......mpeg-2 is tough enough with the new HDV formats.
Let's hope Canon or Panasonic gets it right with their hd cams when they come out.

i have the little panasonic av100, which records 6 mbps mpeg2 onto memory chips... it's smaller than any of those jvc mpeg2 cameras, and that portability gives you a whole new outlook on consumer shooting.

i schlepped it all over manhattan last summer, carried it in my pocket... it's even smaller than the canon digital still camera i carried... you have to experience it to appreciate it... i did not have any issues with the lack of viewfinder, either.

Portability is great- but manufacturers keep thinking we need mpeg-2 "DVD" quality compression.....what most of us really need is a readily easy to edit format which is either DV or HDV- only the newest NLE's can work with mpeg-2 footage and usually recompress which isn't good- I love the tapeless idea- but give us a choice of codecs other than various levels of mpeg-2 compression.

It does seem kind of weird that they didn't include DV25 compression considering the size of the HDDs.

Maybe it has to do with the transfer speeds of the drives they're using?

the reason they use mpeg2 is because it's ready to burn to a dvd, no encoding required... hopefully jvc included some halfway decent software for that.

Anybody try this camera yet? I see it at this store called Futureonics whenever I go to the Fashionshow Mall here in Las Vegas all the time. It looks pretty interesting, but it's $1800 and I'd rather save that money for one of the future HD cameras. But some people must buy these things, so anybody got one yet?

Yep- bnought one today and did some testing regarding a Mac solution to editing the .mod files this camcorder produces. (PC editing is possible with the included CD-Rom software)

Here's the scenario as I see it: the .mod files produced by the camera are muxed mpeg-2 files with the audio mixed in a non-standard Dolby Digital Stereo setup. This causes the video to be played (when renamed to .mpg) correctly in QT (and QT Pro) but no audio is played (although present.) The video has to be converted into a format FCP (or iMovie) can use natively. The ideal solution would be to edit the native mpeg-2 file without conversion- but this isn't possible with the present form of Quicktime (this may change in the future.)

I've used a very well lit clip with some sharp edges and subtle graduations to visually scrutinize the video clip and used the raw .mod renamed to .mpg clip as the "bar" conversions would be "up against."
Using Mpeg Streamclip (free download) I converted the .mod files to several presets and checked individual frames for variations to the original mod file. The absolute best quality with NO LOSS in video quality was produced by simply "demuxing" the clip into seperate video/audio files called .m2v and aiff (headed also works but doesn't change quality and is not needed) and these files can be imported into FCP but you'll need to create a custom sequence preset and when you get everything set just right- the clips will need rendering once imported into the sequence ~ FCP uses the QT engine and I haven't been able to produce a sequence preset that DIDN'T need rendering- if someone figures out the parameters- please post them here for us.
...after some variations in Mpeg Streamclip settings- I've found that using the DVCPRO codec produced the best image quality retaining about 97% of the original's quality- which is quite superb. The best part of using the DVCPRO codec is that you gain all the realtime effects and power FCP is capable of and both iMovie and FCP can use the files natively as normal DV! The downside is that the file sizes will be about 3X that of the original mod file. An hour of DV is about 13GB- so your 4GB Microdrive will end up producing 13GB of data on your Mac (no big deal considering todays cheap HD prices.)

Word of caution: some people have been using DropDV and I've tried this software. It produces a blurred conversion and isn't as good as the DV files Mpeg Streamclip produces (which are as sharp as the original mod files)....I urge users to try both free conversion utilities and check the results yourself. I am using an Apple 23" HD Cinema Display and was disappointed with the DropDV files. DropDV has the convenience of allowing "batch" processing by multiple file drop- but the quality isn't worthy in my opinion. If the program changes it's compression to DV- it would be worth a look.

Also note that when using Mpeg Streamclip, it's best to copy the .mod files to the computers HD and create another folder for the Dv conversions, as working from the Microdrive slows the entire conversion process a great deal...you can always delete the source .mod files after the conversion is done.

Another note worth considering is that there are a few variations to the DV codec and that DVCPRO 50 which has much higher data rates and 2X the file size of "normal" DV does indeed produce a 1%-3% better video. The penalty of a 2X file size maybe worth the effort for those trying to extract maximum quality from the original .mod files.

I was going to export stills and create a website showing just the results I've outlined here- but I don't think there are many Mac users using the MC500 and the relatively low postings on this forum (for the Everio series) led me to believe the effort might not be appreciated by many.

I hope this helps those that might be looking for a Mac solution to editing video from the Everio camcorders. If QT ever gains the ability to play the Dolby Digital Stereo portion of the muxed .mod file- we'll likely be able to edit the .mod files natively within FCP and iMovie.

If anyone cares to drop observations or comments- feel free to post them here.

Thanks everyone.

Here's a quick 3.7mb video shot with the 3CCD Everio MC500 in H.264 codec, quickly edited in FCP using the above procedure.

http://www.stevenunez.com/videos/omantis264.mov

Pretty impressive look since I am very dissapointed in this technology. Guess it is a great idea for purely consumer grade application. Have any footage without using close up shots? I'd be interested to see how it looks with long shots or some mediums.

Coming soon- I'll post when I shoot something wide angle.

(Note: that was shot without any adapters or filters- the camera has good macro potential!)

Looking forward to it....

Any more from this camera? I really liked what you did and am thinking of getting one. I am just in the process of buying a Mac and have never used FCP so your explanation of how to get the video in was a bit over my head but I will deal with that later. Is that camera really as small as it looks?
Thanks.