Camcorder Reviews

Bought it last year! Nice and small, but even Pinnacle Studio 8 can't handle the compression. No voice, can't burn to DVD, blah, blah, blah. You name it I had a problem with it! And now, come to find out, Sony has stopped production AND will no longer pursue MicroMV. They are moving back to MiniDV! ARGH! Pinnacle won't support their product any longer with this compatibility issue and Sony abandons it.

I bought the Canon Elura 50! Great with stills and video. Inexpensive, only 1 ounce heavier and about the same size!

As my wife called it...... I bought Beta instead of VHS! Never be an early adopter.

Mark

I have bought a lot of Sony products over the years so when I was in the market for a camcorder I foolishly just picked this up without researching it. After recording four tapes of my one year old I tried making a DVD and after 20-30 hours and using 3 programs, including Sony's Movieshaker (constant crashes) I have still been unsuccessful. I have just ordered a well reviewed Panasonic camera in DV. MicroMV is a terrible product with zero support from Sony. I won't be buying Sony again.

the dcrip5 is for the early adopters among us. it has "wow" written all over it but make sure you're ready for the limitations of the microMV format.

pros:
- small size, and lightweight: 1.88"W x 4.0"H x 3.13"L weighing 12 oz. this is the main selling point of this camcorder.
- 10x optical zoom.
- Super SteadyShot image stabilization - and sony's system works.
- delivers vibrant colors when shooting in daylight.
- connectivity options: firewire, S-video, composite.

cons:
- microMV format is proprietary and may go the way of betamax.
- microMV video quality is noticeably worse than MiniDV.
- microMV also uses a different data-compression scheme than MiniDV, which means that it may be incompatible with your DV-editing software.
- no still photo capability.
- no video light.
- not Mac compatible.
- very bad ergonomics - a small camcorder will have small buttons and consolidated controls.
- as with most sony products, you pay a premium, pushing up the price.
- battery life could be better.
- only 2.5" LCD.
- non-intuitive menu system.
- no headphone or mic input jack.
- no accessory shoe.

given the limitations of the microMV format, a smaller camcorder is the only reason to use it. and a tiny camcorder is what sony has delivered and that's why this is a four star product for me. but if you can stand a slightly bigger camcorder, check out other miniDV options. these are more affordable, better supported, and almost as portable.

i hope this helps your buying decision. peace.

had windows 98 couldn't download driver finally bought a new tower came with windows xp now I find out that they don't have a driver for the xp also have a digital camera csd 4100 same problem what to do?

For Amazon's blow out price, you can't touch a Mini-DV recorder, let alone get one with a 3" LCD display. However, some clarification is required to Amazon's page. The camcorder does NOT have a color electronic viewfinder (EVF) as stated in the description. Amazon has been notified of the error.
Compared to my 8 year old VHS-C camcorder, the picture quality is like comparing DVD to VHS tape recordings. Images from the Mini-DV system are much cleaner. Then there is the size; nice, small and lightweight.
One final note, you'll find this camcorder bares a very strong resemblance to the JVC models (GR-DVL815), wonder why?

I bought this camcorder back in November of 2001. I used it until March, when it got stolen. I really enjoyed owning this camera. It's light, easy to maneuver, and the menus are easy to navigate. However, it did not take very good shots in bright light. It comes with all the cables and software necessary to hook on to the computer and to the TV. RCA discontinued this model, but if you come across it, buy it-I recommend this camcorder to anyone.

Glad to hear I am not the only one who should buy stock in Duracell. Just wanted to echo the other reviews in that this mouse goes through three AA batteries every two weeks (but the keyboard can go for months??) If anyone ever does hear of a fix from Intel please post. In the mean time I am thinking of getting an optical wireless anyway.

Just thought I'd let you know that I e-mailed Intel tech support regarding the mouse battery issue, and let them know how displeased I was.

They did indeed, help me out. I suggest you do the same and e-mail them.

In fact, I *$trongly* suggest that you do the same.

