The First (Bad) MiniDV Camera
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- čas přidán 22. 05. 2024
- In which I snarkily assess an incredibly expensive camcorder of yore. I'll admit I might have been a bit harsh on it, but even if it's better than I give it credit for, I still think JVC's motives here were not what they should have been.
Reuploaded with 40% less "unblurred Kennedy assassination"! Whoops on that first go-round.
Special note! I bought a new camera and I am very much still getting used to it. It took me three days to color grade this into something resembling consistency, and it's still all over the place. I'll get better in the future, especially with new glass - I shot this on a Canon kit lens and an adapted off-brand F-mount that I just, you know, had around.
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Chapters:
00:00 Intro
03:09 Overview & Market Position
10:02 Controls, Features
17:46 Dock
23:25 Firewire
24:07 POWER GRIP
29:00 Conclusion - Věda a technologie
One of my favorite things to do at Circuit City as a kid was dig through the videos and pictures saved on the demo cameras. Usually just a bunch of teenager-flipping-off-the-camera pictures, but sometimes you found a good, 12x zoomed shot on a stranger's cleavage or up some kid's nose. And sometimes that nose was mine.
Haha I remember those days. I was one of the nose kids. 😁
I still do that at Best Buy lol
Whenever I hit up any electronics store I always investigate their demo phones to see what type of shenanigans other customers got up to
And yes, teenagers flipping off the camera is still as popular as ever.
I work electronics at a big store and I can attest that the photos found on iPhone/pad kindle/etc can be amusing. More so when they even set them to the wallpaper
At Home Depot they had a Smart fridge set up I was able to open youtube so I loaded up a Video and turned it up on max volume
I don't care about video cameras. I don't think I've ever cared about video cameras. But I swear I will happily and attentively watch every single one of these videos through and be interested in it the entire time.
This is the best compliment I can get. Thanks!
Same
Ditto. This guy's style makes me interested in things I didn't realize I was interested in. I'll bet he could make a video on paint drying and I'd watch.
I love that technology is to the point where, in order to show your filming setup, it is easier to grab a camera with a screen attached (your phone) instead of a mirror.
I don't own any portable mirrors!! No use for em!
Lol throwback to earlier CZcams videos
What man owns a hand mirror bruh 😭
“It’s like operating an M1 Garand.” ~ Ping! 🤣🤣🤣
Gotta say, it is not the reference I was expecting. Fantastic nonetheless.
Nice icon
@@Rob81k Very timely comment given they’re currently handing out fully automatic firearms, and other weapons, to civilians in a certain country in Europe right now to defend against invading forces from another country. In the video the comparison of the “ping”’from an M1 Garand was indeed apt, sorry you feel different. Per capita “gun violence” in the US is not in fact worse than other countries, but when you count all firearm deaths, our numbers are heavily skewed by those doing self harm to themselves using firearms…
@@Rob81k Well the media has zero effect on my firearm beliefs, if anything the mainstream media in the US is very much anti-firearm. I appreciate you standing up for your beliefs, however, I will say this. Much of Europe is free now in no small part to the US involvement in WWII, and the M1 Garand played a huge role in that. Now maybe if the US didn’t get involved in WWII Russia and England could have taken on Germany alone, but certainly having to defend two fronts pushed Germany into a corner and split up their forces, weakening their overall defensive position in the later years of the war.
Kinda reminds me of the original Gameboy and the Gameboy Color. Loading a cartridge into those is just so satisfying
20:53 my personal obsession are the cute little drawings of people in the camcorder manuals. One day im gonna collect as many of them as possible and put em all in a zine or something
So sweet! My thing are those ultra neatly drawn illustrations with numbers & arrows that point out how you put the paper into that fax machine. And of course, on the other side, how you don't. INCORRECT!
@@MLX1401 That is adorably nerdy, I love it.
I love seeing miniaturized tape mechanisms. Managing to fit such complicated electromechanical devices into such small spaces truly is amazing!
I bought one of these (it was £1499 I think - at the time I could afford it!) from an airport duty-free shop on the way to visit my wife in Atlanta - she was working on the 1996 Olympics and we did a bit of a tour up through Williamsburg and Boston etc before flying back to the UK. It certainly caused a stir! A lot of people were curious about it and whether it was really a video camera. I worked in a broadcast training establishment at the time and when I came back home from that trip played it back through a monitor and I remember one of my colleagues seeing the tiny camera in its dock and then looking at the screen saying “look at that bandwidth”! It was miraculous at the time (I know that’s hard to believe now). Astonishing to think we can capture and replay hugely better quality images on a thin phone that is mostly a screen!
