JVC Everio GZ-HM320 Camcorder (black)

• Average user rating: 3.5 stars out of 4 reviews
• My rating: 0 stars

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• 7 stars

  This is a fairly good quality camera with a great price

  by Carter_Ebrey on December 25, 2010

  Pros: Small Size
  8 GB Flash Memory Built-In
  Intelligent Facial Recognition Technology
  37mm Filter Thread (becoming more uncommon)
  Manual Focus

  Cons: Low resolution lense not meant for Full HD
  No Optical Image Stabilization
  Manual Focus is difficult to use
  Indoor Clips are grainy

  Summary: This camera is worth the money, because it is dirt cheap. If it were in the same league as mid grade Full HD cameras it would get devoured. Luckily for ...

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  Summary: This camera is worth the money, because it is dirt cheap. If it were in the same league as mid grade Full HD cameras it would get devoured. Luckily for JVC, it is not in the same category and is probably worth the money. If you are looking to make relatively good quality HD video for your home videos, a teen looking to film his skating, biking, or scootering, or a consumer user; this is the camera for you.

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  2 out of 2 users found this user opinion helpful.

• 6 stars

  Dirt cheap, good for average holiday video's

  by ProDigit on August 17, 2010

  Pros: small,
  laser led touch sense on the left of the screen,
  wind noise reduction (audio)
  good zoom
  Good handle ability, even with larger hands

  Cons: Short battery life (we got upto 1,5Hrs)
  Creates MTS files need recoding to .wmv 720 or 360p.
  some functions like higher than 80x digital zoom make little sense
  Photo's are low quality (upto 2 Mpix)
  software suit loads extremely slow!

  Summary: We purchased the cam because of it's pricetag (Sub $299 @ our local store).
  The analog zoom of 20x works pretty ok, you can add zoom digitally to 200x, but ...

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  Summary: We purchased the cam because of it's pricetag (Sub $299 @ our local store).
  The analog zoom of 20x works pretty ok, you can add zoom digitally to 200x, but at that zoom size you only see the pixels of the CCD sensor chip on your screen.
  I found out, at 1080i, the cam zooms in to 40x pretty ok!, and the image is pretty ok with visual artifacts at 80x. Anything beyond 80x zoom looks pixelated.
  It has digital anti vibration, with 3 settings (off, AV, and green; where green equals double AV. Single AV makes little difference in recording) which you can only enable in video to take zoom shots (for photo's; you can not enable this within photo mode, have to go to video mode).
  Recording in zoom modes beyond 40x without anti-vibration is not recommended. Recording faraway objects at 80x with anti vibration at 2x is hard to do, you need a steady hand or stand for that.
  
  It has a playback, video recording, and photo recording mode.
  
  The menu structure in the camera is not very optimized. It took me (a techie but without video camera knowledge) about 30 minutes of browsing and testing before I found out you could set the cam to 480i. Instead of having the video quality and video resolution in the same menu (or even submenu), they are located in 2 completely different places).
  
  Video Quality within the cam can be set to UXP. XP, SP, and EP.
  EP being the lowest quality allowed me to record a video of upto 1,5hrs on a 4GB card.
  The only other I would select is SP. XP and UXP waste too much disk space; while EP might use too much battery in trying to compress the video too much.
  The difference between UXP, XP, and SP was not noticeable, and the difference between UXP/XP/SP and EP is so minimal that unless you compare both side by side, you won't notice any difference.
  
  The software suit (provided on the CD ROM) when opening it up takes several minutes (of seemingly both disk and CPU being inactive) before it passes the splash screen.
  Many times we thought the software crashed, and rebooted it, only when we gave up on it, 3 minutes after starting it, we saw the actual program boot (this is on a Core2Duo 2Ghz computer with 4GB of RAM, and Windows Vista latest SP installed). Here JVC could do a MUCH better job!
  On average it took me 3 minutes just to load the software!
  The software is not easy to handle, and in their effort to make it easier, JVC or everest or whatever, actually made things much harder! It took me nearly 30 minutes to figure out how to backup the video files, and nearly as long on how to convert them (menu structure and button layout are not on a very common place).
  Video's on the cam recorded at 1080i or 480i can only be recoded to 720 or 360p .wmv video; all with loss of quality!
  Instead of supplying the software suite with a way to convert 1080i to 540p, or quickly recoding 480i to 480p which would make more sense, or providing a small app to convert the headers of the mts file to avi. It records in AVC video format, audio I don't know, but presume .wav format.
  
  Video quality is good enough for most non-low light situations. Candlelight dinner recordings will appear grainy and dark on the cam.
  
  The camera bag provided with the cam, actually can fit upto 3 of these camera's (when stacked vertically, 2 when stacked horizontally). The bag looks good enough, unlike the strap on the cam looks a bit cheap and thin.
  
  Camera comes without external LED for recording in darker areas.
  
  You can buy a higher capacity extension battery at a pretty high price (I'll probably go and see the grey market for one).

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  1 out of 1 users found this user opinion helpful.

• 10 stars

  Fun and easy to use...producing excellent results

  by Kelly1973 on July 9, 2010

  Pros: Looks fantastic on my 52" LCD...easy to use and small...love the time lapse function.

  Cons: Not sure about this review...how can one give the Flips and Kodaks of the world good reviews...? They claim HD quality as well. I found those to be horrible quality compared to my JVC

  Summary: Overall this camcorder provides an excellent picture with easy to use features in a small package...LOVE IT...!

  Summary: Overall this camcorder provides an excellent picture with easy to use features in a small package...LOVE IT...!

  1 out of 1 users found this user opinion helpful.

• 7 stars

  Great for the price

  by jerryhazard on February 14, 2011

  Pros: Shoots MTS files, which are easily handled by Sony Vegas and Premiere CS5
  Battery life is not unreasonable, about an hour or more of average use, zooming, reviewing, recording, menu hunting.
  20x-good. 37mm thread is nice - key reason for my purchase.

  Cons: ONLY shoots 1080i (interlaced, not progressive). This is not disclosed anywhere in the available documentation.
  
  Image sensor not super crisp

  Summary: Auto exposure is pretty good, plus you can adjust it.
  
  Auto focus is fair, have not tried manual focus yet.
  
  Menu navigation is not as bad as others would lead ...

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  Summary: Auto exposure is pretty good, plus you can adjust it.
  
  Auto focus is fair, have not tried manual focus yet.
  
  Menu navigation is not as bad as others would lead one to believe.
  
  Videos have a rich feel to them - richer than my Toshiba Camelio model.
  
  Instant on feature is nice.
  
  Overall as easy a cam to use as any other. Fact that will not shoot 720p is a bit disappointing, it only shoots at 1080i (interlaced - not progressive) is sort of a bummer, but the quality is good enough that I don't mind (you might). Still images - either grabbed from videos, or shot in photo mode are not very good. Your cell phone takes better images - not an exaggeration. Last con to list: spare batteries are more expensive than comp - even grey market batteries. Beware and research first!
  
  like most other cameras, don't even bother with the software included, its basically useless.
  
  Windows movie maker, mpeg streamclip, and sony vegas will work great with these MTS files.
  
  For the money - I was torn between a Camelio x100 by Toshiba, and this camera. I got both. This one shoot better quality video. The Camelio has more options as far as imags sizes go (720p @ 60fps). But for video quality and the ability to put a 37mm filter on this (for fisheye attachments and filters) - this is my pick, and depsite the few shortcomings, I am happy with this camera - would recommend it a friend shopping a similar price point.

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