JVC Everio GZ-MC500

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http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/camcorders/0,39029967,39190872,00.htm

Reviewed 22 July 2005

Reviewed by Chris Stevens

We've previously reviewed this camcorder's cheaper sibling, the MC200. The MC500 exceeds it in performance and image clarity by a noticeable margin. This is largely down to the MC500's three CCDs (Charge Coupled Device) -- it uses three entirely separate sensors that respond independently to red, green and blue light. Because of this colour separation, the picture recorded to the MC500's internal microdrive is better than anything a single-CCD system is capable of.

The most convincing reason to consider the MC500 is its size. Unlike most camcorders, it will fit in your pocket. Because of this, you'll find yourself taking the MC500 camcorder to places you would never take a full-sized one. Carrying it around is barely more of a commitment than carrying a large wallet.

Design
The MC500's chassis design reminded us of the massive Panavision cameras that Hollywood movie studios use to shoot feature films. Although the MC500 is tiny, it does share a few features with the full-sized professional 3CCD camcorders. These features include a manual focus ring and widescreen lens hood. It may not challenge the performance you'll get from something like the Canon XL2, but for a handheld consumer camcorder, it definitely has an indie-filmmaker vibe.

As with the MC200, you'll find yourself using inventive new shooting positions when holding the MC500's small body. The lens and grip parts of the MC500 swivel on a pivot, which lets you angle the viewfinder independently from the lens itself. This is especially useful when shooting over the heads of crowds, or tracking low shots. It also makes it easier to shoot footage surreptitiously and it's ideal if you want to video an interview subject without intimidating them with a full-sized camcorder pressed to your eyeball.

The LCD display on the MC500 is bright and visible despite the small chassis. This is critical because using the LCD is the only way of framing your shot -- the camcorder has no standard viewfinder. The MC500's hand-grip didn't cause any discomfort, even when shooting for long periods. It's possible that you'll forgo the hand grip completely and hold the camcorder as arbitrarily as you would any small object -- there is next to no weight to the thing (400g).

The internal Microdrive is easily removed from the chassis. A catch releases the drive cover and the Microdrive ejects when you press a PCMCIA-style button. You can also eject the MC500's battery, but you won't need to do this unless you have extra batteries to swap it with. There is no external charger included with the camcorder, so unless you buy one separately, you'll have to leave the battery in the camcorder to charge it.

Features
The MC500 uses three 1/4.5-inch 1.33-megapixel (1363x975) CCDs to capture your video. This senses 4:3 (full-frame) video at 960x720 pixels and 16:9 (widescreen) video at 1280x720pixels. Although the effective resolution is slightly lower, this is still an impressive feat for such a small device. That the MC500 supports widescreen is in itself impressive -- some full-sized camcorders fail to achieve this.

In a bright environment, the MC500's three CCDs will capture good colour detail, although low-light recording without the built-in headlight is dreamlike and blurry. This is a common problem with DV camcorders, although the MC500's three CCDs mean that video shot in low light is far better than with a single-CCD model.

Perfunctory information about your recording is shown on the camcorder's screen, including time, date and battery level. As you would expect from a 46mm LCD, the icons on the MC500's display are small, but they are legible. You can alter settings via a series of on-screen menus, but a rotary dial on the side of the camcorder determines shooting modes. The dial switches recording from Movie to Photo modes as well as a number of preset modes like sports and night-time.

The 4GB drive bundled with the MC500 will hold around 60 minutes of digital video. You can bolster this by buying additional Microdrives. Provided you dock the MC500 with a computer between 60-minute shooting sessions, it's possible to upload footage and make do with the single 4GB drive.

JVC has bundled a USB cable with the MC500, but if you're transferring a lot of footage, you'll be screaming out for FireWire support. USB 2.0 is no slouch, but it still can't match FireWire for speed or convenience. We'd love to see JVC make the switch to this format with future revisions of the MC500.

When you've shot video on the MC500, clips are listed in a thumbnail index which lets you play back scenes. The bundled AV cable mirrors the LCD display on a TV so that you can screen clips for friends.

Performance
The MC500 is a cinch to operate. Everyone we showed this camcorder to could switch it into recording mode and shoot video within a few seconds. There are very few settings that require a rummage in the manual to activate -- the on-screen menu design is very intuitive. The only significant annoyance is a momentary lag when you first switch the MC500 on. This only lasts a few seconds, but it's enough of a delay to mean that the camera might not be ready to capture a fleeting event.

As is the case with the MC200, the MC500 has impressive image stabilisation. Panning the camera laterally across a scene, the motion is remarkably smooth. It reminded us of the kind of action you expect from a fully fledged Steadycam attachment. Because smaller camcorders are less of a weight burden, your hand is more likely to shake during use. This electronic stabilisation system is partly designed to compensate for any jiggling motion. Tracking shots are smoothed out, but extremely tight zooms are still messy unless you use a tripod.

We achieved a maximum recording time of around 60 minutes with the MC500. This almost exactly matches the recording capacity of the bundled Microdrive. If you need to shoot for longer than one hour, you'll need to consider extra batteries. As with all camcorders, if you're especially frugal with the zoom controls, you can improve this shooting time fractionally.

Despite JVC's almost supernatural attention to detail elsewhere on the MC500, the camcorder does have one extremely annoying quirk: footage is recorded to the internal Microdrive in a proprietary MPEG-2-PS format. This makes it difficult to use a mainstream editing tool like Premiere, iMovie or Final Cut Pro to cut your video. Although JVC bundles basic editing software with the MC500, it won't satisfy anyone who wants their films to sparkle.

If you want to import footage from the MC500 into a mainstream editing suite, you'll need to run codec conversion software to translate the MPEG-2 format. This is a relatively technical procedure that involves getting hold of some third-party tools to decode and then re-encode the video. As you've probably guessed, this won't do wonders for the video quality.

Image quality
Footage shot in daylight on the MC500 plays back crisply and brightly with deep colours and excellent contrast. The 3CCD-based design delivers a better picture than the single CCD of the MC200. We found skin tones especially convincing and the MC500 copes well with high-contrast scenes, especially with more tricky exposures like scenes where subjects are shot against bright skies. Night time and other poorly lit scenes are less impressive -- there's some motion blurring because of the low shutter speeds used to compensate. However, people are discernable even in very low light and the MC500's built-in light goes some way towards clearing up night shots.

While the MC500 can't hope to match larger 3CCD camcorders, footage has a very presentable, near-broadcast quality appearance when shot in adequate light. As you would expect from a 3CCD model, improved colour accuracy is the overwhelming reason to choose the MC500 over a single CCD microdrive camcorder. The improved picture quality over the MC200 is considerable.

Edited by Mary Lojkine
Additional editing by Nick Hide