I have bought a JVC GVL100 digicam(MiniDV format). It is the lower end model so doesn't have any accessories with it. I have purchased a capture board and can now download video, control the camera etc.

The issue then. If I take a "snapshot", and capture a video frame from this shot onto the PC, the quality is not as good as I had hoped. However, The digicam also has the ability to transfer still images through another port "PC-Photo" (if I buy the accessory kit).

Question : Will the quality of the "still image capture" through the PC-Photo" port be better than selecting a frame through the video capture board using firewire?

The camera boasts a resolution of 800,000 pixels (1/4" CCD) which is higher than most other digicam's I saw so I'm hoping the answer will be yes :) I don't want to buy the kit if it's going to be the same quality though.

Thanks in advance,

Regards,

Gary.

-- Gary Price (grp@span.ch), June 05, 2000

Answers

Gary,

I bought a JVC Mini DV GR DVF 31 with pretty muck the same results. The camera is unsurpassed when transferring onto VSH and the sound quality is great, but still images are limited. Did you get the JVC video capture and video producer software with your camcorder? If not, look into it. It will help somewhat. With regard to still images, I ended up buying a Sony Mavica so supplement my arsenal. I don't know what your still image requirements are, but I wouldn't spend money trying to tweak the camcorder. A couple of hundred towards accessories would be better spent on a still camera.

Larry

-- Larry Yerxa (larz@cybertours.com), June 06, 2000.