In 1988 my first video camera was a Sony CCD-V100e. People thought you were a TV channel filmimg
In 1996 I bought GR-DV1 for a trip to Moto GP and WSBK in Australia.
It was like CIA spy equipment in its size and form factor.
Mine was nz$3600 (us $2500) and about 30% cheaper than the Sony(s). I new Hi8 was doomed
The jewellery version JVC came in a Gold clad model.
27 years later I can put the JVC tape into any of the Sony camera I have collected and fire it into PC.
The only flaws of the DV1 were
1. 28-32 minutes battery life
2. Eventually overheating destroys an imaging chip (rolling colour bar) - playback unharmed
It was ground breaking and build felt high end, but the Sonys were perfect studies in miniaturization and battery design.
When the world was turning to solid state recording I collected every DCR-PC and DCR-IP i could.
The Sonys are like a piece of military hardware, and were used on battlefields too.
I don't regret buying the GR-DV1 at all because I can still watch everything I recorded on it on and do digital transfers
DCR-PC1 came out 1998?
I think DCR-PC101 and 110 are the greatest video (tape) cameras ever made
Sony also had a 5-second mode on their camcorders until the late '90s, and in their Handycam Guide video they recommended using it to create a series of fast-paced scenes to hold your audience's interest. I think it's mostly a holdover from 8mm film cameras which only recorded about 3 minutes of footage per reel, so most home movies on film were a series of very short clips, to try to get the most out of that limited time.
Techmoan had a GR-DV1 when it was new and in his review of a Sanyo camcorder he mentioned that when he took it out in public, nobody knew what it was, because they had never seen a camcorder that small before.
"Every home movie will be like a montage from an 80's movie, it'll be great."
Cut to: grandma's birthday set to 'Eye of the Tiger,.' lol
I have this very firm belief that the camcorder industry committed one of the most intense frauds on the public with this impression, although ultimately who really cares if they did, haha.
Oh huh, I hadn't thought about the film camera connection. This *would* be very similar to how film home movies were shot, and this was also the first time in a *long* while that cameras had pistol-grip-esque 8mm style design. Intriguing!
this is just vine with extra steps
My JVC GR-AX280 from 1998 had this 5 second take mode as well. I never really used it though. But i did use the interval mode to make stop motion videos.
25:55 - “$90!?” I said, before immediately remembering the $350 battery grip for my current DSLR. 😬
Meike makes third Party Grips though so you can buy those for a Lot less and basically get the same functionality
I worked in a high-end electronics store. When the JRDV1 came out we couldn't keep it in stock. I sold at least 100 of these and it was $2,200 which was around the same price as a CCD Projector TV. !! This video brings me back!
“Products that make you feel rich” reminds me of the dji mavic dock thing(look it up), you would never see a pro storing their tool under a glass dome to charge it, but you bet there are those out there that want their tiny drone charged up and on display because a drone in a bag in the closet isn’t nearly as impressive as a drone in a museum specimen dome on your desk.
That dome charger does look very, very cool. At least to me. It's the only thing about my sister's mavic mini I'm jealous of compared to my my Xiaomi DJI air knockoff.
I loved the part about nerd gadgets and ridiculous cars being another form of jewelery... it is true when you think about it.
Also I wish I would have had something like that editing dock when I had to produce a film for a high school project back in the day... I can still remember sitting there with two VCRs (which my parents always had for some reason), trying to edit together scenes without destroing the quality too much. (That was before we had a PC that was able to edit video files).
Hey, almost everyone's guilty of it. Ain't like my PC doesn't have a glass door on the side. Also, there were actually much more sophisticated editing docks for other small cameras, and i wish I could get one - I've been waiting for a particular ebay listing to pop up for literally years at this point, hoping it happens so I can show it to everyone.
"I can't think of anything that goes under a TV that has a fan in it because you're gonna hear it over the TV"
*laughing in PlayStation 4*
giggles in XBox One
Apple TV 4K has a fan also lol
My Philips DVDR3575 DVDR/HDD video recorder also had a fan. I replaced it with a quieter one.
Saw this before the repost and thought CZcams broke on me when I got a private video error
I always wondered what would happen in this situation hahs
I had the first video in my queue when you deleted it and I also thought CZcams broke because I just got a playback failure
Ahhh I love your camcorder videos. Camcorders aren't something I was ever able to afford/able to play with outside of a media studies course in high school, but you make learning about them very fun!
