Know what you mean. It does use Firewire with a 4-pin connector on the camera end, so I'm about to cross my fingers on this one. (Is there any implied loss of functionality between 4 and 6-pin Firewire connectors, or is the 4 just a small connector on cameras?) I have searched all over and found no one who mentioned using the Firewire for camera control or just for downloading DV. I finally found a table on the JVC service that makes it sound like the 120 supports DV transfer. We'll see. It seems the documents mostly sweat over getting snapshots off these DV cameras. I couldn't give a rip, no pun intended, since I have real digital cameras.

BTW, when I do the capture, do I have a choice of output formats? Since VidCap won't enable a bunch of the options until it finds a device, I wasn't able to figure it out. I have been using a Dazzle DVC-II, actually an excellent device for capturing S-Video and composite to 2 to 10 MBit MPEG-2 or MPEG-1 files. Quality is absolutely amazing for a $200 device. Actually wipes a $2000 Pinnacle device a friend had a couple years ago. I've ran several 95 minute transfers from a Hi-8 tapes at DVD quality (8 mBit MPEG-2, variable) with never a glitch. There appears to be no visible artifacting. I've then used these MPEG-2s in VV3 and had to re-render them again to MPEG-2. I really would rather start with uncompressed video, but even after the second render to MPEG-2 the output is pretty much clean and sharp as a whistle. (Must be doing something wrong :-) I may decide to standardize on capturing older analog video to MPEG-2 and save a gob of disk space. Any comments?

Too bad VidCap doesn't see the Dazzle. Maybe because the MPEG encoding is all done on the PCI hardware card. It beats the pants off of software compression. One 95 minute 8 mBit MPEG-2 that I captured in real time was then pulled into VV3 for some minor changes, mainly slipping the audio track due to a sync issue. The VV3 render with the 'Pro' MPEG-2 compression to 8 mBit variable on a 1.0 GHz Pentium 4 with 512 MB SDRAM and 100+ GB of free defragged disk space took 8 hours and 45 minutes. Glad that is a dedicated machine! But the bottom line was that the resulting MPEG, which I burned to a DVD+RW with MySonic was beautiful.

Hope this info is of use to someone else. I'll report back on the 120U if I get it. I really like it since it has almost all the features of the higher-end JVC cameras, including 520 lines of video, 680k pixel CCD, I.Link Firewire, PCM stereo audio, 16x9 Squeeze Mode, yada, yada, yada. What really pushes me is that it has a true 16x optical zoom, while the other JVCs have gone to a 10x with massive, and useless, digital zooms. Now I just have to figure it it has a real audio input other than the built-in stereo mike.

Wayne Munn

I have the GR-DVL820U and it works great with VV3c. I would assume that the 120u will work as well.

JAB

Thanks, I hope so. (Hard to type with my fingers crossed :-)

The DVL520 does include software but it's only for the USB connection and viewing still images from the camera, no video capture software was included.

Firewire video capture is handled by the 1394 card/driver and vegas vidcap software. I've used a couple of JVC cameras with vegas and they work great.

franco

Thanks for sharing your experience. What you told me is the kind of info that is next to impossible to get from the vendor sites.

BTW, still trying to figure out (before purchase) if the DVL120 has external audio input. I want to use a couple external mikes, possibly through a mixer, on occasion. Might end up adding a connector for external mikes. I'm an old-time e. tech. hacker at heart :-)

Do you know if any of the JVCs have jacks for an external mike or a line input that can be used with the camera video? This camera is only a starter. In a year or so I plan to get a decent three-chip unit.

Wayne Munn, ASPP

The 120U doesn't have audio or composite/s-video inputs, only outputs. When I was researching cameras a couple of months ago i found that only the 800 series and higher have that functionality.

You can download the instruction booklet in pdf format from:
http://books.jvcservice.com/booklist.asp?Model=GR-DVL120U

For what it's worth I really like my 520U.

Good luck, franco

My additional Thanks Franco :-)

Actually I have already printed the manual for the 120U and the combined manual for the 320-520-720.

Here's the strange part, in the 120 manual the instructions for hooking to aP C state that it is used to "transfer still images to a PC." That's why I downloaded the manual for the 320-520-720. That manual also, on page 65, only mentions transferring still images. Under the notes it even specifically mentions (bullet #7) that "still images can be transferred to a PC with a DV connector-equipped capture board." Is this some sort of translation error I wonder?

See why I was wondering?

Thanks much for your help!

I have an JVC GR-DVL120U and a GR-DVM50U. I'm having a problem with print to tape feature on VV3. The camera is a start up for me as well. I like most of the features. The mic pics up motor noise at low level voice recording. After my warranty I plan to wire in external mic. The print to tape feature is very important and I can't seem to get any answers yet. The camera is great for the price. Hope this helps