If you have your PC hooked up to a TV this is a great add-on. I can easily control the whole thing from the sofa. Or even if you just want a less cluttered desk. I can move it all aside and have a lot of space for doing homework or projects. As for the mouse, a set of batteries will only last a few weeks, but I bought a set of rechargable batteries and never worry about it. I also bought two game controllers. If you have the mouse and keyboard go ahead and get the controllers. The programmable buttons on the keyboard are an especially nice touch and I love the colors. I am so glad to get rid of the wires on my desk.

If you think this item will be usefull to avoid wearing out camcorder for rewind, then please reconsider.

I tried my Kenyo KV-885 for the first time this morning. It continued to run in rewind mode after reaching the end of tape. You've heard a small electric motor bogg down I'm sure. That was the sound. The motor kept running.

I hit the stop button and then eject button to get the tape out. About 1 inch of tape segment was outside of the cassett. Yep it damaged the tape. Guess I am lucky it did't completely destroy the tape.

As a service to customers Amazon.com should remove this item from the catalog.

You'd think they couldn't mess up something this simple. When I plugged it in, I got no power light. After fiddling with the power button for about 2 minutes,the light did come on, but the start button stayed pushed-in. This made it impossible to open the lid. The eject and stop buttons did absolutely nothing. I had to try my best to pry it open since I had a tape in there. I have no idea why it behaved like that but I have heard from others afterwards that it is a common problem. The company must have saved a bundle in engineering this product.

It makes life easy and I protect my camcorder. It was worth every penny.

Ok, so how are you supposed to enter a 10digit SN when the one that they provide for you has 11?
Couldn't install the software so couldn't use the product at all. Multiple posts on the Pinnacle user forum on the company's website also went unanswered with this same problem. Bye Bye, back to the store.
If you're not going to let me install your product and you're not going to help me to figure out how to get around the problem you've created then you clearly shouldn't be in business.

After searching and researching for a device to capture old mini-VHS tapes to my PC, I decided to try the DVC80. Although it installs with ease (driver download for XP) and comes with free MGI 4.0 software, the quality of the capture was much less than desireable. Even at 352x240 I was losing 2 out of every 3 frames, which makes the final product not worth watching. Also the sound transference didn't seem to work nearly as well as the video. So, after hours of experimentation, I came up with a work-around that didn't include use of the DVC80. If you are like me and have purchased a DV video camera and want to capture your old VHS for archive or other purposes, record directly from the source to your DV camera (if it has that option). Then capture thru firewire to the PC. Although this requires an extra step, the quality is 1000% better and worth the extra time. I will say this about the product - if you don't have the DV option for video capture, you will not find an easier product to use. Unfortunately there is just too much quality loss going from analog to digital thru this device.

I am writing this to hopefully save others some of the trial-and-error that I went through. This is a great product for the money and I would buy it again! Like others have said, the VideoWave software packaged with the device is not the best for capturing video. But, better software can be had for FREE. For capturing video, I used VirtualDub to capture files as AVIs. I used TMPGEnc to convert the AVIs to VCD compliant MPGs. The Nero software that came with my CD burner was producing horrible results when it had to perform the conversions. I have dubbed DVDs and VHS with very good results. Following the methodology I have listed below, I can produce VCDs with a quality that can be compared to video tape....

1) Capture the video as an AVI file using VirtualDub with 29.97 frame rate, MPEG4 codec V1 video compression, CD quality audio compression.
- Don't use the audio inputs on the Dazzle unit. Instead, directly wire it into the Mic input of the PC with a Y-patch cord.
- Use S-Video cable over RCA cable where possible.
2) Convert the AVI file to an MPG using TMPGEnc with Video CD NTSC setting and motion search precision set to 'highest quality(very slow)'
- TMPGEnc allows you to pull sections out of the source AVI to divide files longer than 70 minutes into two or more MPGs.
- Expect the conversion to take three to four times the time length of the file
3) Burn the CD with Nero in VCD mode using the MPGs from step 2.

PS - the VideoWave software that comes with Dazzle is great for editing home video that has already been captured. When producing the final file to burn on VCD, do not use its VCD settings. Produce it as an uncompressed AVI and follow steps 2 and 3 above.

