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JVC Everio GZ-HD and GZ-HM Series
JVC's Everio Series 3CCD High Definition MPEG2 camcorders.

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Old April 10th, 2007, 01:56 AM   #16
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I hope if you were in the market you bit over the weekend, cause they have now pulled the $200 savings.
Not to worry, there will be discounts glore. Try B&H.
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Old April 26th, 2007, 05:56 PM   #17
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JVC Everio HD GZ-HD7 quick report and question.

Got my JVC GZ-HD7 yesterday and bought it sight unseen solely based on all the tech specs and after handling the HV10 and HV20 and seriously considered them. I run Nikon cameras and have some time on higher end systems like the Canon XL-H1 and JVC GY-HD100U and wanted something small that would be easier to haul around and if damaged, wouldn't be quite as big a deal as one of the big ones. While I was impressed with what the canon could do, when I held it, it felt light and cheap to me. Again, I'm sure its a wonderful camera I just liked the 3 CCD option on the JVC more and was willing to pay a few bucks more for the 3 CCD. Also has the black & white with blue focus assist feature just like the GY-HD100U and that has come in very useful in the past.

I love the new JVC GZ-HD7! Actually suprised me! The workflow with the hard drive will take some getting used to, but once the plugin for quicktime/Final Cut Pro/Imovie was installed on the Mac, I was VERY VERY impressed with the 1920x1080 picture that showed up on screen even just dumping the TOD file onto a folder then opening it up in Imovie which comes on every new Mac. The Everio HD will hold 5 hours (yes, 5 full hours) of FULL HD 1920x1080 on it's 60 gig drive. Plenty of space.

I did a quick 11 second clip in "full HD" mode (1920x1080) and plugged HDMI directly to a Sony XBR Grand Wega 60" and voila, as promised, incredible detail and ABSOLUTELY VIBRANT COLOR. Couldn't be happier.Left everything set to auto, didn't make a single custom setting change at all. Exported it as a full HD Quicktime file and OH MY GOSH, 146 meg quicktime file for 11 second clip......wow, that's a lot of data. Obviously compresses entirely differently on the camera or using Apple 422 codec, but THAT'S A LOT OF DATA!

Now, here's the issue. I run the latest Final Cut Studio Production Suite and for some reason, cannot get the TOD file to import into Final Cut Studio....errors out every time. I'm sure I'm not doing something correctly, but for the life of me can't figure out what. Probably something to do with the preferances in setting up a new sequence, but again, not sure.

Anyone else with this same camera and Final Cut Studio have any solutions?
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Old May 2nd, 2007, 04:36 PM   #18
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Originally Posted by Drew Bigelow View Post
Got my JVC GZ-HD7 yesterday and bought it sight unseen solely based on all the tech specs and after handling the HV10 and HV20 and seriously considered them. I run Nikon cameras and have some time on higher end systems like the Canon XL-H1 and JVC GY-HD100U and wanted something small that would be easier to haul around and if damaged, wouldn't be quite as big a deal as one of the big ones. While I was impressed with what the canon could do, when I held it, it felt light and cheap to me. Again, I'm sure its a wonderful camera I just liked the 3 CCD option on the JVC more and was willing to pay a few bucks more for the 3 CCD. Also has the black & white with blue focus assist feature just like the GY-HD100U and that has come in very useful in the past.

I love the new JVC GZ-HD7! Actually suprised me! The workflow with the hard drive will take some getting used to, but once the plugin for quicktime/Final Cut Pro/Imovie was installed on the Mac, I was VERY VERY impressed with the 1920x1080 picture that showed up on screen even just dumping the TOD file onto a folder then opening it up in Imovie which comes on every new Mac. The Everio HD will hold 5 hours (yes, 5 full hours) of FULL HD 1920x1080 on it's 60 gig drive. Plenty of space.

