JVC Everio GZ-MG77 (30 GB) HDD Camcorder

Pros: Records Forever! Never run out of tape again. Small size
Cons: Records in uneditable format unless converted. No firewire.

This video camcorder has definitely been a love/hate relationship for me. There's a lot I love, and a few things I really, really hate. So lets start with the good. My main use for this video camcorder is for shooting video for our local community ...

Pros: Video quality, Easy to use, Very light and small, User friendly software,
Cons: Zoom (Digital is useless, Optical should be > 10x, Lens cover is not automatic

It is a pretty good video camera for the price. I have searched and compared the video quality and technical characteristics of several other similar cameras from Sony and Panasonic before I decided to keep this one. It gives really natural colors inside and outside, which was one of the key aspects for me. It is also very light and small.

On the negative side, I would put:
1)Zoom (Optical=10X is probably good for use inside, but for outside, the bigger one would be better. Digital=300X, but it is pretty useless and create a really bad quality). In addition, the zoom is very sensitive and you would have to get used to it.
2) Lens cover is not automatic and not even built in

Pros: Good sound. 30gig HDD. Good image quality. Compact. Very easy to use. Good service.
Cons: Battery life (1.5 hrs), not SDHC compatible.

I was planning on using the camera for hard mounting it to a motorbike and taking video that way. The Hard drive is too sensitive to vibration in this application, so I have to use the sd cards. Unfortunately, 2gig is as big as they come in SD format; this cam is not compatible with SDHC cards (up to 8gig at this time). SD 2gigs are around 40$, SDHC 8gig are about 100$.

In normal use however I love this cam. It's easy, no tapes or discs to mess with, just a usb link to your computer. The 30gig HDD gives you lots of recording time (7hours on max resolution).

The sound quality is very good.

Conversion of the video files is a bit time consuming if you have a slow computer though. Vids are stored in .mov format, and are converted to AVI, MPEG1 or MPEG2 using JVC's software. Their video producing software is decent.

Pros: Great quality, can find reasonably priced when on sale.
Cons: Operator should be fairly computer savvy to do the DVD productions.

This definately helps me keep up with the times, as tape camcorders are soon to be extinct, and DVDcorders are so problematic. I have used this on a weekly basis since I purchased it. The quality of the picture is great. It's fairly small and there's not alot of bulky extras to go with it. You can record and produce your own DVD in a matter of just a few hours.