Looking for a decent DV cam for around £500, and ive been told by someone the JVC GR-D70 is worth the money. However, a review i read says its rubbish in low light and controlls are terrible.
Anyone got or used this cam before?

If not, can someone reccomend a cam in my price range.

TIA!!!!

Does nobody have anything to offer?

[Orbitalzone]

Try < THIS > review!


I've got the little brother to the 70 (the GRD50) and I think it's great. It's very similar to the 70 but without memory card and it's lower still shot resolution.

Sure low light isn't so good but most other similar priced DV camcorders suck on low light. But the JVC nightlight really is useless. (Unlike Sonys)

Pictures are great in reasonable lighting and I think the controls are actually very good. Except for a silly placed snapshot button.

It's got DV in and out, Analogue in and out (great for putting old vhs into the camcorder (which converts it to digital via Firewire - it does this 'live') then into the PC for editing etc. Sadly no microphone socket exists. You have no choice but use the internal small mic.


I give my camcorder 9/10 ....ideal for most average users.

Many thanks Orbitalzone for the input. I had already read that review, along with one other which said the cam sucked. Two conflicting reports, thats why i wanted peoples advice. I went ahead and ordered it yesterday from Askdirect anyway. Now ive got to go and buy an extra battery, case and tapes.

Do generic batteries perform as well as the named JVC batteries? Because they are much cheaper.

Thanks.

[Orbitalzone]

Well I've just got a higher capacity unbranded battery from www.keene.co.uk and it cost about £35. Now the best price for a JVC high capacity battery (1600Ma which is double that of the supplied battery) costs about£70 - £100.

So I reckon it's still better to get 2 unbranded batteries which would outperform considerably the length of 1 JVC original battery.

However, from previous experience you shouldn't leave these batteries unused for months on end as they do deteriorate and then die. This happens with branded and unbranded batts but possibly less with branded ones.

Good luck with the camcorder, I think you'll be pleasenty surprised with the quality. Even in lower lighted rooms I get reasonable results but most DV cams seem less sensitive to light compared to older Video 8, SVHS or VHS-C camcorders.

So next on you list.... Powerfull pc with firewire socket, second large hard drive and a DVD burner!

thanks mate.

Ive got an athlon XP2000+ with 768meg of DDR ram. Also have a pioneer 105 DVD burner and a 120gig HDD. This should be sufficient for my needs yes?

Also, im not sure if i need a firewire card as ive got USB and USB2. Now i understand usb is no good for transfers, but isnt USB2 faster than firewire, and cant it be used to transfer?

Cheers!

P.S - ive gone ahead and ordered the BNV-428 battery from keene for £52. Its the highest capacity battery they do for the camera. Supposed to last around 400 minutes, but at a guess id say 2 1/2 hours with LCD useage?

[Orbitalzone]

Stick to Firewire for the editing... USB2 can't control the camcorder so you have to manually start / stop the camcorder.

The battery you got should last some time... I'm always sceptical of times quoted but I have found that the supplied JVC battery (800ma) lasts about 1 hour or so with average zooming, LCD etc... so I'd figure maybe 3 hours use with the highest capacity - maybe 4 hours if no LCD or zooming used.

(The larger capacity batts are bigger!..... my 1600mz batt sticks out twice as much as the supplied batt... thus making using the view finder hard as the batt pokes out stopping your eye from nicely fitting to the viewfinder! (a minor niggle really)

And your PC sounds more than adequate... I'm still using a paltry Pentium3 800Mhz!!!

Last thing is to get some decent DV editing software, you might get some with a firewire card. Windows XP now has a free download to get MovieMaker 2 which is great to get into editing and does it all except burn to DVD (other software needed for that)

Pinnacle software like Studio 8 is popular but very buggy... so it either works on your PC or it doesn't.... so research before buying editing software!!!

Thanks again for the advice mate.

Movie maker, is it good for editing, or just as basic as they come?
Also, i dont suppose it will re-encode the AVI into MPEG2 to burn to DVD will it? Thats what i plan on doing. Taking footage, editing it, and transferring to a dvd-5 for use in my DVD player. I always use TMPGEnc for encoding anyway, so it wont really be a problem.
Ive been told the picture quality should stay about the same.
Only problem is the bloody time encoding takes.

[Orbitalzone]

Well Movie Maker2 allows basic editing with some effects and titles, so it's fine for basics... if you want more sound tracks or video tracks then it's not for you. However you could edit with it then use TMPGEnc to convert to MPG2 then burn to disc with either TMPGDVD or another DVD authoring program. TMPGEnc is still considered one of the best Mpeg converters.

Check out http://www.simplydv.co.uk/simplyBB/ for another useful forum for all that's DVcamcorders