Thank you! I'm glad you like them! I actually grew up fascinated with camcorders and couldn't get any until my 20s, so this is all sort of cathartic for me as well.
this is me and portable tvs. I wanted one so bad growing up that I've built a collection up now
That $3000 look! Love it
In my head I kept thinking I remembered it being "rose gold" rather than its actual plain aluminum color because my brain just associates it so hard with Money
At that time, digital photocamera's were pretty hefty and expensive = you made a still with your digital videocamera. We used it quite a bit! It was better then capturing it later from screen to a computer and you could actually put it on your pc with some software of JVC. Later versions came with a SD-slot in it so you could also safe the picture to that instead of the digital tape but tape worked almost as well.
Before this, there were 3 options to include a picture to your project (we used it for measurements and pictures for building):
- polaroid, scan that on the paper-scanner, try to scale it and print it... it was a 'picture'
- use your SLR, when the film was full, go to let it develop and digitized, use the CD to include a better picture in your project (still best quality)
- use the capture-card on the computer to capture a still image (max. 640-480 or about... mostly less) from your VHS-tape that was in 'still mode' in your camera...
After we got this first MiniDV camera, the polaroid was only used for legal reasons and the SLR was not touched anymore. To transfer the whole digital tape to your pc, you needed a lot of time but that was just waiting and in the same time you could do other work. Only when the digitizing-stage was on it's end, the computer almost freezes up to complete it's work to make the little AVI (I think it was).
I still have one of the JVC follow-ups of this camera and use it sometimes. With the 'firewire' (compatible) connector and cable on an older computer it still works...
Some DVD/VCR combos from the late 2000s/early 2010s have a fan in them, and I believe all D-VHS decks had a fan in them.
Can confirm that the DVHS decks have a fan. It doesn't run loud though. It also has a JLIP port too.
Yeah, I've since remembered there are other things (like DVRs) but it's still wild for something this small!
also most "bigger" 5.1 / 7.1 home theater amps (especially those in the 2000's ) had fans. But they tended to be temperature controlled or tied to the volume of the music being played. (Technics amps used to modulate the fan to the level of the output) so in general you'd never hear it.
I always get excited seeing your notifications on Patreon and here. Thank you for all your amazing high quality content and hard work. Really seems like youve grown a lot and the amount of info for people who love this tuff that’s top notch is astounding. Just thanks!
Hey man, just wanna say I love your videos. You’re always able to make me interested in these little gadgets regardless of how useless and trash they may be. You’ve even sparked my nature videography hobby back up and I couldn’t thank you enough.
I understand why it's clunky but somehow the camera having its own bespoke deck you have to hook it into to watch on a TV is charming to me. I would've loved the Process if I had one of these as a kid. (And as all kids with families that spent dinner time around the TV, I did want a camcorder so I could submit clips to America's Funniest Home Videos, a show as an adult I cannot stand)
Working with 18650s is actually very safe. People have been given false expectations by CZcamsrs who purposely damage them in silly ways, or the incredibly rare event of a manufacturer messing up and several batteries out of the millions upon millions they sell failing spectacularly. The reality is it's just very very hard to do this to them by accident, and even if you're trying to do it, it can be hard, just look how difficult CZcamsrs have found it to damage unprotected batteries in the most synthetic of testing environments.
I would suggest you just recell it. It looked like there were 2 18650s in that pack? If they're in parallel you don't even have to worry about balancing. If they're in series just charge up two identical new batteries to the same voltage (I would suggest the nominal voltage, it's easier and more likely to give you an accurate battery meter when re-celling). Then just solder them in on the end of the tab (do not solder directly to the battery, only to the ends of the tab).
With only two you don't really even need to worry about balancing, many manufacturers do not bother to even check for it as they don't have a direct connection to the middle point. But if you do the BMS will just have a middle wire for independent charging of each battery.
So yeah I would highly suggest re-celling them. Ideally you could grab the exact same cells. But if they don't make them anymore, just make sure the new cells use the same battery chemistry, and have the same max voltage (e.g. while most cells are 4.2V, some are 4.35V). You would also want to check the cut-off voltage, making sure the new battery is fine, but in reality it's going to be hard to find one that won't. Only other thing you need to make sure is that the maximum discharge is greater than how much the camera uses (again though would be hard to find a modern cell that doesn't), and similarly that it can handle the charging current (virtually impossible to find a modern one that can't, perhaps literally impossible).
One last tip. If the battery BMS is new enough that it will not boot back up, you can generally just put the voltage of the battery in backwards through the terminals, and it'll reboot. Use a current limited power supply or a resistor if you're worried for some reason.
Oh and I think a tool like SMBusb would be mega useful for someone like you. You can use it to speak to most BMS and get useful information out, from basics like the actual current max capacity, to resetting locked BMS. If you want any more info just leave a comment and I'll give you my contact info.
added the first vid to my watch later list, and the reupload gets uploaded just when I got time to watch it. Nice!
