JVC GY-HD101E HDV Camcorder Review

by Nigel Cooper

I’ve heard so many things about these two new HDV camcorders from JVC, so, when I took delivery of a GY-HD101E last week I was pretty excited to say the least.
If anyone is slightly confused by my opening sentence; let me clarify. Yes, there are two models, they are the GY-HD100E, which only has FireWire output, and the GY-HD101E, which has both FireWire output and input. Don’t ask me why this is the case, all I can tell you is that the latter cost £300 more. I can only assume it is designed to give those who already own a separate HDV deck the chance to save £300, or perhaps to encourage people to put that £300 towards the price of a new JVC HDV deck. Of course, it could be that old government TAX issue, which gets stamped onto imported recording devices, who knows. Anyway, the fact is, there are two models and the FireWire in/out or FireWire out only is the only difference between the two, so choose what you will.
This loaner from JVC turned up in a massive box (not the original one) with padding in abundance and even then the camcorder was snugly tucked inside a Portabrace bag. After covering my living room floor with polystyrene bits I eventually saw the familiar blue canvas of the Portabrace bag.
Once I unzipped the bag and took the HD101 out my first impressions were excellent to say the least; this is one really well built camcorder, in fact camcorder seems too mainstream a word for it. What I had in my hands was a totally professional piece of digital video shooting equipment.

So what exactly do I mean by that, well, first off let’s take a look at the lens. Okay, so it’s only a 1/3” lens and not a 2/3” one, nonetheless, it is still a professional bayonet type broadcast design lens and you better believe that it works like one. The lens is one of the primary factors that make the GY-HD101E and 100E stand out from everything else out there that currently cost under £4,300, and before all you Canon XL2 fans shout “but my camcorder has interchangeable lenses”, I’m afraid they are not quite the same. I know it has interchangeable lenses, but they don't really function like professional lenses as they don't have a focusing barrel that stops at infinity. Don’t get me wrong, the XL2 is a super camera, but the lenses are a little difficult to function in certain professional applications. They use servo-motor assisted focus systems that even when in manual focus mode, the barrel just keeps on turning and has no infinity point, this is not a proper focusing barrel. I’m afraid that any lens that does not have a proper focusing barrel that stops at infinity and macro end can be seriously limiting in many shooting situations. How are you supposed to carry out any kind of smooth and accurate “Pull Focus” shot, or “Trombone” (Spielberg) shot with a servo lens that just keeps on turning, not to mention focus pulling racks. With the lenses that are available for the JVC GY-HD101E you won't have any problems in these instances as it is designed just like any other high-end ENG type professional lens.
The Lens

