Customer Reviews

Panasonic PV-GS19 MiniDV Camcorder w/24x Optical Zoom

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This has been an excellent camera for filming our less-than-a-year old daughter, indoors and out. The quality is quite good, and the camera is fairly feature-full. However, the one problem we've had is in connecting this camera to our computer. Panasonic does not have a driver up on their web site to let us download video from the camera using USB. We can download still photos, but not video. The most recent drivers don't seem to support this version of the camera.

However, the Firewire(IEEE 1394, DV) connection is recognized by Windows XP immediately and supports the camera quite well. Since we added on Firewire support for our computer, we've been downloading video and editing it easily. With Firewire, the camera also functions as a webcam.

The only thing I wish the camera had was a simple audio-in connector. The only audio the camera records is from its built-in microphone. The higher-end cameras in this line have this feature -- if you're going to record church events and the like and want to hook into the sound system, you'll want a higher end camera.

Overall, we're very happy with this camera. Just that matter of both the online texts and the manual not being clear that USB will not let you download video, you need Firewire for that.

My son bought this camera on his own this past summer to take videos of his friends skateboarding, etc. His desire was to get video editing software to add sound effects, music, titles, etc. The camera works great and does what is advertised. Always keep in perspective that a $300 something camera will not match up with the features and extras that a $1000 something camera offers.

The real reason for my posting this message relates to how to connect this camera to your PC to download videos. This is how it will work.

1. Ignore the USB connection stuff in the manual. Good for still picture transfer and webcam stuff only. Look at page 43 in the manual: "PC Connection With DV Interfac Cable". You must use this method to transfer video.

2. You need a "firewire" IEEE 1394 OHCI compliant card in your computer. I purchased and added a PCI Trendnet TFU-H33PI to my 5 year old HP XL773 computer that I also recently loaded Windows XP.

3. Here is the KEY. I bought a cheap SanMAX 4pin to 6pin 1394 cable. Could not get the camera to be recognized by the computer OS. With XP it should recognize the camera as soon as you connect it and turn it on with the camera set to playback mode. XP will treat it like new hardware the first time. I tried everything to reload the card software and search online for drivers and through forums for answers. Then I remembered that my neighbor does video editing. I took my sons camera over to his house and his computer recognized the PV-GS19 Panasonic camera right away. I then plugged my SanMAX cheap cable into his computer... NOTHING. IT WAS THE CABLE. I borrowed his Belkin shielded $25+ cable and plugged it into my computer and it WORKED.

Moral of the story. Don't skimp on the firewire cable. They are not all created equal.

I was taking good video 20 minutes after opening the box.The camera is easy to use and you can compensate for dark scenes quickly by changing a video setting with the cameras joystick.I had no trouble copying video from the camera to my computer ( XP ) via the USB connection. The windows movie maker program worked fine.Be aware that Panasonic does not supply a USB cable with its camera.

This is an excellent camcorder, it small, easy to carry around, and has good battery life. It even fits into a inexpensive carying case we had our for digital camera. It has a lot of great features and served us well on our vacation. Its been said before, but the only real drawback to this is the instructions. To Claridy: The camcorder can transfer still pics from its SD slot via a USB cable, you will need firewire to transfer it to the computer or use as a webcam - both which work very well. It also has all the necessary cables you will need if you just want to hook it up to your VHS/Home DVD burner via A/V cables and record, or just watch the playback on a TV. It could use an external audio mic output, but we found the internal microphone is quite sensitive and met our needs very well. Overall: Definately recomended

I really wanted a 3CCD model, but since I'm just starting out and need to buy other stuff, like a tripod, monopod, media, firewire adapter card, camera bag, etc. This fits the budget nicely and it is compact enough to carry it anywhere. Yes the USB connection does work, yes FireWire does work, although it took me a minute to figure out that a connection problem was the fault of the video software version I was using, not the fault of the camera.

Great product! Great image and zoom. Captures color very well. Sound is good. Very compact. Good battery life. Still picture quality is ok. Definately recommend this product.

This is a great camcorder. I've read that people have problems with uploading video to the computer, but I have not tried to do that yet. We purchased the camera to film everyday things (holidays, the dog, etc.) and it works much better than I expected. The zoom feature is great--I can't believe how crisp the film is for things that are so far away. I've even used the camera in place of binoculars on our travels because you can see everything on the screen so clearly. We also play back video in the car on our way home from travels and enjoy watching it on the mini screen and listening to the audio. The most unexpected benefit of the camera is how easy it is to take pictures from film. We watch what we filmed on TV and just hit the picture button to snap digital photos after the fact. It is fantastic! I really like having the digital camera and camcorder in one; it's one less thing to carry. Again, I can't speak to the computer upload of film, but not everyone wants to do that either. The only drawback to the camera is that it doesn't have a light or flash. However, we haven't found that we really needed it yet, and we have filmed a lot inside and out. I am so happy with the camcorder!!

If you are looking for a camera that has everything you need to transfer movies to your computer this is NOT it. It WILL work if you get the cable and you use a software suite such as Nero (that often comes w/ DVD burners)- but these things don't come with the camera. The size of the camera is great as well as the battery life. The biggest problem, and an important one at that, is that we found this camera to have a dark picture- picture was a bit grainy and pixely and especially poor performance in low lighting. Battery life & size were not good enough to sacrifice sharp picture quality and bright picture & colors.

I have owned this camera for several years now. It still captures video and I can retrieve digital video off of it from my computers running Ubuntu Linux. My major complaint was that the view screen quit on me after about a month of owning it, thank goodness for the built-in old-school viewfinder. The video quality is rather poor, but may be fine for some as a basic starter camera.

I grabbed this camcorder at Walmart as the cheapest option on Christmas Eve 3 years ago, to capture my kids on Christmas morning. Little did I know my hubby and kids would do the whole gift-opening without me or the camera, while I slept in after staying up half the night doing last-minute wrapping!

Anyway, the camcorder has been good for recording our family and kids growing up. I couldn't upload to computer either until I found this special cord my hubby had for his HP computer, that's extra small on the camera side. "Firewire" doesn't specify it enough at the store.

I love the 1 GB SD card that holds pics in it, and now I use the camcorder almost more for still shots for ebay and other images for email than I do for video.

My biggest disappointment is that there's no extra light feature. Many images come out dark in low-light settings, and I can't adjust for it with an extra light. Maybe I should read the manual - I just read there's a manual low-light setting.

I meant to return this camcorder within 30 days for a refund until I could research a GOOD one, but then Walmart's return policy was 15 days, I think. Oh, well. Could've been much worse!