JVC Highlights GY-DV5000U

[Gregg Lengling]

JVC (C2050) is rolling out the first two modules for its GY-DV5000U camcorder. First, the DR-DV5000 (co-developed by JVC and Focus Enhancements) records the DV signal onto a user-removable, standard 2.5-inch compact hard disk. An 80G hard drive will deliver more than 6 1û2 hours of digital recording time. The DR-DV5000 can be pre-configured by the user to record in the native file format of any major nonlinear editor (NLE), including: Avid OMF-DV, QuickTime-DV, RawDV, AVI Type 1-DV, AVI Type 2-DV, AVI Type 2C-DV, and Matrox AVI-DV. The DR-DV5000 is fully integrated with the GY-5000U, providing extensive status information. It plays back through the viewfinder and LCD display.

Second, the GY-DV5000U encodes MPEG-4 files in realtime using the KA-DV5000U MPEG-4 pack. For traditional production work, the KA-DV5000U boasts a feature called "Scene Capture," which automatically stores a scene log containing an MPEG-4 video clip and the start and end time code locations of each recorded scene on the tape into a CF memory card. Bundled software named Scene Viewer displays the time codes and the MPEG-4 video clips as well as the time codes corresponding to all the scenes recorded on the DV videotape. The MPEG-4 clips can then be viewed and managed on a personal computer.

For HD acquisition, JVC will showcase HD-CMOS high definition camera technology with a three 2/3-inch 2.1 megapixel CMOS HD camera that utilizes the next generation of Rockwell CMOS chips to deliver full 1080i high definition performance. The camera outputs 1920x1080/59.94i and provides two SMPTE 292M HD-SDI outputs. The configuration is box style and, with its 2/3-inch B4 bayonet lens, is capable of many applications.

For the "I wish I could afford HD" crowd, there's the JY-HD10U, a 1-CCD, handheld mini-DV camcorder from the company's consumer products division. It's an SD (480/60i) unit that also happens to record in progressive (480/60p) and HD (720/30p). The two progressive models use native 16:9 from the 1.18 megapixel CCD with MPEG-2 compression, and the standard mode is 4:3 with DV compression. Additionally, the JY-HD10U can upconvert or downconvert to most formats, because it provides format conversion while playing back through its analog component outputs. Other features include an optical image stabilizer system, still photo capture capability, two XLR connectors, and an IEEE-1394 bus interface.