JVC Everio GZ-MS100 Camcorder Reviewby Michael PerlmanPublished on May 27, 2008 2:07 PM
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Compression (4.0)
The JVC GZ-MS100 (Review, Specs, Recent News, ) records standard definition video in the MPEG-2 format, similar to the kind you'd find on any DVD, hard disk drive, or flash memory camcorder. One look at the chart in the next section tells you MPEG-2 is not the most efficient compression. A lot of storage space is taken up for only a little recording time.
In terms of general image quality, MPEG-2 tends to show more compression artifacts than its main competitor in standard definition, MiniDV. Compression artifacting most often comes in the form of blocky bits of color that appear in areas where you'd expect to see a uniform or smooth pallet.
There are four quality settings on the JVC GZ-MS100 that correspond to different bitrates. The highest setting, Ultra Fine, records at 8.5 Mbps. Below that is Fine, recording at 5.5 Mbps, then Normal at 4.2 Mbps. Each of these outputs a 720 x 480 picture. There is a fourth setting, Economy, that records 1.5 Mbps at 352 x 240. This is a very low quality setting that is not recommended for any type of important recording. It's better practice to record in the highest quality, then reduce the size and quality with editing software. That way, if you ever need to go back and retrieve the high quality recording, it's there.
JVC GZ-MS100's card slot for SD and SDHC cards
Media (6.0)
The JVC GZ-MS100 records video to SD and SDHC memory cards, a popular and widely available card type found at any camera shop, electronics store, or megamart. Relying solely on memory cards as your recording media can be both freeing and troublesome. Cards are incredibly small and light compared to tapes, DVDs, and hard drives. It's easy to pop them out of a camcorder and into a card reader for your computer. However, cards are considerably more expensive than tapes or DVDs. If you need to stock up on blank (Specs, Recent News, ) media for a vacation, it could get costly unless you have a computer you can dump footage onto at the end of each day.
The chart below gives you approximate recording times based on card capacity.
| Ultra Fine (8.5Mbps) | Fine (5.5Mbps) | Normal (4.2Mbps) | Economy (1.5Mbps) | |
| 512MB | 6 min | 10 min | 13 min | 36 min |
| 1GB | 14 min | 21 min | 29 min | 80 min |
| 2GB | 29 min | 43 min | 60 min | 150 min |
| 4GB | 60 min | 80 min | 110 min | 300 min |
| 8GB | 110 min | 170 min | 225 min | 595 min |
Editing (6.0)
Editing MPEG-2 footage from the JVC GZ-MS100 is relatively easy. JVC could have made the process a little easier if each video clip was a unified, single file that could be copied and pasted from one place to another. As it is, clips are split into separate video and audio files, and only certain editing programs have the ability to re-join them.
The GZ-MS100's YouTube Upload feature is definitely one of its selling points, but we encountered a few bugs along the way. First, you may want to set the GZ-MS100 to "Upload Record On," a mode that limits clips to 10-minute chunks. Of course, you can also shoot as much as you want, then edit the footage down to a single movie. The important thing to remember is that YouTube cannot import clips longer than 10 minutes.
Next, you'll need to install Power Cinema NE, the included software, from a CD-ROM. This is one area where JVC loses big points compared to the Pure Digital Flip Ultra (Specs, Recent News, $149.99) and Sony NSC-GC1 (Review, Specs, Recent News, $199.00), both of which have software built right into the camcorder - no installation, just connect to a computer and the upload process begins. JVC also loses points (as does Sony) for offering PC support only, sorry Mac owners.
Once the software is installed, connect the GZ-MS100 to your PC via a USB cable. There are several buttons on the camcorder and the computer screen that you could hit to begin the upload process, and it's not entirely clear what you're supposed to do. It was only after some trial and error that we found that all the buttons have the same effect. Select "Upload" from the camcorder and Power Cinema will provide you with a screen of options, one of which is a YouTube button.
After you've selected your clip, click the YouTube button again. A login screen will appear, prompting you to enter your YouTube username and password. If you don't have one, there is an option to create a username and password. Once you've logged in, you can choose the video category and whether or not you want your video to be Public or Private. The downside is that the title, description, and tags are all chosen for you--some random file name becomes the file name, "Everio Videos" becomes the description, and "Everio" becomes the tag. Fine, if JVC wants to brand its videos, that's one thing. You can change the labels later, but they should at least give you the opportunity to replace the labels from the beginning. This product is supposed to make it easy for non-techies to upload video. The same group shouldn't then be expected to navigate YouTube's user settings, find their videos, and rename them.
After agreeing to YouTube's terms of service, you can upload your video. The video is automatically down-converted from an .MOD file to a .WMV file so it meets YouTube's file size requirement.
Here's what we found about this, the least involve but most time consuming part of the process. The Upload function is buggy. It works most of the time, but the progress bar is misleading. For example, it will appear at 87% progress and then suddenly jump back down to 50% for a short duration before the "Your video was successfully uploaded" screen appears. In addition, it seemed to work well on XP machines, but worked more sporadically on different on Vista machines. This is frustrating, and a real pain in the behind if you plan on leaving your video to upload while you go out. Make sure you have a rock solid connection and stable PC.
Oh, and that's another slap in the face--no Mac support. It's less than ideal.
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