JVC Picsio GC-FM1 Camcorder Review
The Software
Contents
One of the things that make the Flip Video Camera popular is software. The Flip’s software automatically installs when you insert the camcorder’s USB connector. JVC follows that trend by having their software pop up immediately when the device is attached to the computer via the USB cable. However, that is one of the few things that JVC got right with its software.
The FM1 comes with the Pixela MediaBrowser LE. This software has a nice interface, as shown in Figure 10. However, it is really lacking in functionality. With it you can browse and preview your video clips and still pictures and you can download them to your computer. However, you cannot do any editing. What if your video is just a little too dark? Well, you will have to editing it with some other video software.
We also found the software to be unintuitive. We had to look at the help menu to learn how to move the videos to the computer. This should be something that is clearly marked and easy to do.
This software is Windows only. Mac users, however, can attach the JVC to their Mac and edit the videos with iMovie without a problem. I believe that PC users will also want to use other software with this camcorder, as well.
Figure 10: The MediaBrowser software.
If the videos you have taken don’t need any editing, you can use the YouTube button on the software, shown in Figure 11 to import your videos directly to YouTube. This is fairly easy to do and the software even supports multiple YouTube accounts.
Figure 11: Upload to YouTube.
We know that we have been spoiled by the Flip camera’s ability to edit vireos, to import different file formats, and to compile multiple clips into movies. However, JVC will have to do a lot of work on their software before we can give it marks that even come close to the Flip’s software.