I did a quick 11 second clip in "full HD" mode (1920x1080) and plugged HDMI directly to a Sony XBR Grand Wega 60" and voila, as promised, incredible detail and ABSOLUTELY VIBRANT COLOR. Couldn't be happier.Left everything set to auto, didn't make a single custom setting change at all. Exported it as a full HD Quicktime file and OH MY GOSH, 146 meg quicktime file for 11 second clip......wow, that's a lot of data. Obviously compresses entirely differently on the camera or using Apple 422 codec, but THAT'S A LOT OF DATA!

Now, here's the issue. I run the latest Final Cut Studio Production Suite and for some reason, cannot get the TOD file to import into Final Cut Studio....errors out every time. I'm sure I'm not doing something correctly, but for the life of me can't figure out what. Probably something to do with the preferances in setting up a new sequence, but again, not sure.

Anyone else with this same camera and Final Cut Studio have any solutions?
Do you know if you can edit it intermixed with HDV?

In my case I edit with Avid Xpress HD, and I don't know if the HD7 codec is already provided for.
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Old May 11th, 2007, 07:59 AM   #19
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Hi, all. I handle PR for JVC here in the U.S. Here are some links to help with editing HD7 footage with a Mac:

Tutorials for both Windows & Apple:
http://software.transdigital.co.jp/p...eng/index.html

MAC FAQ:
http://software.transdigital.co.jp/p...g/mac_faq.html

And if you're using Windows:
Windows FAQ:
http://software.transdigital.co.jp/p...g/win_faq.html
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Old May 17th, 2007, 07:32 AM   #20
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Originally Posted by Terry Shea View Post
Hi, all. I handle PR for JVC here in the U.S. Here are some links to help with editing HD7 footage with a Mac:

Tutorials for both Windows & Apple:
http://software.transdigital.co.jp/p...eng/index.html

MAC FAQ:
http://software.transdigital.co.jp/p...g/mac_faq.html

And if you're using Windows:
Windows FAQ:
http://software.transdigital.co.jp/p...g/win_faq.html
Can you tell me how I can edit HD7 footage with a PC, particularly with Avid Xpress?
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Old May 27th, 2007, 05:36 PM   #21
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Originally Posted by Carlos E. Martinez View Post
Can you tell me how I can edit HD7 footage with a PC, particularly with Avid Xpress?

Copy to your PC HD and change the .TOD file extension to .M2T and import into Avid. Works on Liquid.

I found a thread on the Avid forums on this camcorder. I am looking at it as a "B roll" for weddings with my hd110. De interlacing is my biggest concern tho. My issue is mixing 720p with 1080i on a 720p timeline.

Ian
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Old May 28th, 2007, 06:12 AM   #22
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Copy to your PC HD and change the .TOD file extension to .M2T and import into Avid. Works on Liquid.
Clever, very clever. Now at least I can start thinking it might work. Thanks

Quote:
I found a thread on the Avid forums on this camcorder.
Do you have the URL for that forum. Is it here on DV Info?

Quote:
I am looking at it as a "B roll" for weddings with my hd110. De interlacing is my biggest concern tho. My issue is mixing 720p with 1080i on a 720p timeline.
In my case I would be mixing with 1080i, so maybe that's less of a problem.

It would be a B or C camera for me too. But it's affordable and has 3 CCDs, instead of the Sony A1, which it's HDV semi-pro and has just one CMOS.

It's not much better than their HDV consumer models, which BTW I will be testing one type of soon: the Sony HC7, PAL version. On a job I am involved in, shooting with Z1 @ 1080/50i for transferring to 35mm later on, we would be using the HC7 to capture to Mac. And the director will be handling it during shooting as his "personal angle camera".

Getting back to the JVC HD7, it looks as a potentially very interesting camera, which can go insconspicuous on many situations. But I have to see how it mixes in with the Z1.
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Old May 28th, 2007, 07:01 AM   #23
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GZ-HD7 output

There's one thing I hadn't seen until now: how do you connect the HD7 to the PC to download HD from the internal HDD?

