macnn/electronista
07/19/2007, 8:20am, EDT
Thursday, July 19thJVC intros HD3 cam with 60GB drive
JVC on Thursday expanded its Everio cameras with the HD3, a new model that it says will bring HD video to more people. The 3CCD camera is 27 percent smaller than the HD7 but still produces 1440x1080 video and contains a 60GB hard drive for extensive recording; in extended mode, the camera can record as much as 7 hours of video at full resolution without a substantial drop in quality. Video can also be captured to Class 6 or higher SD and SDHC cards when footage needs to be easily transportable, JVC says. The camera includes a handful of image quality assist tools such as digital shake reduction, aperture or shutter priority, and visual aids for exposure and focus.
Previewing and authoring movies is also advanced, the company claims. In addition to HDMI output for watching raw footage in full HD, the HD3 can link with the company's USB Share Station to burn DVD backups of unedited clips; a dual-layer disc will store up to 55 minutes of full-resolution video. Hookups for FireWire and USB let users edit clips through video editors such as iMovie HD and Final Cut Pro, or in Windows author videos directly to Blu-Ray through a bundled copy of CyberLink BD.
JVC hopes to ship the camera to North America by early September for $1,300.
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While the resolution of the camera may be 1440x1080, the PAR of the pixels is 4:3, which when displayed at 1:1 is 1920x1080. There is a difference in PAR (pixel aspect ratio) and DAR (display aspect ratio). Almost all cameras in the sub PRO-Master category (AVCHD, DVCPRO HD, HDV, HDCAM) store video in a format that is not 1:1 1920x1080. In the case of DVCPRO HD in fact, the image is recorded at 1280x1080. But on display, all of these formats display natively at 1920x1080. This technique is very similar to DVD MPEG-2, where the pixels are typically stored at 720x480 (3:2), but widescreen is presented at 854x480 and standard is 640x480.
Is this an AVCHD camera? If so, it's worthless for iMovie :(((((((
I would expect the AVCHD barrier may be removed next week with a revision to iLife.