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Product Review: Page (1) of 1 - 10/21/09

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FIRST LOOK: JVC HM-100u

A great primary or secondary HD camera for under $4000

By Heath McKnight

The JVC HM-100u ProHD camera may be small in size, but it's packing three Full HD (1920 x 1080i/p) CCDs that capture great image quality, and it uses Sony's SxS/EX technology to deliver a tapeless workflow on affordable SDHC media cards. Plus, if you're a Final Cut Pro user, you can shoot directly to QuickTime for even faster importing and editing.

Camera Technical Specs
The camera has a fixed high definition Fujinon lens which gets a good zoom at 10:1, along with three 1/4-inch CCDs that produce a great image. However, due to the small sensor size, the camera doesn't perform quite as well in low light situations. You can shoot in two flavors of full HD; 1920 x 1080i/p or 1280 x 720p in a multitude of frame rates including 60i, 50i, 30p, 25p and 24p in 1080, and 60p, 50p, 30p, 25p and 24p in 720.

Compression is at 35 Mbps, but you can also shoot in 25 Mbps (similar to Sony and Canon HDV) at 1440 x 1080, 60i or 50i, or at 19 Mbps (similar to JVC's HDV) at 1280 x 720p, 60, 50, 30, 25, and 24p.

You can customize the look to what you want pretty easily in the menu, which is laid out well but different than most menus I've used. Audio-wise, you've can record to two channels of uncompressed LPCM (linear pulse code modulated) audio, 16-bit at 48Khz. Fully manual, which is just what the doctor ordered.

The camera also has various auto functions, which are good for true run-and-gun situations, but be careful with the auto white balance, because I've noticed the color will drift.

In Action
Because it's a small hand-held camera, it's easy to carry the camera, do run-and-gun shooting, and get the camera into tight situations than bigger cameras, like the HM-700u shoulder-mount unit, can't get into. I was able to do a lot more with this camera than even the Sony XDCAM EX1, and that's considered a hand-held camera, too!

There is a full-featured menu, but as I mentioned above, the layout takes some getting used to, especially if you normally work with other professional cameras. And because of the size, the ergonomics of where buttons and controls are located also takes some getting used to.

Due to copyright issues, I can't share any of the footage I shot, but my friend Dan Conklin, owner of an HM-100u, provided some beautiful shots from sunny South Florida! Check them out below (original is 1920 x 1080 24p, downconverted to 480i):

I used the camera for two weeks shooting local TV commercials with an XDCAM EX1 and I felt the footage cut together nicely, though I did see a difference in low-light situations versus the three 1/2-inch CMOS sensors found in the EX1. But otherwise, I really liked the JVC HM-100u, which is light years beyond JVC's proto-HDV camera, the hand-held HD-100u, which I purchased in 2003 and had many problems with.

SxS/SDHC Technology
JVC is using the Sony SxS technology (found in the XDCAM EX cameras) with 35 Mbps compression and the images look great. However, instead of shooting to expensive SxS cards, you can use small and relatively inexpensive SDHC cards, similar to what you'd find in digital still cameras, to record onto!

You can do dual-format recording, and shoot directly to QuickTime (.MOV) for the fastest way to first transfer to a drive, then import and start cutting immediately in Final Cut Pro (FCP). This is a dream come true! You can also record to the familiar MP4 and use the ProHD Log and Transfer plug-in to process the clips. Either way, tapeless is the way to go.

If you're not editing with FCP, not a problem; shoot in the .MP4 format and check to see if you'll need a plug-in or not for processing and/or editing here: http://pro.jvc.com/pro/attributes/HDTV/manual/editing1.html

Conclusion
I really enjoyed working with the JVC HM-100u; it's like using a smaller XDCAM EX1 with all the features you'd find in a JVC ProHD camera. It's a great second camera, or even a primary camera since the cost is below $4,000 USD. My friend Dan Conklin's been using his HM-100u for a while now, and our opinions seem to match with the pros and cons. At the end of the day, the video and audio look and sound great in most situations, and I really do recommend the camera. Visit http://pro.jvc.com for more details.

And thanks to Dan Conklin for the great footage; visit his site at http://www.louddata.com/.