From what I have just seen at the specs, there is no 1394 interface or any other type to make a digital download from. There's HDMI, but I don't know how to interface that with a computer.

Does anyone know how to solve that quiz?

Last edited by Carlos E. Martinez; May 28th, 2007 at 07:17 PM.
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Old May 30th, 2007, 06:21 AM   #24
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Originally Posted by Carlos E. Martinez View Post
There's one thing I hadn't seen until now: how do you connect the HD7 to the PC to download HD from the internal HDD?

From what I have just seen at the specs, there is no 1394 interface or any other type to make a digital download from. There's HDMI, but I don't know how to interface that with a computer.

Does anyone know how to solve that quiz?
If you look at this JVC spec. page and scroll down, you will see USB 2.0 listed.

http://www.jvc.com/product.jsp?model...hId=141&page=3
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Old May 30th, 2007, 01:25 PM   #25
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According the to the FAQ above, I should do the following to edit with FCP:

Quote:
Q8 I’m unable to play video files with Final Cut Pro smoothly. It takes a long time to read a video file into Final Cut Pro.

A8 We do not recommend reading a video file (extension: .TOD) directly into Final Cut Pro. Use QuickTime Player to convert the file into a QuickTime movie file (extension: .MOV) in Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC format) and then read it into Final Cut Pro.
I know the AIC suffers a slight loss in resolution, but what about a straight conversion to .mov? I'm assuming they will be full 1920x1080 60i video files that can be edited as as regular HD or HDV files.
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Old June 18th, 2007, 11:06 AM   #26
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what frame rates can this camera handle?
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Old June 18th, 2007, 11:56 AM   #27
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what frame rates can this camera handle?
60i only which is unfortunate considering it has progressive CCDs. Since Sony and Panasonic are replacing their non tape camcorders quickly, I think JVC should replace the HD7 with one that has progressive modes and a better stabilizer.

Last edited by Paulo Teixeira; June 18th, 2007 at 08:57 PM.
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Old June 29th, 2007, 05:01 PM   #28
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JVC serious about Mac support or not?

Does anyone know if JVC is serious about Mac support for this camera or not? I was so annoyed to find out that their QuickTime plugin won't play the TOD files in real time on my brand-spanking-new MacBook Pro (and very disappointed in JVC's tech support response telling me that my system might not meet the minimum requirements). It was really annoying to have to transcode from the TOD format to HDV (or AIC) in iMovie at something like 4 times *longer* than real time. I think that the Japanese company that JVC contracted with to write the QT plugging probably didn't do any type of code optimization at all to take advantage of the Mac's GPU features.

I really want to like this camera (and keep it) but it's got to be better integrated with my Mac workflow. Right now the JVC/Transdigital claim that this is supported under iMovie and FCP rings pretty darn hollow.
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Old July 11th, 2007, 02:59 AM   #29
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JVC GZ-HD7 impressions

So I spent 10 days with the JVC GZ-HD7 shooting in Southern California and I have to say that I really like this camera. I like the feel of the camera in my hand, I like the ability to offload all my day's shooting via USB to my MacBook Pro just as if I were copying files from a hard disk (well, I guess I am), I like the ability to review anything that I've shot in the field while I'm in the field without having to worry about which tape the shots are on or winding the tape back and forth to get to where I want to be.

I bought three extra high-capacity batteries (JVC BNVF823US, the "4 hour" batteries) and two stand-alone chargers (JVC BN-VF8) and I never ran out of battery power since I am religious about charging all my batteries after each day's shooting.

Some down sides to the camera - if you stack on too many filters - I had a UV filter and then a circular polarizer - you will see the edges of the filters in the image, and if you then put a hood on the stack, you wind up with an image that looks like a cheap porn video (not that I would know what a cheap porn video looks like of course, and no offense to those of you that shoot and edit cheap porn videos ;-). My solution was to get a 46mm to 77mm adapter ring, put a 77mm circular polarizer on that, and then put a 77mm round hood on the end of that whole mess. Even so, I can't fully extend the hood without seeing part of it in the image. I have read where someone has actually gone to some 80mm+ ring and hood in order to resolve this problem.