So, back to the HD101E’s lens. As I’ve already mentioned, this is by far the best feature of the GY-HD101E for the following reasons: it has a professional 1/3” bayonet design, which is exactly the same as you will find on the larger 2/3” professional ENG and other higher end broadcast lenses. Everything about this lens works just as it does on the larger size pro broadcast lenses i.e. a professional focusing barrel that physically stops at infinity and physically stops at the short end, it also has a professional macro function lever for those extreme close ups, I’m talking about filling the frame with a one pound coin here. It has a professional flange back (back focus) adjuster.
For those who are new to professional interchangeable lenses here is how flange back works. Firstly, it is only necessary to perform this task when the lens is attached for the very first time, or when focusing is not correct in both the telephoto and wide-angle positions. You also have to carry out a new flange back setting if you change the lens for a different focal length lens. This is the only true way to ensure your images are in pin sharp focus at both ends of the lenses focal length and it is how the professionals have been doing it for years.
What else, are yes, you can turn off the servo zoom and switch to manual, this enables you to use the chrome lever, or zoom barrel to carry out zooming. This is incredibly smooth and not to be confused with consumer servo zoom lenses when they are in manual zoom mode. Switching into manual zoom on this lens has advantages in abundance, one that springs to mind is those “Crash Zoom” shots or ultra fast establishing shots; these can be executed with 100% accuracy.
Then there is the Aperture Ring. When you switch the camera into manual exposure mode you simply turn the aperture ring to adjust the exposure, again, this is the professional way of doing things, no little aperture scroll wheel stuck on the side of the camcorder body here, or worse still, a menu based aperture system; the latter being next door to useless.
You will find yourself shooting in manual exposure mode more and more because of this method. It’s how broadcast ENG professionals have been doing it for years, and with very good reason indeed. The GY-HD101E has a broadcast standard “Zebra Stripe” function to aid you with the exposure when in manual mode. If you are not familiar with the zebra assist function, it is just like the name suggests. Any area of the viewfinder that is overexposed has diagonal stripes over that area; you simply turn the aperture ring down a few stops until the stripes disappear, easy! Once you get used to this it can be carried out manually in a split second, in less time than it takes the best man to get the ring out of his pocket; if you’re into the whole wedding videography thing anyway.
The lens has the usual professional “Zoom Rocker” for smooth zooming with the aid of a totally silent zoom motor. In front of the zoom rocker is a manual/auto exposure switch, which is positioned in the perfect place for use without having to take your eye from the viewfinder. If you switch this to manual exposure mode there is still a button just in front of it, pressing this button kicks in the auto exposure mode while your finger keeps it depressed so if you want the camera to give you an estimation of what the exposure should be you can depress this button for a second, then let go and the camera will hold that exposure, even if you recompose your shot into different light.
Underneath the lens you have a standard professional Lanc socket for attaching remote zoom/record start/stop controllers, also on the bottom of the lens is the switch to turn the zoom from motorized to manual via the zoom barrel on the lens.
Okay, so why haven’t I mentioned “Auto Focus” yet? Well, that’s because there is no auto focus on this lens, we are now grown ups and we can think for ourselves, we don’t need mummy-camcorder to do it for us now do we. You are now in “Professional Land”. But don’t despair, if you are used to a camcorder with an auto focus mechanism you will soon loose your bad habits of relying on this somewhat risky method of focusing your camera. It’s simply a question of getting into the habit, and with the JVC camera you won’t have a choice, you are suddenly forced into learning the professional ways of doing things; welcome to the whole new world of “Your footage is about to take on a whole new PROFESSIONAL look”.
Personally, I can focus my shoulder-mounted cameras with pro lenses quicker and more intelligently than any auto focus camcorder on the market today, and so will you. Once you have owned a GY-HD101E for a few months you will wonder how you ever managed without such a lens; think about it, when was the last time you actually thought about the fact that you now have to change from 2nd to 3rd gear and looked down at the shifter when you were out driving your car? Exactly. It’s actually quite ironic how some auto functions are a big hindrance. You will learn to appreciate the manual system that professional lenses employ and after all, if you can learn how to use a professional manual lens system like this, then you can use any high end broadcast professional lens too as they all use the very same system.
While on the manual focus bit, the HD101E has a very need “Focus Assist” button. When depressed the viewfinder turns to black and white and any outline areas of focus suddenly light up blue (or red or green, depending on which you choose in the menus), this makes it very easy to focus accurately and quickly.
Just take a look at the close up picture of the end of the lens barrel, it reads “FUJINON TV ZOOM LENS”, that’s because it is manufactured to the very same production line standards as all other Fujinon broadcast lenses. If you were to physically pick up a £9,000 high end Fujinon 2/3” professional ENG lens, then pick up this one that comes as standard with the JVC, you will notice that the only difference in the way they feel is the physical size, one is a smaller 1/3” lens and the other is a larger 2/3” lens. Apart from that they both have the same quality feel, the barrel, the aperture ring, the flange back lever, the macro lever and all the other functions including (and most importantly) the actual glass elements, they too are manufactured to Fujinon’s high quality control standards.
So why does the JVC GY-HD101E come with a Fujinon lens and not a JVC lens, well for the very same reason that any professional camcorder, such as Sony or Panasonic don’t come with Sony or Panasonic lenses, and that is because JVC, Sony and Panasonic don’t make professional lenses, they make professional cameras so they leave the lens/optic business to the professional lens makers.
The standard lens that comes with the GY-HD101E is the 1/3” Fujinon Th16 x 5.5 BRME. Other Fujinon and Canon lenses can be bought for this camera and they include: S14 X 7.3B12U (Fujinon), S17 x 6.6BRM (Fujinon), S20 x 6.4B12U (Fujinon), YH16 x 712U (Canon) and the YH19 x 6.7K12U (Canon).