I bought one of these from Japan and it’s cool because it cost like 10 bucks but shipping was like 200. Thanks for the new video!
Hahahhaa yeah you can really get dinged on the shipping... I have a number of devices that cost More Than I'd Have Liked for that reason
Was working at Circuit City when these came out. Sony came out with two models as well. Someone actually came in and bought two of the JVCs.
Twooo? 😯
I wrap a thick rubber band around all my charged camera batteries. I have to take the rubber band off to put them into my camera, so telling charged from uncharged batteries in the bag is pretty much automatic.
In December 1997 I bought my JVC GR-DV2 which is like the DV1 but with ~1.5" screen for ~$1,300 and I remember at that time the DV1 was about $1,000
Love to see the evolution from your earlier stuff to now! Techmoan isnt the standard for no reason, you have a great future
Why did I become overly stressed by the time the video nearly ended? There is no external LCD display, no FireWire and the battery packs are stupid proprietary in design.
I have the JVC GR-DVM70U and last used it 10, 12, 13? years ago as one of 3 cams for a wedding... decent quality, and even though better options were available, those were still fairly spendy. Loved seeing this and the Ryobi soldering iron vid; I will likely be spending lots of time watching in the future. Your comp of the latch / unlatch dock mech was PERFECT! Talk about batteries... the 70U used plates that came in two thicknesses, much like a couple of my early cell phones. Dandy! Mine does have direct 1394 thankfully, and I found some minidv blanks on clearance just a year or two ago, so we’re still ready to rock :)
The GR-DV1 was the first of a series of vertical camcorders made by JVC. Following models added the much useful firewire port and the flipping LCD screen.
I loved this video and it brought back great memories as a kid. I remember editing my videos with the camera and recording them to VHS. I truly wish I still had those VHS tapes or the 8mm tapes. Great video!!
Oh yeah, I would love to see some footage from proper 80s/90s editing, almost all the "found footage" I've seen is just whatever came out of the camera from hitting rec/stop. Thanks for watching!
Your videos are awesome, man. Thanks for all the great work!
The very first MiniDV camera ever released was the Panasonic EZ-1. It was released before IEEE had finalized the Firewire protocol, so it didn't have a firewire port. I bought an EZ1 on the day they were released and used it to shoot several travel shows for Discovery Communications way back when.
Wow, I had no idea that MiniDV machines existed without FireWire / 1394 / iLink. I've started to re-digitize home videos on my Digital 8 Handycam from 1999, which still works flawlessly. The first time they were digitized to DVDs (on an Athlon XP Thoroughbread running ULead), this time it's to MP4s through an "old" 2nd gen Intel i5 Mac Mini, and compressed on an M1 Macbook. Thanks for another great video!
I love calling the brickformat MiniDV camcorders "Video Walkman" because they really look and feel a lot like the early 90s Walkman devices from Sony who could also record (like the TCS-350) but it records Video & audio on a tape similar to DAT.
I had one of those jvc minidv camcorders and shot all my deployment in 2000-2001 with it. Bought it off a staff sergeant of mine for like $600. Managed to find a couple batteries in Spain since the battery that came with it only lasted about 1 minute. The new batteries lasted not much longer, and cost a small fortune. Wow. Flashbacks.
Somewhere in my basement I have a PAL version of this JVC camera, which I sort of got from my uncle back in 2011 ("sort of" meaning he sadly and unexpectedly passed away just 64 years old and my aunt said "just keep it - I don't need it")
I had borrowed his camera as I was in need of a way to transfer a few MiniDV tapes to DVD for a friend. Sadly, my uncle had kept it in storage for far too long and the camera was pretty non-operable, so I had to look for one on the used market.
Having watched this video, I think I'll have a chat with a friend of mine, who's skilled at fixing up old AV gear. Would be cool if I could get that old tech up and running again.
10:24 mind blown, that's such a cool way to turn on the camera
Regarding the battery switch to remember if charged or not. Some Canon batteries had covers which would fit two ways and they had a small hole in them. In one orientation they showed a red dot and in the other they didnt. I thought it was pretty neat although i of course totally forgot about it a week later.
