Review: JVC Everio GZ-HD40 AVCHD Camcorder


With its 1/3” CMOS image sensor, dual format and dual media recording, a microphone input and dedicated headphone output, might the Everio GZ-HD40 just be JVC’s best consumer camcorder to date?


Image of JVC Everio GZ-MG40 AVCHD Camcorder
Despite the fact that JVC was really the first company to turn its back on traditional tape-based recording media and DVD disc recording in favour of HDD (hard disc drive) based camcorders, the company that brought us VHS again pushed back the frontiers with its ground breaking Everio G series models. What’s interesting is that, with this latest model they’re now ready to grab some of the AVCHD limelight too. And who can blame them?

Recently, JVC has been forced to live in the shadow of other big names like Panasonic, Canon and Sony whose high definition camcorders have been better, technically, and which have quickly grabbed the plaudits. Whilst this pioneering work was going on JVC was struggling to hang on to its Matsushita parentage, but when the Panasonic owner decided to sell off its stake to Kenwood it looked like JVC’s future was doomed. However, the company has held on and is now fighting back with some great new product, of which the GZ-HD40 looks like being a perfect example.

Of course, JVC’s arrival on the AVCHD scene is somewhat surprising, even at this stage. To date, the adoption of this revolutionary new high definition format has been limited to Sony, Panasonic and Canon, with JVC looking like it was going to stick with its MPEG2-TS (transport stream) high definition compression/decompression system. Now that’s all changed - and hopefully for good. Two new models, this Everio GZ-HD40 and its sister product, the GZ-HD30, offer a choice of high definition or standard definition recording to either hard disc drive (120GB on the HD40, 80GB on the HD30) or to optional MicroSD memory cards. A third model, the GZ-HD10, offers AVCHD recording only and uses a 1/4.5” CMOS chip to record to a 40GB HDD.

What’s good about the GZ-HD40 is that its maker is following the latest trend by providing an external microphone input and dedicated headphone output along with all the other digital and analogue output connections as well. Things are looking up for JVC!

First impressions


Weighing in at 455 grammes it’s a lovely bulky camcorder that fits nicely in the hand (as long as you don’t have a dinky little hand, of course!) and feels the business when using the 2.8” colour LCD. There’s no viewfinder but the LCD does sport a range of controls on the left of the frame. The 120GB HDD (Hard Disc Drive) is what contributes to the weight, but the housing on the right does give it nice balance, especially when on a tripod. There’s a cold accessory shoe (one that doesn’t convey power or signals) on the tup under a flap; this can accept a microphone or a video light. There’s a stereo microphone up there, too, in addition to the zoom toggle and snapshop button at the rear end. Loads of connecting sockets are provided behind moulded flaps as well. The battery sticks out at the back rather than being recessed, and the slot for the tiny MicroSD flash memory card is underneath.

Image: Rear view of JVC Everio GZ-HD40 Hybrid HD Camcorder

Lens-wise, the JVC GZ-HD40 comes with a JVC High Definition lens that produces 10x optical zooming and JVC has provided a manual lens cap which is operated by a switch positioned to the underside of the lens barrel. That’s good because there’s no chance of losing the lens cap or having it dangle in front of you when the camcorder’s in use!

Features


The feature set of this camcorder and that of its partner product, the GZ-HD30 (which has a 80GB HDD but in pretty much all other respects is the same), is impressive to say the least. For a start, JVC has given it a large 1/3” CMOS progressive image sensor which generates a total of 2,680,000 pixels for use by the movie and the digital stills photography side of things. The F1.8-2.2 lens has a focal range of between 4.5mm and 45mm in optical mode, and a filter diameter of 43mm.A built-in LED light provides additional illumination within a range of 1.5m, so although you shouldn’t expect it to light up Wembley Stadium it’s good for close-up fill when there’s no other option.

Both camcorders allow users to record to either the internal hard disc drive or to MicroSD card (not supplied) in either High Definition AVCHD or standard definition MPEG2. The former is fast becoming the defacto standard for consumer HD camcorders, using a compression and decompression system called MPEG4-AVC/H.264 which is capable of producing stunning quality pictures when displaying even on large LCD and Plasma screens. By default, the camcorder records high definition at 1080/50i (interlaced frames per second, in Europe) but the option to record at 50p (50 progressive frames per second) is available in the menu system.

The standard definition option uses a very similar compression system to that employed on regular DVD discs - namely MPEG2. Audio is captured using Dolby Digital 2ch (HD) and MPEG-1 Layer 2 (SD).

For the techie-orientated among you, both the HD40 and its HD30 sister offer AVCHD recording at three datarates: 17 Mbps (XP, VBR), 12 Mbps (SP, VBR) and 5 Mbps (EP, VBR). Standard definition video has two settings: 26.6 Mbps (FHD, VBR) and 1440 CBR (27 Mbps, CBR). Audio is recorded at 48kHz, 256Kbps, whilst MPEG-2 TS audio uses 48 kHz, 384 Kbps.

Stills can be taken and saved to either the HDD or to the MicroSD card in 5 Fine/Standard modes, the highest being 2432 x 1368 pixels resolution.

According to JVC, the image sensors used in the current HD Everio line are small sized, but high resolution, 1/3” and 1/4.5” CMOS chips. This CMOS uses proprietary interpolation technology based on that which JVC developed for its 3CCD cameras, and the resulting algorithm makes it possible to generate virtual pixel data (orange diamond area shown in illustration below) from the red, green and blue physical pixels, thereby providing image information that actually surpasses what’s required for 1920 x 1080 Full HD imaging, or for 1440x1080 imaging in the GZ-HD40/30’s companion product, the GZ-HD10.