The Camera Body

Right, so let’s move onto the camera body, the main part that is made by JVC. As I mentioned at the beginning of this review, when I fist took the GY-HD101E out of the bag I was really impressed with the build quality and after playing around with it indoors for an hour I was quite simply blown away by the overall feel and built quality. The HD101E feels every bit as solid as a £25,000 broadcast ENG shoulder-mounted camera, only this is packed into a much smaller space. Everything on this camera feels solid; I got the impression that these cameras will last a very long time and take some serious documentary location shoot punishment. All the levers, buttons, XLR sockets and various switches felt like they will withstand been switched and pulled thousand of times without any hint of wearing or breaking off.
All the various controls on this camera are very logically laid out. In fact they are laid out in pretty much the same places as you would expect to find them on high-end cameras such as industry standard DigiBeta or D9 for example. The zoom rocker, auto/manual iris controls, record start/stop and RET buttons all fall very nicely under the right hand fingers with absolutely no need whatsoever to take your eye from the viewfinder.
The very same can be said about all the left hand controls such as the AWB (Auto White Balance) button, Zebra on/off button, Skin Area detail button, Gain button, ND filters, User modes, Shutter speed wheel etc. They are all so perfectly and ergonomically placed that they can all be controlled without removing your eye from the viewfinder.
Here is a great example of the fastidious thought and design that JVC have put into this. Look at the picture with the “GAIN” and “WHT.BAL” buttons, what do you notice about them? Well, the Gain switch is rectangle in shape and the White Balance switch is perfectly round, why? So you know which one your finger is on by feel, hence you can stay focused and concentrated on your viewfinder composing and exposure and not worry about things like this. It’s careful thought like this that will lead to you getting better shots and overall more professional looking footage; well done JVC!