And maybe this is totally normal and still being used with the current ones but hey
I came across your channel completely via the algorithm, and what an awesome experience it has been sifting through your catalog and keeping up with your regular uploads. My interest in camcorders has only extended as far as the world of skateboarding, and it's interesting that you brought up the VX1000 in this video. Skateboarders are the reason VXs are so much more overpriced than other camcorders with similar features and form factor, as the cult of VX in skateboarding is ravenous to scavenge parts off of basically that model exclusively. It has been so fun learning about all the awesome features present in so many consumer and prosumer cameras and can't wait to purchase an analog camcorder equipped with more of an understanding of what makes a great camera a great camera! Thanks CRD,
It's really tough to get hard into camcorders and *not* know about skate videos just for this reason, because the VX1000 is, how to put it... one of the only camcorder model numbers anyone recognizes. It's a Named Model rather than one of the myriad forgettable things called "DZ-1001EF" or whatever. Most camcorders are completely interchangeable, but the VX1000 stands out just because of this cultural significance. Anyway, thanks for watching!
@@CathodeRayDude skateboarders were always using the vx-1000 with the century optics 0.3x fisheye lens (mark I ), to get to the most extreme look back in the day
"You're gonna hear the fan over the tv" Tell that to my Sony TV that literally has 7 fans of its own. I'm like the guy in the vestibule of the MiB headquarters any time I want to watch anything.
Technological progress: we've gone from noisy audio on quiet devices to quiet audio on noisy devices.
Welcome to the life of a console game player XD
@@stheil I haven't really been near a gaming console since they were all fanless. My work PC does spazz out and run the fans full blast for a moment any time I open an application. I really hope consoles don't do that sort of thing.
@@moconnell663 Unfortunately, they do. At least my XBOX One / PS4 Pro get pretty load when playing games, if I sit too close to the TV it's definitely loud enough to be annoying...
@@stheil it sounds like a special cabinet might be in order.
Mechanical image stabilization DID actually exist in 1996 - hell, the tech was around in 1976. The top-of-the-line Panasonic/Philips/Magnavox S-VHS camcorders in 1988 were when it actually started being available at consumer level tho. This was quite literally a miniaturized Steadicam built into the optics of the camera, that would smooth out up to 12 degrees of angle change purely mechanically - not like modern ones that use accelerometers and float the CCD magnetically.
The main complaint by reviewers, aside from a sticker price of $2700, was that the image stabilization system in the PV-460 and CPJ-815 added TWO POUNDS MORE WEIGHT to an already 5.5lb camera, of which I own a lower-end model and can attest that die-cast frames and lead-acid batteries ALREADY get heavy pretty quickly.
Speaking of which, that series of camcorders DOES actually have a 10 second self-timer mode, but that's because there's no IR remote - you get a one-button remote with a long cord that plugs into the 2.5mm jack on the back, so if you wanna stand more than 12 feet away (which you will, the FOV is tiny) you're gonna have to hit the countdown button and walk away. Don't worry tho, in practice 10 seconds is closer to 14 because it takes 4 seconds for the tape to re-thread itself, since it unwraps the head drum when paused for some stupid reason.
two pounds! whew!!! wow! huh, I should keep an eye out for a vintage OIS camcorder then.
@@CathodeRayDude There's 2 working PV-460 camcorders with EIS for sale on Ebay, sub-$100 shipped, right now, the Panasonic/Magnavox 300 and 400 series cameras are REALLY prolific. I own TWO of the lower end models, and have run into THREE OTHER PEOPLE with them at furry conventions JUST in 2019, not even INCLUDING the people who nerded out over mine who said they had one but left it at home.
I dunno about the EIS system but if it's built as well as the rest of the camera (and 2 pounds extra says it oughta be) there's not much that can break on em - these things are built like tanks. I've had one of mine apart and it's through-hole components, die-cast aluminum, and stamped steel, and everything is SERVO direct drive with HDPE gears - no belts to wear out. Only issue is the S-VHS ones have real problems with dirty heads, I can literally WATCH the quality degrade over the length of a T120 tape on my PV-S445.
And being full-size VHS, they take those 2.3AH AGM batteries that are like $20-30 on any site, still in production, as they're still used in medical equipment I think. You can also usually revive the original ones with distilled water and leaving em on the charger for like a week, the original chargers are non-regulated transformer/rectifier supplies that'll just slowly boil off the electrolyte if you leave the battery on em too long and that's the usual failure mode.
That.Was.Awesome! Your sarcasm alone was worth the price of admission 🤣🤣🤣
Wow brings back memories, i had this model when my children where young. Still have the tapes awaiting to be transferred.
My dad had one of the follow up models to this in 1998. It was the GR-DVL9000. The quality was so incredible for the time. And it had a MASSIVE 4 inch screen
I have never been an early adopter, but somehow I've always had friends who are. It's great, the best of both worlds: You get to see the latest and greatest gadgets, maybe even borrow them to try them out, but you don't have to pay for them or put up with their kinks and quirks. ;3
"High end amateurs or low end professionals" - I felt that. hahahahaha
LOVING that you mentioned skate vids 🤘🖤
hey, skaters made skating INSEPARABLE from post-80s video!
