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12 out of 13 people found this review helpful
3.0 stars
"Using JVC Everio with Mac and iMovie"
Pros: Hard disk storage is the wave of the future
Cons: USB is unsat and MPEG-2 format is virtually useless
Summary: The JVC Everio is a great camera with two significant problems. First the data transfer system is USB. This is slow and not the standard for high speed video transfer. A top of the line camcorder should have firewire support, and there is no workaround for this. Second, the camera saves the data in a .MOD file which is an MPEG-2 codec. This is fine for direct transfer to DVD, but most editing software (like iMovie) does not support MPEG-2. Of course the sales girl at Best Buy didn't tell me any of this, and only after I filmed my son's birthday party and sat down at my Mac to post a little movie did the shortcomings of this camera begin to surface. So like all us geeks I stayed up all night looking for a way to prove I am actually smarter than the guys at JVC who know a lot about building cameras, but not so much about what it takes for the average consumer to turn boring home video into an interesting memory (I like to think of it as video scrapbooking).
About 4AM I arrived at the workaround described below and then tested it again after I woke up this morning to make sure it wasn't a caffeine dream. With this workflow you can successfully use the JVC Everio with iMovie.
BACKGROUND: JVC Everio camcorders use hard disk media to record video files which is great for navigating directly to the video you want to edit. The camera stores the video in a .MOD file in an MPEG-2 format. JVC provides software called Capty MPEG Edit EX for Evario, but it is not quality editing software and not worth the time to learn.
PROBLEM: iMovie can?t access the camera directly to import the video and Quicktime Pro doesn?t even understand the MPEG-2 format.
REQUIREMENTS:
a. dowload and install DropDV. This converts the .MOD MPEG-2 formatted video into standard Digital Video (DV) for iMovie. (see www.dropdv.com)
b. Optional - dowload and install Quicktime MPEG-2 player so you can preview clips before you burn disk space and time converting them to DV and importing to iMovie. (see www.apple.com/quicktime/mpeg2)
WORKFLOW SOLUTION:
a. Create a folder on the desktop and download the entire SD-VIDEO folder the camera hard disk to your new work folder
b. open the new folder in Finder and using the search function find all the .MOI files. Then highlight all the .MOI files and drag them to the trash. These are files that contain junk the camera faluted on and not real video data.
c. Next use Quicktime to preview the imported clips to verify which ones you want to convert. Delete any files that you don?t want in your movie. NOTE: You may need to change the name of the file from .MOD to .mpeg. Also, you won?t have audio because of a long technical discussion dealing with the codec for MPEG-2 and demux?ing it etc.
d. Now highlight all the files the folder, which after deleting the .MOI?s and reviewing in Quicktime will only contain the desired files for the movie. Drag all these files in one group onto the DropDV icon and it will convert to DV and create a folder on the desktop.
e. Open the desktop folder and click on the ?imovie project? folder. This will launch iMovie and all your desired clips will be there including the audio you couldn?t hear in Quicktime.
Hope this saves someone the sleep I lost staying up all night to figure it out,
Zac
- 7 replies to this review
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Sorry re last comment about no audio which referred to Zac's comment that audio was lost...didn't realize he was referring to QT. DropDV carries audio over flawlessly!
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Without audio this is crap!
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thou i have a problem. after following zacs procedure and was able to transfer movies on i movie. i tried transeffing again but a yellow screen comes out instead of the movie..ive noticed that when i transfered files to my movie folder .mod was a blank ppr instead of th e black screen that says exec....
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great comment Zac.
I just purchased the SONY DCR-SR80 Hard Drive Camcorder from 'Circuit-City' and encountered the same problem.
I was hoping that the Sony would be more compatible with a Mac than the JVCs, but they are not and they also output MPEG-2 files.
I ended up downloading 'MPEG Streamclip' from http://www.squared5.com/. It is free and outputs more options than just DV. I also downloaded the MPEG-2 codec for quicktime, but cannot hear sound from the virgin-video-clips direct from my camera. Any suggestions?
I am using quicktime 7.1.3. Quicktime is not a necessary with the use of 'MPEG Streamclip', BUT it would be nice to preview clips in Quicktime and hear the audio from the clips. I can see video but do not hear sound.
Thanks again for the great comment. Great to hear other Mac-Apple users on CNET.
jon -
Hi Zac
How do you do if you are using windows xp, I would love to find a way out of this, I'm getting frustrated trying to use the program that came with JVC Everio GZ-MG20 -
I bought the JVC GZ-MG77 because my old Sony Digital 8 was Bologna (LEMON Best Buy would not replace after many more than 3 repairs of the same kind; reason I wouldn't buy Sony, reason I won't shop Best Buy) I didn't realize how UNcompatible the JVC is to the MAC, but Zac allowed my purchase to still shine. I'll have 1 baptism, 4 birthdays, 3 Graduations (2 from college, 1 high school) and my Twin daughters two weddings within 2 months this summer. Zac, you saved the day. You made a long night of internet research a short afternoon walk in the park, Sooo MANY Many many thanks! All the videos (so far) have been superior quality through DropDV - to iMovie - iDVD and burn. Not a terribly short process (get ready for DropDV to eat almost minute for minute the time it took to shoot) but it makes the .MOD files very usable in iMovie. I'm sure JVC should be sending Zac a royalty for the GREAT WORK here!
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Zac's expertise is, I feel, above the average "moviemaker," whose knowledge of computers may be much less. Anyone should THANK HIM for bothering to explain the process he worked out to make his Everio-shot footage usable, especially JVC! There are definitely "kinks" to work out with this camera. I thank Zac, as I was ABOUT to purchase one and am glad I decided not to. I need simplicity, but I want tape-less. Zac saved me a lot of grief---and a bit of money! Thank you, Zac!
JVC Everio GZ-MG77:
