My wife and I have been talking recently about buying a new camcorder. Our daughter has a school play coming up next week, so we decided it needed to be sooner rather than later. My wife finally decided that she just didn't care too much about the details of the camera, so I went out this afternoon to get one.

My first stop was Circuit City, since they're going out of business and I thought I might find a deal. They had a few HD cameras left, but in the end I decided to go to a different retailer. I chose this other store in part because I was nervous about spending that kind of money at a store that I know for a fact will be gone in a month, but also because I found what I thought was a helpful salesman at the other store.

The camera I bought was the JVC GZ-HD5. It's an HD camera with an internal hard drive for recording. I had thought I had done the necessary research before going to the store, but there was one key element I didn't look into, and that turns out to have been a huge mistake. (But in looking for solutions tonight, I know that this isn't something I would have been able to find in advance.) As all of my readers should know, I have a bit of a bias towards Adobe products. I'm getting into the whole realm of video editing in part because as an owner of the CS4 Master Collection, I have all of Adobe's video editing tools, including Premiere Pro and OnLocation. A big part of the reason why I want a camera at all is so that I can use and learn these tools.

And here's where the fun begins. It turns out that JVC is one of those damned fool idiotic companies that insist on making cameras that record in completely non-standard formats. In this case, their cameras record to a totally useless "TOD" format. And from a new round of research online, I've discovered that pretty much, only the POS software suite that comes with the camera can actually read or do anything with these files. Great. I spend $850 on a camera but can only use worthless tools to produce crappy DVDs that look as unprofessional as it's possible to look? Does that sound like a good plan to ANYONE outside of JVC's boardroom? Seriously? (Fun fact: the software tool that they provide to create DVDs has a menu item that says, and I kid you not: "Right to DVD". Yup. They can't even take the time to spell check their menus.)

In particular, no Adobe product recognizes the format. I found a tutorial online that shows how to use 3 other tools to re-encode the video so that it can be supported by Premiere at least, but that doesn't do me a damned bit of good - there's no way I'm spending several hours on each clip I need to import before I can even start editing it. And it doesn't let me use OnLocation.

You may have noted above that I didn't mention the name of the retailer. Here's why: I plan to take the camera back to the store on Monday (they aren't open Sundays) and get them to make things right. Why, you ask, do I think that they have any share of the blame here? Well, because when I was at the store, I specifically told that nice salesman that I was looking for a camera that I could use with Adobe OnLocation and Premiere. His response: "Well, if you were just a soccer mom off the street who didn't know anything about the software, I'd suggest a Sony. But since you need to use those tools, you need to go with the JVC." Yup. THEIR salesman suggested that I buy this exact camera specially because it was the best one to use with OnLocation and Premiere, when in fact it is the one brand of camera that will not work with those tools.. Like other electronics retailers, they have a 15% "restocking fee" on opened camcorders. So I'm not mentioning their name because, as I said, I hope that they will make it right. I'm going to take the camera in, ask to speak with a manager, and calmly explain the situation. I'm going to ask that he take this camera back, with no fee, and allow me to exchange it for the Sony model that will do what I need it to do.

So check back here on Monday. I will be revealing the retailer at that point. Hopefully, it'll be in the context of "this retailer is a good one, because they care about customer satisfaction and made it right"; and not "please do not shop at this store."

And either way, I would definitely recommend that if you're in the market for a camcorder, steer away from JVC. Even if you're not planning to use the Adobe products, rest assured that you will not want to use the software that comes with the camera, but that seems to be the only choice the company gives you.