My dad's old 80s VHS camcorder also had that stop motion feature. I used it with Mario paint to make animations. Wild!
VX1000 - what a camera that was - even comparable with cheaper BetacamSP's at the time. Canon GL1&2 (XM here in Europe) were cheaper options and endless frustration in audio segment, but this JVC was just...everything you said in video. Well done!
What's interesting is that the JVD cigarette pack form factor was basically modified into the iPhone / all smartphones ever, but now we shoot with the wide side out with a facing screen. This thing is like a Paleolithic smartphone design.
Yeah, in a sense, and if you fast forward to the early action cameras like the Flip, they're almost literally that. I can't remember if they predate the iphone.
@@CathodeRayDude They do, I think by like a year. Lol. I'm not saying Jobs ripped them off, just that they were all clearly working out of the same design ecosystem. Apple just pushed it literally as far as it could go.
I remember the Mission Impossible game on N64 had a mission where you had to use this or a similar camera to do something. I loved that mission because I thought it was the coolest camera in the world 😁
"Only 4 grand! Cheap!"
This is meme-worthy.
"Only 2 billion! Cheap!"
"Only [too much money]! Cheap!"
I think it makes a good business plan to get this out JVC was probably selling but loads of VHS-C- and S-VHS-C camcorders- and despite pushing the VHS game they knew it would not last. They wanted the current customer to know- that when it came to be leaving the VHS world behind- JVC would still have something for them.
Thumbs up for a well studied review. I have the JVC GRDVM-5 that came after your DV1. It anticipates some of your comments! For example at 30:32 JVC did make it a great camera by adding a flip-out LCD. The new charger holds the camera locked in an upright position so there is no nonsensical fan. The controls for menu and tape playing are moved to sensible positions. I have used the camera from new, including doing a complicated exercise to edit travel sequences to a Hitachi VT-7E VHS recorder that obeys IR start/stop control from the JVC control pad. Picture quality (resolution, zoom range and low-light sensitivity) are all excellent for an analog connection. You don't mention sound but my camera microphone works adequately and the camera has a weak and tinny internal speaker for playback. I would happily use this dainty camera more except for A) I can't access a digital output from either the "DV OUT" or "JLIP" sockets. I hear talk about software existing for this, but not encouraged by JVC. B) My two Li-io batteries don't hold charge for long.
A previous girlfriend of mine had a Canon 40d, and when she ordered new batteries for it they came with covers. The covers are able to go on the battery 2 ways, one way shows a label on the battery through a window, and one doesn't, for indicating charge state. Very clever
I have a few receivers, sound systems, etc that all have fans in them. I never really noticed the fans though and I kept one under my monitor to have 5.1 on my desktop at one point. Worth point out that was back in ~2007 and my computer at the time was built with high end parts for CAD work; it wasn't exactly the quietest machine around lol.
RE: the physical charge switch on the battery: Canon LP-E6 (and many replacements) come with a orange cover for the contacts that has a battery indicator shape cutout in it, and the cover can be put on upside down, so either the blue or the black part of the label is visible through the cutout.
thank you so much for the power thirst clip
Good lord the docking part was EXCELLENT! lol
i worked SO HARD to make that garand insert
alright ha ha real funny you had me fooled for a second there, but seriously, where is the firewire?
:( are you sitting down
On a camera in 1996? It wasn't IMPOSSIBLE, the 1394 standard was ratified in 1995, but... very tight window to integrate it into this, and it was not yet the obvious standard. We still thought HDTV would use 5BNC for video back then.
@@CptJistuce The VX1000 had it a year prior!
@@CathodeRayDude That's fair.
Though I'd note that Sony was one of the primary developers of 1394(they actually held more related patents than any other company involved), and thus had a significant leg up in implementing the standard.
...
They also didn't use the standard-compliant connector, and forced the IEEE to add their non-standard connector to the standard a few years later. I suspect the camera was being designed before the connector was finalized and they chose the potential outcome they preferred).
@@CptJistuce that’ll be why Vaio were the only laptops I ever saw with it besides Apple’s. With that smaller connector, which I’m presuming that’s the one you’re referring to.
The smallest Mini DV camcorder I used to own was the Sony DCR-PC55. It came in a variety of colors, and it wasn't the best quality, but it had a HUGE screen and was tiny
I am a 55 year old gadget freak from Amsterdam and can confirm that the JVC was the first in the world, it was very popular with yuppies in the mid 90s. expensive like hell , 5000 dutch guilders , the cheapest car then was 8000 guilders. I bought the Sony model a few years later when it was 1000 guilders.