Graphic showing JVC's image pixel interpolation

Storage


The existence of such a large Hard Disc Drive in addition to the MicroSD card slot means that you’ll find it hard to run our of storage space. At its highest (XP) quality setting it’s possible to cram up to 900 minutes of full-spec AVCHD video onto the HD40’s disc drive and 600 minutes onto the HD30’s 80GB drive. Alternatively, a 4GB MicroSDHC card will hold 30 minutes at XP quality and 60 minutes on a 8 GB card. At the lowest AVCHD setting (EP) 3000 minutes can be saved onto the 120GB HDD (1980 on the HD30’s 80GB HDD) and 100 minutes on a 4GB card or 200 minutes on a 8GB card. Recording in standard definition will give you 600 minutes at FHD quality on the 120GB HDD (360 on the 80GB). There’s no capability to record standard definition onto the MicroSD cards in either of these models, however.

Connectivity


Options for connecting the HD40 and the HD30 up to the outside world are impressive. For a start there’s a HDMI cable socket for connecting direct to HD devices like LCD and Plasma TVs (this incorporates the x.v.Colour protocol for improve colour processing). There’s also a socket into which the supplied Component / AV combined cable can be plugged. This passes Component Digital outputs as well as well as AV (analogue video and audio) outputs as well, with the single cable having multiple connections - Red, Green and Blue for component digital and composite video and stereo audio (yellow, red, white) RCA Phono plugs.

Image of JVC Everio GZ-HD40 on Docking Station
USB 2.0 (mini B) is provided, as is a very welcome separate microphone input and dedicated headphone output. All in all, an impressive set of connections for which JVC must be credited. Not only has the company embraced AVCHD in addition to standard definition recording but they’ve provided a set of connections that befits a model aimed at serious users very well indeed.

Like many Sony camcorders, the JVC comes with a handy Everio docking station (pictured in use, left) into which it sits when charging or when requiring connection to either a computer (for transfer) or for playing out to other HD or standard definition devices. There’s a limited number of connectors on the docking station which make it possible to leave them in place whilst the camcorder is away in use elsewhere.

It’s interesting to note that this and its sister product make it possible for users to stream out their video via a FireWire (IEEE1394) port as well - useful for making quick digital copies to a DVD or HDD (Hard Disc Drive) recorder which in turn has this facility. This FireWire connection can’t be used to capture video from camcorder to computer in the same way as it’s possible to do with MiniDV or HDV sources, however. It’s a direct stream out of a standard definition MPEG-2 signal.

Performance


Look back at our review of JVC’s Everio GZ-HD7 HD camcorder and you’ll see we said very nice things about it, and with good reason. But by today’s standards (and that ws only 18 months ago) it’s lacking by virtue of the fact that it doesn’t record AVCHD. In such a short time the whole HD camcorder world has turned on its head and AVCHD is now, as near as dammit, the standard for consumer high definition where camcorders are concerned. That’s why it’s really important that JVC gets on the band-wagon quickly - and it’s done this very cleverly with such a Hybrid product as the HD40 and HD30. Not only does it offer a choice of recording codecs (compression/decompression systems) but also a chocie of media (HDD and flash memory). That’s good.

But what’s even better is that the quality of images coming off the generously-propertioned CMOS are very good indeed. We shot some test footage in a variety of situations - outdoors in bright conditions, outdoors in less than sunny conditions and indoors as the light was fasding. Surprisingly, it wasn’t just the outdoor shots that were good; those taken in darker interiors resolved very well - well enough for the majority of users and perhaps good enough for some serious users as well.

Sound quality from the upward-facing microphone is very acceptable in the broadest range of situations, but this can be made much better with the option to use an external mic and set levels to manual when monitoring on headphones via a dedicated output and using the in-vision linear meter in the LCD to keep things under control.

Overall manual control is good, though users have to accept that they’ll be modifying things on the fly using menu options and a mini-joystick (mounted on the left of the LCD frame) to make adjustments.

In general, the quality of pictures when recording at the highest setting in AVCHD and MPEG2 modes was very good indeed, and surpassed our expectations. Rick and diverse saturation of colours as displayed in a busy summer flower bed looked superb on playback, and the camcorder’s handling of contrast ratio (where light and dark areas are included in a frame) was very impressive.

Full HD archiving to DVD without the need for a computer


JVC Sharestation CU-VD50 connected to GZ-HD40
The HD Everio can be connected to the optional HD Everio Share Station, the JVC CU-VD50, via the supplied USB 2.0 cable. The Share Station allows users to create HD data discs in order to archive HD video clip files and write to both DVD-R and DVD-RW discs. It also allows for the creation of digital stills in a JPEG format.

Dual-layer DVD-R is also supported, which means that the combination of the HD Everio and the CU-VD50 can provide a PC-less solution to the problem of the finding the means of high-capacity archiving of HD content.

HD and still image files can be played back in full quality via the CU-VD50’s HDMI output without the use of a computer or the camcorder, meaning that it can act as a convenient HD Blu-ray player.

The following editing/archiving solutions are supplied with the camcorder:
The supplied software disc includes a plug-in that works with Apple iMovie and Final Cut Pro software for Macintosh computers. It worked first time when connected to an Apple Intel iMac running iMovie 08 by the reviewer, and the results were excellent.

Conclusion


I didn’t expect to like the JVC as much as I’ve come to like equivalent products from its competitors, but in reality its handling, ergonomics and superb picture quality remind us all that JVC really is equipped to take on the big names and give them a run for their money. The AVCHD market is a really, really tough one now that’s seeing some excellent products come to the fore, but the Everio GZ-HD40 has what it takes to make serious camcorder users very happy indeed. In fact, it’s quite possibly the best consumer camcorder the company has ever produced - and that’s saying something! Highly recommended.

Reviewed by: CB. July 2008.