In use

So how does the GY-HD101E handle in the field? Pretty good actually, well I’d say better than that, it handles amazingly well. Just looking at it you could be forgiven for thinking that it is not going to balance on the shoulder that well. On the contrary, the GY-HD101E is perfectly balanced on the shoulder, better than anything else in this price range that I have ever tried, in fact it betters many shoulder-mounted cameras that I have tried costing twice this price. Most full size shoulder mounted camcorders, including models like JVC’s own GY-DV5100E weigh closer to 6 kg. The GY-HD101E weighs just 3.1 kg (6.9 Ibs) including lens, viewfinder, battery pack, microphone and tape. Now, although this is not the lightest camera in the world (well you can’t have professional cast-iron build quality and ultra light weight in the same package), it is still light enough for you to carry it around on your shoulder all day without getting back ache.
Which brings me to another point that will be very relevant to wedding videographers. Because of the lovely balance of the GY-HD1001 and the fact that it is about half the weight of the GY-DV5100E or similar camcorders like Sony’s DSR range of shoulder mounted camcorders, this makes it one of the best camcorders a wedding videographer could currently buy. You could walk around all day with this camera on your shoulder and not feel a single twinge in your back, it really is that well balanced.
You can even slide the shoulder pad back and forth to enable you to get your eye in a nice comfortable position against the viewfinder, this is achieved by depressing a button by the shoulder pad, then sliding it into the position you want, then release the button.
Personally I think progressive looks much nicer than interlaced footage. This is especially true of wedding videos, simply because it looks more film-like, kind of smoother and more romantic, which is what weddings are supposed to be about anyway. However, if you have a client (bride/groom) who insists it be shot in interlace, as opposed to 720p HDV mode, fear not, simply switch into standard DV 576/50i mode, which is probably what you are doing at the moment. The GY-HD101E still has a big enough presence to give you an air of professionalism, especially with that lens sticking out front and with the IDX battery adaptor you can run this thing all day and not have to worry about your batteries expiring.
It is very easy to adjust the camera to your own bodily ergonomics. The viewfinder can be pulled out a long way; this is very handy if you are a one-man camera operator who wears headphones for monitoring the sound. I had on a chunky pair of Sennheiser HD25’s and there was still half an inch more that the viewfinder could have come out. The shoulder pad can also be slid back and forth to find a comfy position.
So, what else does it have? Well there are two broadcast standard balanced XLR audio microphone sockets, a nice clear 3.5 inch flip-out LCD screen, which I found to be very easy to view even in direct sunlight, in fact it is one of the best flip-out LCD screens I have ever seen. There are two ND filters built into the body at the lens mount end, these are a 1/4ND and a 1/16ND, very useful for those extra sunny days, or when you need to control depth of field; the latter I might add is quite easy to achieve with this camcorder. Usually with DV camcorders it is quite difficult achieving a nice shallow depth of field where the background is thrown out of focus. Although the HD101E has 3 x 1/3 inch CCD chips it is still pretty easy to pull off “Pull Focus” shots and achieve shallow depth of field; I put this down to the professional lens. The CCD chips have 1,110,000 effective pixels for reproduction of HDV and DV high quality footage.
The HD101E has 3 User Mode buttons, which can be preset in the menus, White Balance settings of A, B and Preset, manual audio level control wheels for both channels, LCD brightness control, viewfinder brightness control, viefinder peaking and focus assist, audio input 1 & 2 for Line, Mic and Mic 48V, variable scan shutter so there is no flicker when shooting computer screens and other non-PAL format screens, professional Timecode Free, Rec & Regen settings, Cimema mode, which sets the gamma characteristics and colour matrix close to the characteristics of a movie screen. Gamma and Skin colour adjust features; the latter Skin Area detail for better and more natural looking skin when shooting people, a very useful “HEADER REC” Function: When the REC/VTR trigger button is pressed while the STOP button is pressed, this function first records the colour bar video and test tone of the built-in signal generator at the beginning of the tape. Then it records the black video signal and the mute audio signal for the duration specified in advance. When the recording is completed, the unit enters the Record-Standby mode. The time code value at the Record-Standby position becomes the time code specified in advance.

Battery run/charge times

Operating times: BNV-428 = 40 minutes. BNV-438 = 60 minutes.Charge times: BNV-428 = 3 hr. 20 min. BN-V438 = 4 hr. 20 min.
Now, if this doesn’t sound long enough for you, don’t despair, as you can see by the pictures, it is very easy to buy an IDX battery adaptor, which will then enable you to use professional IDX batteries, which will give running times of almost 4 hours on a single IDX Endura 10S or 10 V-Loc battery.
For transferring your DV and HDV footage to your computer the JVC chooses to use the larger 6 pin FireWire connector, I approve very much as it is a lot less fiddly than the smaller FireWire variety.
As with any high-end professional camera, the HD101E has a “Drum Hour” display, which displays the drum/head usage time and Fan Hour time, the latter displays the fan motor usage time. These are very useful to estimate for regular maintenance and servicing, or second hand value grading years down the line.
The camera also has the usual playback functions and buttons i.e. Stop, Play/Still, Fast Forward and Rewind, which brings me to a tiny gremlin. These playback controls are a little hard to see, this is because the earpiece, which is mounted on the back of the handle obscures the view of them slightly, which makes seeing the first three buttons (Stop, Play, Rew)a little difficult to see. However, this could be seen as nit-picking and personally I wouldn’t use these controls anyway. If I were to use the camera as a device for transferring footage to my NLE editing computer I would use the device controls via the computer. Also, I got the impression that you would soon get used to where these four buttons are and wouldn’t even have to look anyway, see, I told you it was nit-picking. The only other gremlin I found was the lack of 1080i recording in HDV format, more on this in the next section.
Basically the GY-HD101E has everything a professional cameraman needs and no gimmicky features that he doesn’t; this camera just works and is built for the job of capturing professional footage in either DV or HDV formats in Interlace or Progressive shooting modes.

