The Editblog

UPDATE: The official English JVC link is up and working here.

I was intrigued  tonight (or last night if you read this on Thursday morning) about a number of Twitters coming from the San Francisco Final Cut Pro Supermeet at MacWorld. Reports were of JVC announcing the GY-HM100, the “World’s first Apple’s QuickTime file format support” camera. The tweets were saying it records directly onto SD cards, 3 pounds and less that $4,000. By having true QuickTime support, a file can go from card to edit with no transcoding or rewrapping using the XDCAM-EX codec. There was a link posted to go to pro.jvc.com/hm100 that takes you here. As of midnight central the continue to GY-HM100 product pages takes you to a password protected log-in screen. It’ll probably be fixed by morning.

In the meantime I did some poking around Google and it returned this link to a Japanese JVC site with more specs on what looks to be the camera. The specs below are from the Google translation:

Apple’s QuickTime (for Final Cut Pro) ? the world’s first file format support, SDHC card and a direct record. No image degradation by wrapping the file conversion and codec conversion. In addition, MPEG-2 ISO response to correspond to the major non-linear editing system.

HDV 720p format is used in full-HD1920 mode (60i) to respond. 1080p in 24p/30p (/ 25p) features.

Stick to high-quality HQ mode (35Mbps) and can save space for better compatibility mode SP (19Mbps/25Mbps) can be selected.

A new 1 / 4 type progressive CCD adopted. 3CCD rich color and unique 14-bit DSP system to achieve high resolution. The newly developed Fujinon (shares) in high-performance 10-times zoom lens, high-quality support HD recording.

Weight significantly reduce the burden of shooting 1.4kg lightweight, compact design. Increased mobility, dramatically expanding the field to shoot.

SDHC card slot and two with the group, about two cards can record six hours long (SDHC32GB, SP [19Mbps] recording mode).

By morning there might be a more official site up form JVC America but if you are up late and want a sneak peek then here it is from Japan. Unfortunately it looks from the translation that it is lacking a FireWire port. While the actual judgement on this workflow will wait until the camera is in hand this idea is perfect since it shoots to XDCAM and doesn’t introduce a new codec that software manufactures will have to implement. We have too many different codecs as it is. This is a really great idea to think that finally you can go from shoot to edit with absolutely no transcoding, converting or rewrapping. Just a file copy from card to media drive. The big question I have is what took these camera makers so long to do this!