6 Responses to “Steve Mullen on the JVC GZ-HD7”  

1. 1 Mark Bistline Apr 19th, 2007 at 8:30 pm

   Steve,

   Very interested in the next installment of your review–specifically on editing. I have ten days left to return my Sony AVCHD camera and I work on a Mac. Am I to understand that I can edit HD footage from the JVC directly in FinalCut or even iMovie on the Mac? Is there an Achilles heal somewhere, and if not, why aren’t the Mac blogs full of praise for this as an editable alternative to the Sony?

   Thanks.

2. 2 Swaza Sep 18th, 2007 at 2:51 am

   Steve, I have both the GZ-HD7 & a Mac 10.4 iMac, with iMovies 8 and the simple fact is that you cannot simply drop a file into iMovie and hope to create something. Contrary to popular belief it just does not work. JVC uses a TOD format, which can be opened in QT 7.2 Pro and then exported to Movies as an mpeg. From there you can drop it into an open iMovies 8 and play around with it. Warning, the otherwise High Def.clips will be wilted to medium definition which defeats the purpose of having a HD camera in the first place. I am so peeved off as there is NO answer as much as one likes to pontificate on the subject.
   Camera manufactures are happy to sell you a camera, provided all you want to do is burn it to disc and forget about editting it.

   By the way the Editing program provided by JVC is a basic useless editing piece of Cr&%$ when used on PC XP.

   Sorry mate, there is NO good news with JVC

3. 3 Doug Nov 21st, 2007 at 6:34 pm

   im looking to buy the JVC-gz-hd7 and edit in Sony Vagas 6. If you can burn a DVD from the
   camera, is it possible to lift off the components from the DVD into the editing programme
   without quality loss.
   doug

4. 4 Courtney N Dec 9th, 2007 at 11:03 pm

   Hello Steve and Swaza,

   Steve Swaza is right, I bought the JVC and I can’t edit it unless you do the steps above throught QT. It sucks I am going to trade mine for the Cannon HD camera very fast…. It was a big mistake for me to buy this camera.

5. 5 John B Feb 18th, 2008 at 10:41 am

   Hey y’all,
   I just got off the phone with a JVC tech guy who although was a big help, makes me want to SCREAM! I will start with this: HD camcorders are ahead of their time. Why? Because there is no up-to date software that can manipulate high-def files. Well thats a lie, there are a few. If you purchase a high-def DVD burner it will come with an editing program (some basic piece of S*#T) which can manipulate these HD files. Other wise, whether you use PC or Mac the .tod files will be downgraded to SD (standard def).

   Trading your camera Courtney? I don’t think that it will match up with this one, be patient, the software is coming. HD is ahead of it’s time.

   If anyone is having problems with their computer not recognizing the .TOD files here why this could be. When the camcorder was released it was matched up with the proper Quicktime version to read the .TOD files. Now that QT has upgrade from the original working version, 7.3, to the new 7.4, it no longer reads these files. Dude on the phone said to try and downgrade somehow. Or to talk to Mac about it.

   Hope I could help. My lovely GZ HD7 will just grow dust until the world catches up…. may be china has…..

6. 6 taylor Apr 24th, 2008 at 7:23 pm

   hey, i also bought the jvc hd7, but im not dissapointed. the full high def (1920×1080) .tod files cannot be supported unless downgraded or whatever (i havent tryed it yet), but screw that… my initial motive for getting this camera was for the 1440 cbr mode, use it! if you have any editing program that supports hdv, here you go. this is where jvc messed up. the 1440 cbr mode is essentially “hdv on disk” as i have seen posted on a forum. all you need is a firewire cable, just capture the footage onto your comp like good old dv footage.

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