JVC GY-HM100U ProHD Camcorders Follow Miss Universe Tour

Miss Universe travels an estimated 250,000 miles each year visiting dozens of countries, and most of her appearances over the past three years have been documented with JVC GY-HM100U ProHD handheld camcorders.

“I’m amazed at how durable the JVC camcorders have been,” said Colin Hornett, director of Digital Multimedia at the Miss Universe Organization. “The GY-HM100U provides a balance of image quality, portability, durability, and ease of use, along with the advantages of a file-based workflow.”

Hornett leads a small team that oversees the organization’s online interactive productions. The team is responsible for maintaining the Web site, building video packages for the online video player, live webcasts, and documenting the lives and activities of Miss Universe, Miss USA, and Miss Teen USA. The Miss Universe Organization, a joint venture of Donald J. Trump and NBCUniversal, is celebrating its 60th anniversary in 2011, and will broadcast the Miss Universe pageant on Sept. 12, live on NBC from Sao Paulo, Brazil, to an estimated worldwide audience of approximately 1 billion viewers.

The production team has been using three GY-HM100Us, provided to the Miss Universe Organization by JVC for promotional considerations, to produce video blogs, travel films, and other promotional packages that are posted on YouTube and www.missuniverse.com. “It adds up to be our best choice,” said Hornett. “The raw image that it produces is very good. I’m absolutely delighted with what we’ve been able to do with them.”

The lightweight, handheld form factor has been very convenient on location for interns who often have to operate a still camera in one hand while shooting video with the HD camcorder in the other. Plus, the production crew has to pack light for its worldwide travels, and the camcorder’s compact size saves valuable luggage space and weight.

In the field, footage is recorded to non-proprietary SDHC cards, then transferred to a laptop and separate hard drive until it can be stored on servers at the organization’s New York-based facility. Most video projects need to be completed quickly, so efficiency in the edit suite is a critical part of the Miss Universe workflow.

Hornett said JVC’s native file recording, which allows the Miss Universe crew to drop video footage into Final Cut Pro without transcoding, might be the GY-HM100U’s best feature. “The workflow of these cameras is fantastic,” he explained. “There’s no conversion – you shoot, then you edit. It lets you make the most of your editing time.”