Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)While there is much I really like about this camera, its short comings prevent me from recommending it to people who want just one video camera. The problems I am experiencing deal mostly with the camera's POOR performance in medium to low light conditions. While many camcorders excel at producing images in standard room lighting, this camera does a dismal job. In normal room lighting the auto focus will occasionally fail and even at the best of the times the images lack adequate saturation. The manual white balance settings improve the situation only marginally. If you are going to be shooting inside your house, use another camcorder.
Now the upside - the camcorder delivers good quality images when shooting outside. Motion artifacts are occasionally detectable when objects in the scene move quickly but not annoying at all. The zoom is quite satisfying and the auto focus only lags slightly behind when quickly zooming in the 10x optical zoom range. The compact size is spectacular! The standard tripod mount socket is a welcome addition.
And, of course, the whole video editing experience is greatly enhanced by the direct transfer of the camera's hard drive to your editing station's hard drive. (I recommend you get a card reader or PCMCIA adapter, so the camera isn't involved in the video transfer. You can be charging the camera while you are working with the saved video - something you'll do often as the battery only lasts an hour).
The saved video files have a .mod extension. The manual says you should only use the supplied software to edit/play the video files. The supplied software is from Cyberlink and it is adequate. I have found that by renaming the files to .mpg after I have copied them to my editing station, I can edit/play the video files with software not supplied with the camera. Don't know if this will work in all cases, but so far so good.
The still camera images are actually quite nice for a 2 mega pixel camera. They are always saved as JPEG files. I have found no option to save as a lossless TIFF. A real shame since the supplied 4GB microdrive really has enough room to store these big files.
The audio quality is excellent, no complaints what so ever.
One last disappointment - the camera limits maximum file size to 4GB, even if you have a compact flash card that can hold more. As a result it shall forever be impossible for this camera to record more than 60 continuous minutes using the highest quality video setting. Sure, an 8GB card can hold 2 of these 60 minute recordings but something will be missed when the first file hits the 4GB wall and the recording is stopped and the camera waits for you to manually start a new recording session.
Click Here to see more reviews about: JVC Everio GZMC200 2MP 4GB Microdrive Camcorder w/10x Optical Zoom
Still images or video--capture either 60 minutes of DVD-quality MPEG-2 movies or thousands of super-high resolution UXGA-size JPEG pictures with the Everio--the first camera to use Microdrive technology. The included 4GB Microdrive card, though it is the same size as Compact Flash card, has such unprecedented capacity because it is has its own built-in HDD (hard disk drive).
Until now, tapeless formats have been severely limited in the length and quality of video capacity, but the Everio's Microdrive lets you shoot up to 60 minutes of high quality MPEG-2 video--and even more in lower resolution modes.A selection of recording modes lets you choose more quality or more shooting time. The highest quality ULTRA mode records at a constant bit rate of 8.88 Mbps with AC 3 audio -- comparable to the DVD data rate (average 4 Mbps video/9.8 Mbps maximum). Essentially what you get is DVD quality, with the same video and audio format as a movie DVD. And the number of still photos that will fit on the Microdrive card is nothing less than awe-inspiring: More than 5000 of the highest resolution images (1600x1200 fine).
2.12 Megapixel CCD This 1/3.6" CCD with a total of 2.12 million pixels (effective: 1.23 million for moving pictures, 2 million for still pictures) offers the high resolution capabilities needed for high quality digital videography and photography. And the Megabrid Engine applies separate, optimized processing to moving and still images, for videos with a high signal-to-noise ratio, and high-resolution still pictures.
Versatile, Lossless Data Store what you've shot on the provided Microdrive card, optional CompactFlash or SD Memory Cards. size as a CompactFlash card, but with many Gigabytes of capacity. You can eject the Microdrive card, just as you would a CompactFlash or SD Memory Card, and load data into your PC via optional card adapter. Or simply connect the camera via its USB2.0 interface for quick downloading to a PC. All transfer is digital-to-digital, so you won't lose any quality in the process.
DVD Creation & Sharing
Multi-Format Support In addition to making it easy to create DVDs, the supplied software converts to a variety of file formats for distribution via the Web or by e-mail. Supported formats include DV-AVI, Windows-AVI, MPEG-1 and MPEG-2, as well as Windows Media Video and RealVideo that can be streamed over the Internet.
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