JVC GZ-HD7

Vic,

You have to install specific software from JVC:

http://software.transdigital.co.jp/products/cbsev/qceng/


Jeroen

8-core Mac Pro-workstation Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Did you find anything that worked? I bought a GZ-HD7 as well and I can't use my Windows/Premiere Pro SW to edit so I'm looking at buying a MAC with FCP.

I have this camera..

Best way is to convert the TOD files to ProRes in the quicktime player
The plugin makes sure you can play tod files in your quicktime player.
importing the files in final cut pro is just slow and not working well.
So go for prores!!

On a mac pro this goes pretty fast and works great!!

see ya

read the conditions to get the HD7 to work with iMovie 06 and 08:

Apple discussions link:
http://discussions.apple.com/click.jspa?searchID=-1&messageID=5110759

Victor, It is highly unlikely that FCP will ever support the format used by your camera.

Final Cut is a professional editing program designed to work with
high-end video codecs and is rapidly moving toward fully un-compressed video editing.

The technology employed by many of the consumer camcorders, such as yours, calls for very highly compressed video stored on hard drives or solid state devices. In other words, moving in exactly the opposite direction from Apple's Final Cut Pro.

In response to this new wave of cameras Apple, among others, appears to be extending such products as ILife/iMovie to meet the editing needs of the owners.

I found this info on the net.

Hope it helps you out.

If you are using Final Cut Pro or other professional non-linear editing programs on the Mac, you cannot use the camera's native .TOD format, which is basically an MPEG inside the .TOD container. Forget about following JVC's instructions: they are too time-consuming and don't allow batch processing. The easiest conversion method I've found requires two freeware programs: The VLC media player, and MPEG Streamclip, both available on the Apple Website (and elsewhere). You'll first need to use the VLC player to convert the .TOD into a .TS file, which takes seconds (you are only changing the container format to MPEG TS, not actually changing compression). Once you've changed the .TOD file to a .TS file, you can use MPEG Streamclip to change to a variety of file formats that Final Cut Pro can recognize. Of course since you are recompressing the file at this point, expect this to take far longer than the first step.

While you can use a variety of compressions, I use DVCPRO60. Files compressed using DVCPRO60 can be viewed in Final Cut immediately without a need to render. The quality of the final DVC PRO .MOV file seems identical to the original .TOD file.

The GZ-HD7 is a great camera. Unfortunately, there have been a slew of bad reviews by writers in Mac Magazines that didn't really take a close look at the camera, or didn't understand how easy it was to get the .TOD files into usable ones for the Mac. That was 2007; Now, in 2008, there are a lot of problems on the horizon: The first is that the Everio component for MPEG-2's only works up to pre-Leopard OSX operating systems. It will not work in OSX 10.5. A JVC rep told me today that JVC and Cyberlink (the Japanese company who had made the Everio MAC component for JVC) have no plans to update this software (which, is astonishing, being that JVC has just dropped about a half a dozen new Everios at the January trade show and is planning to release the newer evolutionary replacement for the GZ-HD7 in August, 2008. Let's hope that they will change their minds). Photodave's solution is a doable one, however, it is a bit complex to set up the required directories on your Mac, and, more importantly, VLC media player is consistently plagued with security issues and bugs...so, be careful. There is no doubt that the GZ-HD7 is one wonderful camera. The pro division should take a look at it and maybe model a smart small pro cam after it. (Both Sony and Panasonic have two new delicious 2008 Pro ENG HD hard drive clunkers which owe their lives to the JVC Everio HD evolution). It is frustrating to say the least. But, tool & die, market share recouping, corporate blindness (on every level) and even stupidity, and maybe, just maybe a hint of vision every now and then are the factors that dictate what equipment we finally get our hands upon. Good luck to everyone in the future.

I got a message from Cyberlink. They claim that they do not make the QT Component that comes on the JVC accompanying disc with the GZ-HD7. JVC is responsible for that, and again, they are not going to update the component with a fix. The problem is within the component on the disc not being compatible with QT 7.4. A fix is needed, and again, if someone doesn't come up with one, then, it might be time to move on from using the GZ-HD7 camcorders.

Temporarily, the short term fix will be to use Photodave's formula. For keeping the integrity of the HD GZ-HD7's HD .TOD file's content, you might want to save it in Slipsteam in the "ANIMATION" codec, which is a lossless codec used for real-time playback of uncompressed RGB video.

JVC announced two new HD Everio models: The GZ-HD5 & the GZ-HD6 (the only differences being choices of hard drive capacity & body finish options). Actually, although JVC is holding their cards close to the chest, from what information that they have put out, they are claiming that there will be software which will "support Apple Applications;" to date, this could mean anything (whether or not it is backward compatible for the GZ-HD7 or not waits to be seen (also, it might not be available as a
download and will be part of the package for the new camcorders. The guts appear to be similar to
the GZ-HD7 except they've reduced the size down by 40% (closer to the original two Everio camcorders that were released). The camcorders will be out in Japan in February and (maybe) in the USA in March.
Check in on the JVC website in the future for more information as it is updated.

Re the GZ-HD5 & HD6, JVC has announced: "...also included is a plug-in that works up to 1920 X 1080I with Apple iMovie HD and Final Cut Pro video software for the Macintosh." Whether this is backwards compatible with the GZ-HD7, or not, we will know in March when the cameras enter the U.S. market.

I have a JVC GZ-HD7. After using it successfully once or twice, it suddenly didn't work. I tried everything and did a lot of research and now I have it working again. The problem was updating QuickTime Player to 7.4. QuickTime Player 7.3 works fine when viewing and importing to iMovie HD. I had to overwrite QT 7.4 with the older version using a shareware application called Pacifist. It worked fine without even registering anything.
Here is where you can find the older version of QT player7.3 for leopard : http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/

and here is the link for Pacifist: http://www.charlessoft.com/Pacifist_2.5.1.dmg

I am agree with Jan, the GZ HD7 is a wonderfull camera, but JVC, should take care of their clients. Today the standard for video editing in the professional segments, is Apple Macintosh. So we all the owners are waiting for a solution as soon as possible.