With my Thailand holiday fast approaching it was time to work out what sort of stuff I was taking with me. I don't mean what clothes; I'm not a woman. I mean iPod, DSLR Camera, Bobby Charlton wig, Red and White (Eng errr land) face paints; stuff like that. The DSLR is going to get me some nice artistic shots for the site, as at present they consist of UK based photos. What I needed was something to capture the moment of us being there… Hmmm, what to do. I'd thought about a camcorder, as I have an analogue one already. Problem is, it's a bit too big to be classed as handy, and so I’d be reluctant taking it out with me. Besides, the battery lasts as long as a recently released prisoner's fornication session.

Maybe I could get an el cheapo digital camcorder; it was time for a Google search. There are some half decent ones out there for around the £200 mark, however their physical dimensions were not as small as I would have preferred. I knew that JVC used to make some small ones as I'd seen them on some ITV show ages back. Another look and I found the JVC GR-DX** series. I looked at the GR-DX77, '97 and '107. The '97 and '107 being the main contenders. Although the '107 seemed to be a higher spec’d camcorder, it seemed that the '97 has a larger LCD (3" compared with 2.5"). Hmmm… now what!?

I sent a text to a neighbour of my mum's whom I know has a JVC camcorder asking her the model number and would she recommend it. To my delight, she offered to lend me the camcorder as long as I could show her how to work the software. She'd had it a while, but had never properly figured out how to get the proprietary software working, and would instead plug it directly into the TV.

When I got home after picking it up, I turned it upside down after recognising the design, and lo and behold, it's a JVC GR-DX107. Cool, I get to play with the one I fancy buying. Having a look round the device I was impressed with the size and the aesthetics, but was disappointed not to find a firewire port under the plastic port flap. Instead there was DC in, Mic in, and USB in/out. Never mind, I was certain the camcorder would transfer data to a capture program with USB and encounter to real issues.

As with all USB devices, I went about installing the drivers, software, and only then did I connect the device. Windows said 'hello' to it and associated it with the recently installed stuff. Strangely I couldn't see it in My Computer like I thought I would do – as per my webcam. Loaded the JVC software and went about attempting to capture DV.

The software looks all nice and pretty, but is awful to use. It isn't possible, for instance to right-click a recently captured DV file to select copy, or for that matter, delete. The only way I could see was to click the DV icon and then go via File > Save As or File > Delete. You weren't even able to drag directly on to the desktop. I thought it might be because there is some sort of final encoding which takes place, but no, the saving is instantaneous.

To my confusion the capture was limited to 320 x 240, which is way short of DV quality; apart from the fact that this is NTSC resolution, whereas the capture is PAL. Must have been a settings problem. Could I find it? Could I heck. Time to try out Adobe Premiere. Problems with this software too - but worse - the device wasn’t even recognised. A trip to a forum (my saviour) tells me that USB DV devices aren't supported in Premiere. Argh. I had another look at the camcorder and saw a little panel with an 'i' stamped on it - bingo 'i' for 'i-Link' or 'firewire'. Off to Staples for a Firewire card and cable. I pick up a Belkin kit for around £35. Try again in Premiere with success. The quality is excellent (bar the interlace lines) and you are able to take direct control of the camcorder with the capture software (as with JVC, by the way).

I then imported the captured file into a project and went about cutting it up. Unfortunately I had to save the video and the sound separately if I wanted to save by section. Saving the whole timeline wasn't a problem, but then it would make my cutting work redundant. So now I have three sets of both audio and DV. There is no doubt, an easier method, (such as batch capture, for one) but at the time I couldn’t be bothered.

After messing around with a few cross-dissolve transitions, I thought I'd export the DV footage to XviD. The compression was great, but the interlacing was annoying still and a bit more noticeable. So I popped it in to VirtualDub and loaded up a filter called Deinterlace - Smooth. I'd used it before and it does a pretty decent job as deinterlacing. The interlacing is done to make television images look smooth. On a PC it just looks a bit funny. So if you’re exporting to DVD to then only watch on a TV there is no point running the filter. After recoding the footage and running it again in Media Player things were looking a lot nicer. I think it's time to start playing around with Adobe Premiere a little more…