Shooting formats

So what about the shooting modes? Well the GY-HD101E has a few tricks up its sleeve here. The camera will shoot in standard DV mode at either 576/50i (interlace) or 576/25P (progressive) and it will also shoot at 720/25P in HDV mode. There is no mode for shooting in 1080i in HDV, but remember there are two versions of HDV i.e. HDV1 and HDV2; they are not competing formats, one is progressive and the other is interlace, simple. Television broadcast companies tend to prefer the 'interlace' look for television programmes, whilst the 'progressive look' is prefered by filmmakers and is even preferable in certain other programme making applications.
If you want to shoot anything for TV applications using the GY-HD101E then shoot in the standard DV 576/50i mode and if you want to make an independent low budget feature film, shoot in either 576/25P DV or 720/25P HDV modes, the choice is yours. If you want a camcorder that will do both 720p and 1080i both in HD, then the closest you will get is Panasonic's AG-HVX200 DVCPRO HD P2 camcorder, which provides 1080i and 720p recording with the production-proven image quality of 100 Mbps DVCPRO HD (not HDV, DVCPRO HD is far less compressed and is 100Mbps). The AG-HVX200 shoots on a P2 card in 1080/50i, 25p, in 720/50p, 25p; and in DVCPRO50 or DVCPRO or DV. However, you will have to wait for the Panasonic AG-HVX200 to become available in the UK, this is predicted around February 2006. The Panasonic AG-HVX200 does not have the professional bayonet type interchangeable lens system like the JVC does, instead it is a built in affair like the current DVX100B. For now, the best choice by far for 1080i HDV footage is the Sony HVR-Z1E, but again this model has no interchangeable lenses. As I've pointed out already, this is not a format war, 1080i and 720P are two different beasts for different shooting applications.

However, it could be argued that Progressive is the way forward. The EBU (European Broadcast Union) quite like the progressive scan mode. The JVC GY-HD101E will output 720p/50, however, when recorded onto tape, it converts it to 720p/25 hence it cannot record at 720p/50.
The 25 progressive frames that you end up with are what give that film look as it is so close to 24fps (frames-per-second), which is what film cameras record at. Remember, this is not a format war, progressive and interlace will continue to co-exist for years to come. Set top boxes and HDV displays will have inputs for 1080i or 720P either 25 or 50.
Okay, some people might say “but I don’t like the electronic flickering look that 25P gives”. My answer to that is, learn to shoot like a cinematic film cameraman, adapt your shooting technique for 25P, get some 25P shooting techniques training from someone who is used to shooting on film. Progressive shooting is a different sport to intelace shooting, you can’t just grab a 25P camera and go off shooting in the Mini DV/DVCAM/Digibeta style that you are used to, or yes, you will get flickering images. Just ask any 35mm film cameraman. Each shot has to be planned and worked out in advance to prevent the flicker phenomena, that is just as present in film shooting as it is in progressive shooting, in fact, more so.
A skilled camera operator who is used to shooting on film format cameras will get top-notch results shooting in 25P with no flicker in sight. However, the flip side to that coin is that any locked off shots with say fast passing vehicles will result in a slight flickering on the moving vehicle. JVC have built in a 'Smoothing' feature, which basically (from what I could tell) looks like it simply overlays the previous frame at what looks like approximately 50% opacity, no clever algorithms here.
Although this smoothing effect kind of works, it isn’t great so if you really want interlace images I would recommend shooting in standard DV 576/50i mode. Personally I would not use this function in HDV mode; instead I would carry out this effect in post-production. I know there will be a bit of rendering time, but this is better than ruining any chance of being able to use stills from the footage or achieve a decent slow motion at the editing stage.
If you shoot in Progressive mode you can’t just flit the camera around like you do in DV mode. Progressive 25P shooting is a whole new ball game. You have to shoot like you would with a Cine Super 16 or 35mm film camera i.e. be smoother with those panning shots and follow the motion in the viewfinder. I would strongly recommend getting some training in either 25P or proper film camera shooting techniques. Once you have mastered this shooting style and adapted your shooting style for 25P you will get smooth professional cinematic looking footage, especially if you also switch in JVC’s Cine/Gamma mode.