I got the next model up from that, I got to say it was a great camera and had it for many years. It was trouble free and shoot lots of great videos back then. Sorry I had them all and it was a good camera for the time. JVC make great video products. All my high end decks are JVC. I also use to repair video machines,cameras,etc.
Just here to say your eyebrows are absolutely on point 🔥
i'm not sure exactly what that means haha
@@CathodeRayDude They're expressive and lovely, I'd say.
Loved the M1 Garand comparison.
I remember on some canon lp-e6 batteries you could use the included battery covers to tell if the battery was charged or not. Half of the label was blue and the other silver so you can put the small open part over the different colors to indicate charged or not
The dock for that camera kinda reminds me of the dock for my ThinkPad T480. Lenovo killed the dock connector in favour of Thunderbolt starting with that generation, so in order to actually engage the dock once you set the laptop down, you have to push in the slider on the side so that it connects to the laptop's USB-C ports. It's very rifle-esque.
I remember my first encounter with actual Mini DV "Brickshape" camcoders in the late 90s. Sure i saw them before on ads and musicvideos but it was back in August of 1999 when i first saw them with my own eyes, in a shop window and i was blown away by the insane price it came. About 3000-4000 Deutschmark which was a lot. Keep in mind that my VHS-C Camcorder (which was a JVC model GR-AX280 that i got earlier in April 1999) cost me around 500DM back then. And that model was even on sale and normally went for around 700DM. Back then i felt the Brick Shape of the Mini DV Camcorders to be really cool and futuristic and looking back at them now, they still look cool and futuristic. I still however prefer the Sony 1Megapixel CCD models. The picture quality from these camcorders is simply amazing by Standard Definition video standards. ESPECIALLY the superior PAL models.
We actually do have a VHS / Mini DV hybrid player at home. My Dad was a prosumer so we all had old tapes on VHS, Mini VD from his prosumer camcorder, and even old 8mm film. I'm in the process of archiving / digitizing it all.
"Bonus"
"Bummer"
*hat starts rotating to the side*
"Why does noone ever talk about the m o u t h f e e l?" (of the product experience)
I don't get it. What does Hontrapoints have to do with camcorders?
@@salvatoreshiggerino6810 he did make a mouth feel joke in the video.
I love these vids thank you dude
Towards the end of the '90's, I borrowed a Canon EOS lens from a friend, and it had optical image stabilization. It used an actual gyroscope, which you could feel and hear spinning up when the lens was activated.
I assume that this has probably been commented before, but it seems that JVC actually released a direct successor to this: the GR-DVM1. It still had many weird design flaws, but it added an LCD screen and the dock mounts the camera upright so it's still (theoretically) usable while docked.
My dad got this camera couple years after it was released, costed him pennies. Ended up recording a lot of family activities. Brings back memories seeing those junky docks and add ons, how as a kid i wasn’t really allowed to touch the stuff. We still got like 10 batteries somewhere, some we had to hack and swap the cells inside. It kept recording in some wanky formats that could not be read by anything but the camera itself, because of that all the videos at some point were just ripped to vhs though the dock.
Pretty sure ours is still working and with all the accessories, maybe worth something to a collector?
Love how this dude talks :) Greetings from Poland :)
Absolutely the bit with the M1 (*PING!*) was teh best!
I couldn't *not* think about it every time I racked that lever
Wow, that Powerthirst clip. Deep pull. Five stars.
13:20 The non-optical Image Stabillisation was called "Fuzzy Logic".
I appreciate the sarcasm at 5:20
The vx2000 is also revered in the skate community as well. I shot on a Canon ZR45MC with a wide angle lens. It was a shitty camera, but shot on Minidv so it was nice for editing. Of course I used Windows movie maker in XP, so I wasn’t making masterpieces. I’m assuming the highest quality on minidv possible was 480p, which is decent.
The highest quality on DV is 576p ;-)
@@ConsumerDV is that for PAL region? With NTSC aren’t there some lines of resolution that were used for time coding or teletext or some other placeholder for additional information in the video signal?
Oh man the Garand montage killed!! 🤣
My brother and I love your channel dude, so much respect for your depth of knowledge, and if I may admit, finally dumbing down rf modulation in your nes radio station video to a level where my idiot brain can understand it
I have a Canon ZR miniDV camcorder, released in 1998 at around $2k and the first in Canon’s ZR line (and I think it’s also the first miniDV camera Canon produced but I’m not sure), and it’s interesting to view it with the context you provided in this video. Despite releasing two years later, the ZR still has that metal body and requires an external dock, so obviously you were right about other companies following the JVC design, although the Canon does have a digital display which is neat. I guess that’s what Canon focused their development efforts on instead of reducing size!
