Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Had this digicam for about 24 hours and here are my first impressions:
I own a Panasonic SV AV100 which saves mpeg2 video and mpg4 to a SD card. It did it well and I was pleased with it, but the low resolution digital camera function was surpassed by some wireless phones. I wanted a device that took high resolution photos and digital mpeg2 video saved to a memory card that could be immediately loaded to PC and burnt to DVD. The JVC GZ-MC100 and MC200 took 2mp pictures and saved mpeg2 video to a 4 gb microdrive or SD card, but had poor low light performance - worse than my little Panasonic. So, it was with some anxiety that I shelled out $1595 for the GZ-MC500.
I bought it hoping that the new 3CCD video chip would not only give better color video and good 5mp jpeg pictures, but that JVC would have taken the time to improve low light performance... and they did.
In bright light the automatic videocam performance of the camera is really good. Indoors without any light on and bright sunlight coming in the window, the video remained sharp with pretty good color saturation and no graininess to my eye when played back on TV directly from camera. The MC500 seems to really be working much, much better in low light conditions than the MC100/200s before it. At night with room lights on, I took more videos and although there was some dimming of the picture, the video was still bright and not grainy. Color still looked good though there was some loss of color saturation in those conditions. In a completely dark room, forget about it since there is no infrared function. But I did not care about that. Much better in low light than my Panasonic SV-AV100 overall. Microphone picked up voices/sounds in stereo very well.
The interface is intuitive and easy to navigate for me.
The camera bottom heats up while recording to microdrive and I never recorded more than 5 minutes of video but the heat build up was quite noticeable. Unlike my Panasonic, there is no remote control which is quite disappointing in a $1600 digicam that is begging for immediate video playback to TV directly from camera.
In summary, I am both relieved at the camera's good low light performance and very happy with the camera's mpeg2 video quality and very happy with the 5mp jpeg picture performance. I would give this camera 4.5 stars out of five taking off 1/2 point for lack of remote control.
Go to this site and use translate option on google toolbar to read text or just download the duck video and jpegs to see this camera's quality. Rename video .mod extension to .mpg to view in WMP. Remember this is 720 x 480 mpg2
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Click Here to see more reviews about: JVC Everio GZMC500 5MP 3CCD 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 5,000 of the highest resolution images (1600 x 1200 fine).
Three 1/4.5-inch 1.33 Megapixel CCDs for High-Quality Image Capture The image sensor in the Everio GZMC500 features three 1/4.5-inch CCDs offer the high-resolution capabilities needed for high quality digital videography and photography. The Everio features a total of 5 Megapixel-Class Digital Still recording up to 2560 x 1920 pixels (JPEG), and High-Quality MPEG-2 Video Recording (up to 720 x 480/60i in ULTRA mode) with Dolby Digital Audio (MOD file). 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 and 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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