Plug and play HD for this Mac user
It's been a number of years since I had a camcorder. It was a tape unit and after the initial infatuation with the new toy I found that I never used it. Recording was a chore (juggling tapes and batteries) uploading was tedious and the quality wasn't all that good. For quick ad hoc recordings my various digital still cameras could grab a few seconds of good-enough video. The camcorder disappeared from my life.
A few years later things have really changed. I received the Everio GZ-HM200 snapped in a couple of 8GB SD cards charged the battery and I was ready to go. We took a day trip to Mount Rainier; the weather was perfect and I took a lot of video of photogenic glaciers and waterfalls.
When I got home I wanted to upload the video into my computer. The Everio comes with software for Windows PCs and Mac users are hardly mentioned in the documentation. I had searched the various on-line discussions of Mac video and there were many cautionary tales about compatibility issues with the Everios. I anticipated problems.
I was wrong. I connected the USB cable to my Mac Mini started iMovie (part of iLife '09) and opened up the camcorder. The USB menu opened and I chose the "Upload" option. iMovie detected the camera asked me a few questions (video quality destination whether to check for stabilization issues) and then imported the video clips. It was trivially easy - just the way I like it.
The Everio has a "Snapshot" mode to take still images and I had tried it out. This meant that while I was working with iMovie iPhoto also started up and offered to import the photos I'd taken. My verdict: it's OK for casual 1x use but no substitute for a real digital camera. The problem is that the Everio's autostabilization mode only works for video not for still images. This meant that a couple of 20x zoomed images while impressively magnified were hopelessly blurred. I'll stick with my Panasonic DMC-TZ4 for the still shots.
The JVC Everio is a tremendous little camera: compact easy light and producing excellent HD video. (Yes my Mac Mini feels a little underpowered for working with this.) The dual slot SD card design is excellent; the camera will automatically switch from one card to the next during recording and you can swap cards on the fly. In XP mode (17 Mbps VBR 1920x1080) 16GB is good for 2 hours of recording which feels about right. (You can crank it up to 24 Mbps which will give you 1 hr. 20 min. or drop down to 5Mbps at which point you can run for over 7 hours!) No more media juggling.....
There are tons of additional features in this camera and sometime I may try them out. But for the basic job of plug-and-play HD video this is hard to beat.
Recomended.More detail ...
