JVC GZ-MG36 review

After a successful first year battling for a stake in the competitive digital video market, JVC's Everio G range of hard disk drive (HDD) digital media cameras seems to be attracting a lot of attention among users looking for a no-nonsense and accessible means to shoot digital video and stills.

In the year or so since their launch, JVC has seen a marked increase in interest and sales of its HDD cameras, which provide up to 30GB of built-in hard disk storage and give instant access to individual clips for ongoing transfer to DVD via USB 2.

Given its small size, the GZ-MG36 is a surprisingly weighty little beast. With no tape compartment, the only opening part is the 2.7in widescreen format LCD screen. The screen's frame hosts a convenient menu button and a mini joystick, which is used to navigate menus and activate various other manual functions when recording. The internal, non-removable, 30GB hard disk drive occupies the right half of the body behind the strap, and controls and buttons have been kept to a minimum: there's a tiny zoom toggle on the top of the camera, a single record and snap button in the thumb position at the rear, and a sliding power and a play/record mode switch situated on the top left of the case.

In keeping with similar products in the range, this model has no AV signal inputs, although the full range of outputs includes an S-Video socket, which can be found inside the LCD screen recess.

It's as easy to take stills as it is to shoot video. When in movie mode, it's first necessary to determine which of four recording quality modes to use - determined by Mpeg-2 compression rates varying from Economy, at 1.5Mbits/sec, up to Ultra Fine, at 8.5Mbits/sec. At the highest setting, it's still possible to obtain seven hours' recording time with the 1/6in, 8 million-pixel CCD.

Movie frames acquired through the impressive 32x optical power zoom lens are anamorphically squeezed into the 720 x 576 pixel CCD space and unsqueezed during playback or for editing in 16:9 mode.

Picture quality on a 28in widescreen TV was acceptable, but motion artefects were noticeable on fast movement. Still images are written to an optional SD card at a disappointing 640 x 480 Jpeg mode in either Fine or Standard choices, and aren't of practical use for serious snappers, although perhaps acceptable for leisure use or even web stills. However, the quality of the incoming stereo audio is crisp and clear when encoded to two-channel Dolby Digital using 48kHz 384Kbits/sec sampling with the two best recording modes. Playback quality at Economy (352 x 288 pixels, 1.5Mbits/sec Mpeg-2 with 128Kbits/sec audio) has an unimpressive recording time of around 37 hours.

In keeping with most consumer-level tapeless media camcorders, the primary recording format is compressed Mpeg-2, which isn't all that Mac friendly. So to facilitate editing and DVD authoring with a Mac, JVC has bundled Pixela's nifty Capty Mpeg Edit EX 1.4 software, along with a direct-to-DVD authoring utility called monoDVD. Both of these applications require connection via the supplied USB cable and enable a Mac OS X 10.4-equipped Mac to identify the contents of the HDD as an external mass storage device, and also manage the job of tagging clips for cropping, deleting and moving prior to the creation of a DVD. It's not really an editing program to speak of, and is somewhat lumpy and confusing to understand - so beginners beware - but as the means to export clips in a range of Mac-compatible file formats, including MOV, DV Stream and even Sorenson 3, it's a useful way to get HDD content into iMovie or Final Cut Express.