ktb53
I've had the JVC GZ-HD7 for a year now and it's taken this long for me to find a comfortable process for dealing with this camera in a simple manner.
First let me state that I'm a mac user so if your a PC user then your process is probably considerably different. Also, I should state that I'm a video enthusiast who, while I desire professional looking video am mainly working with my own personal home video and am trying to create a process that is fun and easy to use. I do have Final Cut Pro and am working to learn that more but I am using iMovie '08 as a destination for all my video.
So here's my process for getting my video from the camera to iMovie '08.
ORGANIZATION AND RENAMING
First I shoot everything in the Full HD mode because I want the best quality out of the camera. I will end up with the "large size" (960x540) for editing but I want to at least capture in full HD. This produces the TOD files. When I download video off the camera I plug in the USB 2.0 cable so the camera shows up as a drive with the files on it, ( I choose playback on PC). I drag the PRG folders off the camera onto my harddrive and only keep the TOD files deleting those others.
I haven't found a real clean way to delete the files off the camcorder so maybe someone can chime in here. If you delete the folders the camera doesn't seem to like it.
So now you have a bunch of files on your computer with whacky names. I sort the folder list by date which should put the files in the order they were shot ignoring the way the names are set. This is important because if you organize by alphabetical files are going to get out of order as they were shot.
I then use the Adobe Bridge as a mass file renaming tool (one of it's features) If you don't have bridge you can use any shareware app or whatever. I determine the groupings that I want based on the events that I shot. For instance if I shot my kids out riding their bikes i put all those files in a folder. I use a year / month / day_event folder structure such as: 2008 / 03 March / 12_kids Riding Bikes Each event for that month will get it's own folder with the day and the clips within that. I batch rename the clips in this format: MMDDYYYY_event_001.TOD (03122008_KidsRidingBikes_001.TOD). I now have all my clips pulled off the camera organized and the sequence should be as they were shot.
CONVERSION FOR IMOVIE '08
I downloaded MPEG Streamclip (free download @ http://www.squared5.com) and use that to batch convert the files so I can import them into iMovie '08. I don't want to add any compression to this conversion because they will get converted again when I pull them into iMovie '08 so I use the Apple Pro Res 422 codec and choose best quality. I usually put a folder called "converted" inside my source folder and put the new files in there. I now have .MOV files that can be pulled into iMovie '08.
CREATED DATE ISSUE
Before I import the movies into iMovie '08 however there is a problem that has to be addressed. The converted files are "NEW" and the created date is the date that the converted file was created, no when I shot it. I have to batch change the .mov files created date so that when it imports into iMovie '08 it has the right date. I downloaded this applescript (http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20060703160750583) that you can run to change your created date. You actually have to take the code from that page open apple script, paste it in and create a little app but it works well. I put it in my dock and drag files on it to change their created date.
IMPORT!!
Now that I have changed the date I'm ready to import into imovie. I would prefer to keep everything in FULL HD at this point but my Macbook Pro (pretty much a top of the line laptop in 2008 with 4GB of ram) cannot handle editing the full HD video in iMovie '08 so I choose the "Large size" and hit import.
SUMMARY
This is the best process that I have found for getting the best quality video into iMovie using the JVC GZ-HD7 in full HD mode. If anyone feels they have a more efficient process please let me know! Hopefully apple will support the .TOD file natively someday soon.
First let me state that I'm a mac user so if your a PC user then your process is probably considerably different. Also, I should state that I'm a video enthusiast who, while I desire professional looking video am mainly working with my own personal home video and am trying to create a process that is fun and easy to use. I do have Final Cut Pro and am working to learn that more but I am using iMovie '08 as a destination for all my video.
So here's my process for getting my video from the camera to iMovie '08.
ORGANIZATION AND RENAMING
First I shoot everything in the Full HD mode because I want the best quality out of the camera. I will end up with the "large size" (960x540) for editing but I want to at least capture in full HD. This produces the TOD files. When I download video off the camera I plug in the USB 2.0 cable so the camera shows up as a drive with the files on it, ( I choose playback on PC). I drag the PRG folders off the camera onto my harddrive and only keep the TOD files deleting those others.
I haven't found a real clean way to delete the files off the camcorder so maybe someone can chime in here. If you delete the folders the camera doesn't seem to like it.
So now you have a bunch of files on your computer with whacky names. I sort the folder list by date which should put the files in the order they were shot ignoring the way the names are set. This is important because if you organize by alphabetical files are going to get out of order as they were shot.
I then use the Adobe Bridge as a mass file renaming tool (one of it's features) If you don't have bridge you can use any shareware app or whatever. I determine the groupings that I want based on the events that I shot. For instance if I shot my kids out riding their bikes i put all those files in a folder. I use a year / month / day_event folder structure such as: 2008 / 03 March / 12_kids Riding Bikes Each event for that month will get it's own folder with the day and the clips within that. I batch rename the clips in this format: MMDDYYYY_event_001.TOD (03122008_KidsRidingBikes_001.TOD). I now have all my clips pulled off the camera organized and the sequence should be as they were shot.
CONVERSION FOR IMOVIE '08
I downloaded MPEG Streamclip (free download @ http://www.squared5.com) and use that to batch convert the files so I can import them into iMovie '08. I don't want to add any compression to this conversion because they will get converted again when I pull them into iMovie '08 so I use the Apple Pro Res 422 codec and choose best quality. I usually put a folder called "converted" inside my source folder and put the new files in there. I now have .MOV files that can be pulled into iMovie '08.
CREATED DATE ISSUE
Before I import the movies into iMovie '08 however there is a problem that has to be addressed. The converted files are "NEW" and the created date is the date that the converted file was created, no when I shot it. I have to batch change the .mov files created date so that when it imports into iMovie '08 it has the right date. I downloaded this applescript (http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20060703160750583) that you can run to change your created date. You actually have to take the code from that page open apple script, paste it in and create a little app but it works well. I put it in my dock and drag files on it to change their created date.
IMPORT!!
Now that I have changed the date I'm ready to import into imovie. I would prefer to keep everything in FULL HD at this point but my Macbook Pro (pretty much a top of the line laptop in 2008 with 4GB of ram) cannot handle editing the full HD video in iMovie '08 so I choose the "Large size" and hit import.
SUMMARY
This is the best process that I have found for getting the best quality video into iMovie using the JVC GZ-HD7 in full HD mode. If anyone feels they have a more efficient process please let me know! Hopefully apple will support the .TOD file natively someday soon.