Well I purchased a brand new JVC MG330H camcorder today and I’ve got to say that at first, I wasn’t very impressed with it.

I unpacked it, gave it a short charge and then took a few videos in the room and then hooked it up to my Mac. A few days ago, I had ordered another camcorder before finding out it wasn’t compatible with my Macbook, so before ordering the MG330, I was careful to ensure it was fully compatible. I had to purchase and download a plugin from the Apple store so that Quicktime would allow me to play MPEG-2 files, and even then the MG330’s files are actually only MPEG-2 in sort, as their extensions are .MOD.

Following a bit of research, I discovered I could open the files in a freeware program called MPEG Streamclip - great I thought. However, after opening the first video, I realised that the videos had nasty horizontal lines on objects every time the camcorder or an object moved. The image looked grainy and blurry and certainly not what you’d expect from a modern camcorder.

The solution for this is actually very simple, but it took me all day to find it out. In MPEG Streamclip, click “File” and then click “Export to” whichever format you want, and at the following screen, make sure you have the “deinterlace video” checkbox selected - this solves the problem. It took me hours to discover this, after playing around with iMovie 08 and ffmpegX, which are both good in their own right, but don’t have the same functionality as Streamclip.

I have tried using my JVC MG330 on my PC, but the software bundled with the camcorder wasn’t up to scratch and I would have been very unhappy if I had been forced to rely on my PC for video editing (particularly since Mac’s are supposed to be good with media).

Now that I’ve discovered this, I am very happy with the camcorder - for it’s low price, it’s got some decent features and it’s very compact. Just remember to deinterlace the videos if you’re using a Mac!

Tags: JVC MG330, mac, mpeg streamclip, MPEG-2

On February 17th, 2009 by Dan Price. Filed under Other technology.
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