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MPEG is a compression codec for digital fooage, all the MPEG means is 'Motion Pictures Experts Group', the bofins who come up with and agree standards for thsi stuff.
I believe the JVC's use MPEG2 compression, which will give you the same standard as digital television and DVD's.
Other common standards are MPEG1 (for video cd's) and MPEG4 (very compressed video for web, and the likes of digital stills camera movie modes)
MPEG2 is gradually replacing AVI, which is just part of a general trend.
There are more and more DVD camcorders, sony launched a format called microMV a few years back using MPEG2 and the new HDV cameras use the MPEG2 codec in high definition mode.
The critics of MPEG2 (and there are a fair few) is that it applies too much compression. Where AVi applies compression with each frame, MPEG2 is much more efficent (in terms of file size used) because it compressess over a series of frames.
Compression isn't a bad thing, even digibeta uses compression, the problems are when it's over applied. MPEG2 can look jittery when theres a lot of camera movement of subject movement. It can look more grainy as it tries to make two or more pixels the same colour to save space.
The good news is that MPEG codec engines on camcorders are getting better all the time. I've never used ULEAD, but Pinnacle Studio can import MPEG.
There is a trend to MPEG replacing AVI (AVI is a predominantly tape based file system, MPEG lends itself better to portable hand solid state hard drives, as bandwith and data transfer rates aren't as high) as camcorders become mre compact, the price of memory cards falls, and MPEG files can be uploaded to your PC in quicker than real time.
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