Picture quality

For this review I could not test the camera to its full potential with a HD screen, as I would have liked, so my viewing was on standard definition monitors. However, the footage I shot both indoors and outdoors looked very impressive indeed, even on the standard def monitors.
At the editing stage, viewing the footage on my large Apple LCD computer display the footage looked quite stunning and even more stunning on my JVC CRT production monitor that I use in my edit suite for colour grading etc.
Once I edited a short five-minute sequence and ran it off to tape I then played it back on my large Sony CRT widescreen TV, here it also looked impressive. Colours were punchy, blacks were nice and crushed and there appeared to be a fairly decent contrast range too. Overall, the clarity and sharpness of the footage was excellent and just what I was expecting of a camera of this quality and price range. There was just a tad of purple fringing in places, but nothing too noticeable and certainly no worse than any other HDV camcorder I have used. I can only imagine that the footage would be even more impressive on a decent HD monitor. In hindsight I should have asked JVC to loan me one of those too.
On paper the Sony Z1 has better resolution than the HD101E, which means the Sony could have a slight advantage for certain specialized shooting applications such as green screen chromakey shoots. Although both the JVC and Sony both use 4:2:0 sampling, the Sony’s bigger resolution of 1080 lines should give you an edge for chromakey shoots; 1080 gives better chroma resolution, which in turn gives better chromakey results.
However, there of course many other factors to take into consideration, resolution also comes from the lens and as I’ve already mentioned, the JVC GY-HD101E has a cracking Fujinon piece of glass on the front. Then there are the electronics and circuitry and onboard processing scientifics… all of which add to the final resolution and image quality. So I would not like to say which between the JVC and Sony would produce the best image quality. If you prefer interlace shooting then it would appear that it boils down to two things; Sony Z1 1080i HDV footage with it’s built in optics vs JVC’s 576/50i footage with its Fujinon lens, I’ll let you loose sleep over which one could come out on top.
I shot some footage in standard DV 576/50i mode on the HD101E and edited a short 5-minute sequence together and played it back on my large widescreen TV. Just as the HDV 720p footage looked impressive, so did the DV 576/50i footage. It had lots of the HDV 720p footage characteristics i.e. crushed blacks, clarity and overall sharpness, nice punchy colour saturation and a wide range of contrast. There was a touch of purple fringing, especially when zoomed right in close. However, I wouldn't let this put you off. HDV is the consumer version of HD and slight purple fringing is simply a characteristic of pretty much all HDV camcorders, I've also seen this on phenomena on other makes of HDV camcorder. There were also signs of chromatic aberration
The camera I had was an early sample so there were signs of the 'Split Screen Effect'. The ‘split screen’ effect is down to the fact that the 3 tiny CCD chips are packed into such a small space and have such a lot to do, they overheat. The chips require a lot of energy to capture the footage. To achieve progressive capture, the chip collects the data from each individual pixel in one sweep. It then drops that captured data down and channels it to the MPEG2 encoder to perform compression for final delivery to MiniDV tape. To deal with this overheating issue, JVC engineered two separate circuits to cut the workload on the chips in half. JVC decided to split ht chips down the centre. However, two circuits could not sustain exactly the same performance as each other, which resulted in a line where the two halves met. Since I wrote this review, JVC have released firmware updates to reduce the problem. People are now reporting that it is only visible if you really look for it, or you can’t see it at all.
Finally I would recommend using the JVC M-DV63HD and M-DV63PROHD tapes when shooting in HDV 720P mode. As you might know, the HDV format uses the same MPEG-2 compression codec as standard commercial DVDs, so like all HDV camcorders, a drop-out might effect several frames and not just one like in DV mode, this is because of the GOP (Group of Pictures) algorithm. When shooting in standard DV mode I would still recommend using JVC’s own brand Mini DV tapes as they are scientifically matched to JVC’s camera heads and will give the best performance.
©2005 Nigel Cooper