Yeah, it *really* stuck!
The Canon ZR-1 was designed to be a "dockable" camcorder. It certainly was a thing at the time, just like dockable laptops that had limited ports on the laptop itself. It was a common tactic in the 90's to shrink down the size of a device. Of course if you don't have the dock, said devices tend to become quite useless!
I also recall Sony venturing into the ridiculous with their docks and attachments. They released a MiniDV Network HandyCam (ex: DCR-TRV70 and 80)... with a dock that could connect the camcorder to the internet via a modem or ethernet! It wasn't for sending videos though, the camcorder had an e-mail client and web browser.
I still use my ZR850 today. One of the last tape-based camcorders.
The best setting was the 10 fps mode. This wasn't slomo, It was long exposure. This made it useful for night shooting, just hold it steady.
It was a great size. I used it to shoot lots of emergency crews and accidents. I could work around in the back of an ambulance or in the ER without any effort.
Firewire? I had a Panasonic DVPro deck for playback to SDI and the early NLEs.
Interesting video. I remember buying my first professional DV camera in late '95 (or early '96) for personal video projects; those were a big step over the Betacam cameras widely in use at the time. It was probably the first time I had a video source with decent enough quality for (digital) chroma keying, something that's pretty much fruitless with Betacam footage.
Some infolithium batteries have the little dead indicator tab. Ive only seen it on a single NP-F330 somehow still holds a charge. Its very clever tho. Rather than relying on the user to set the tab it uses the charger to pull the tab out and the camera pushes it back in. Full automating the process
My friend had one of these (nearly) It had a black and white only viewfinder and the battery went on the back, not sure if it was an earlier or later model ?
great content as usual but the moment I saw that tape cover I subscribed
lol 29:15 ...looking at my server rack full of enterprise gear. Hey, I might be living alone, but I really need those 5 VLANs!
A lot of the Cameras I used during the time where I did video editing on a regular basis was during the MiniDV era, both with standard definition video and HD video (on a variety of consumer and prosumer cameras). Through the lens of nostalgia, I kinda miss these things, but to be honest, the video capture process and the video quality tells me I don’t.
I much prefer the modern SD card based video storage…
Yep - I still have two Canon XHA1 camcorders. Biggish beasts, immaculate condition and sadly pretty obsolete. You can get good video out of them in the right circumstances but you have to work hard on the grading and post-pro. Nothing like as easy and wonderful as current technology where you can get instant access to really beautiful video files from an SD card!
The form factor reminds me of a cross between WWII era 16mm cameras EG:the Keystone A-7 and the boxy film cameras that the KGB liked to use, like the Kiev 30-M aka the 'cigarette pack' camera. I wonder if they were going for a sort of James Bond look.
This camera was featured on the STING DESERT ROSE music video
That's a similar but newer model! You can tell because of the flip-out LCD, which the DV1 doesn't have.
@@CathodeRayDude Rewatching the video, Sting REALLY liked the still shot mode on that camera!
@@CathodeRayDude jvc grdvm90. I think it’s that model
MEMS Accelerometers, or to be more precise MEMS gyroscopes didn't exist then, but small mechanical gyroscopes existed then. It's a small tuning fork vibrating. Only one axis, so there was two of them mounted 90 degrees apart. These could be Murata ENC-05 or similar.
huh! didn't know that! makes sense but still, wow.
Ouch, that network switch comment hurt.
I just bought a Juniper EX2200 to run my home network haha
HELLO. I recommend for presentation one of the strangest video cameras in the VHS system. I filmed several times with such a camera. The picture was very good. It's called the Hitachi VM 4400. It's still available on ebay. Success
I can't explain the feeling I got from seeing that battery notch for remembering if a battery was charged or not. It's like... I've never experienced something 'quaint' before this moment. Because that is so ultra quaint it's adorably silly.
I bought the VX-1000 the first day it came out. Boy, am I glad I did as it went back ordered for at least six months. I was about the rent it out to others because they wen't available. I looked at it. It had 3 CCD chips, Component color, Image stabilization, only weighted 4 pounds and cost $4,000. I had owned a Betacam which weighted 30 pounds, (the battery weight four pounds alone) had component color and cost $35,000. It was a "No-Brainer". I had that VX-1000 for 10 years. It made me a lot of money. I bought it from the Good Guys consumer video store with a five year warrantee for $500 extra. I use it a few times. New video heads, pinch rollers, etc. Anytime someone would look in my Betacam - $350.00, let alone repair it.