Another thing I noticed about my camera, not sure if it's a common design of all units, is that the lens and/or sensor seem to be mounted off-center WRT the filter - what I mean is, if you were to shoot a straight line out of the center of the camera's lens, it would not go through the center of the attached filter, but rather go slightly to the left of center. This is severe enough such that it affects the size of step-up ring/filter/lens hood, since anything much smaller than 77mm caused the filter/hood to block the right side of the image. I've asked JVC about this, let's see what they have to say.

Finally, I'm back in my studio now and I'm converting all the TOD files so that I can edit them in FCP. I'm also making SD NTSC DV versions so that my daughter can start playing with iMovie to learn how to edit (let's see who comes up with the better program ;-) I was struggling with the JVC/TransDigital "QuickTime Component" that is really a big POS - first of all, it would not allow smooth playback of TOD files on my MacBook Pro, and JVC told me that I should "check my system" since it might not be adequate to play HD files (my MacBook Pro exceeds all of their published requirements, so piffle on JVC). I also had a problem doing batch conversion of TOD files to AIC and DV formats. I wrote a simple Automator workflow that would prompt me for a list of files and then feed them to QuickTime to do the conversion. I noticed that when I played back the converted files, the first two seconds of audio would repeat, but not the video! This caused the audio and video to get out of syn with each other. Manually converting a TOD file using QT worked fine. I finally was able to reproduce the problem by adding just two files to my list to be converted, and the audio problem manifested in the converted files. I think that this is caused by a bug in the JVC/TransDigital code, but I'm not sure, and I've also sent that bug report into JVC.

So, quickly getting tired and frustrated with crappy software, I read up on the net about using VLC and MPEG Streamclip (both are free, and both are on Apple's site, or you can Google for them). These two work together perfectly - I pass in a list of TOD files to VLC and tell it to do a batch convert of the encapsulating container to MPEG TS format - that is very fast, since it's just changing the container info, not actually doing any re-rendering or any other heavy lifting. I then feed the list of TS files into MPEG Streamclip and tell it to do a batch convert to whatever format I want. The MacBook Pro grinds away doing the transcoding while I do other work, and the resulting files not only work properly, they also look great - a lot better than the results I got when using the JVC/TransDigital and QT combination. As an added plus, VLC is able to play the TOD files without any problems, so that lends even less credence to JVC's assertion that my system isn't "adequate" to play TOD/HiDef files. Why do companies have to lie instead of just saying "I don't know". Ugh!

So, after all this, I've got a bunch of really nice looking files that I can now take into FCP and mangle with my creative energies ;-) More on the FCP story next week.

mike
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Old July 11th, 2007, 10:32 PM   #30
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Mike,

I am glad you like the JVC GZHD7; it is impression that this camcorder is not good compare to others. But it is been almost three months since I am using it; I bought it first day when it was launched.

I am really happy with the performance, I have captured some really good footage with this camcorder, I have posted in this forum also, and maybe you have gone through it.

Frankly speaking I would have bought Canon HV20 if it would have been with hard-disk that is the only reason I went for JVC, I wanted to buy HDD based camcorder, and otherwise I really like Canon HV20, the OIS system in Canon HV20 works better than JVC GZHD7. And I agree that OIS on JVC is very less effective, that is the only worst part of this beauty!

Canon has two good features one is 24p recording which gives you cinema look videos, and second is it can convert you old analogue tapes in digital format. To me Canon HV20 video looks brighter than JVC, but I like JVC's performance. JVC GZHD produce rich colour and some times I feel it looks to me over saturated!

You told you have captured some good vides, if you willing to show your works to others than it would be good, I would appreciate if you upload you videos here in this forum.

You can upload them at www.megaupload.com they allow you to upload one file up to 500MB.

Thanks,
Kaushik
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