I purchased a DV-S20 last week. Well, I have to agree with what the people who give this product one and two stars have to say. I really cannot add much more to what's been said about it, but I can confirm that it performs poorly in pretty much all aspects of operations. The one thing that I truly did not care for, is that the camera insists on taking pictures at 1/30 of a second, no matter how much light is available. I adjusted the ISO by bumping it up to 400, but to no avail. In some cases, the shutter operated at 1/6 of a second! With shutter speeds that slow, it's no wonder that most of the pictures were fuzzy. Once in a great while, I was able to get a good, clear picture. But that was only achieved by holding the camera perfectly still with two hands and leaning up against something solid. Unfortunarely, this method isn't very practical in the real world. I used up the batteries very quickly because I spent so much time deleting a lot of bad pics. The video I took of my normally graceful gray tabby made her look as if she was in an earthquake. It was very jerky.

I got this for Hannukah from my parents, and although it's not exactly a real camcorder it really is better than nothing. The Digital Camera on here all out sucks basically, but once in a while you can nail a decent digital picture. As for the camcorder it's ok, you can't exactly make a real movie, (unless you buy more memory, which is almost the price of the camera/camcorder itself), but even so ive enjoyed making short documentarys and sending them to my friends. Anothjerb great thing is the size, I mean you can take it anywhere, you never know what you could get on tape. Anyway overall, this is a decent item.

This camera is just great. The quality of the videos and pics aren't perfect like you would see from an 1000 dollar camera but I love them because I just want a camera that I can have fun with and not get real serious about it. First of all it's inexpensive so if it breaks, it isn't the end of the world and since it's so small you can take it anywhere. It includes software that you can use to edit and create your own movie masterpiece. It's zoom is a little weak but having a great zoom is too high above the price range of this product. Its battery life is about one hour but if you get the accessory pack it will turn into 90 minutes if you use the batterys included in it. The vidoes do include sound since the camera has a microphone. Another great quality it has is the fact that it can record up to 18 minutes and 700 pictures with its 64 MB internal memory. I would recommend this to someone who doesnt want the top of the line camera (if you do than spend more money) but wnats something that will be easy and fun to use. Really, anyone who wants to make movies should buy this. That's what my intention was and I love it.

I would recommend the camera's video quality and nicely put operating controls, even thought there is an inconvenience with the camera's external light button that it would be better placed on the outside of the camera, not inside where the LCD panel closes and forcing you to open it each time you want to activate the light and some useful controls when trying to only use the ViewFinder to maximize battery use. THE very drawback on this model is the lack of any editing software and USB cables. And be advised that Panasonic doesn't offer any free software not even PC drivers for letting you use any other software to control the camera.... you must buy them and wait months to arrive because they are always "backorder"... if you don't intend to hook it up right away with a Computer, it's a nice camcorder with many included extras other cameras have as options but no software is just a pain in the butt....

Enjoying the camcorder so far. Got a multi-card reader (to ease up on the battery usage on my digital, too) and getting the stills off the camera is a breeze. Computer recognized it right away as a removable drive. Had a Dazzle set up for the old analog camcorder and the Panasonic hooked right up to it, video on computer looks great. Lowlight is a touch grainy but still better than my old Sharp viewcam.

I BOUGHT THIS CAMCORDER AT CIRCUIT CITY IT HAD GREAT FEATURES AND WHEN I OPENED THE BOX THERE WAS NO SOFTWARE(AND I CANT STILL FIND NONE) AND NO SB CABLE WHICH REALLY DISAPPOINTED ME I FOUND OUT THAT THE NEWER MODEL OF THE PV-GS SEREIS SUPPORTED THESE.ANYWAYZ ITS A GREAT CAMCORDER AND FOR CAPTURING STILL PHOTS U NEED TO BUY AND SD CARD(NOT INCLUDED IN THE BOX)

PANASONIC U HAVE FALIED ME

I buyed this product with the help my friend in US. And it doesn't works for india PAL system. I wasted my 45 bugs.
It convert b/w picture to color from cam corder but it didn't stopeed vertical running of picture. So it's of no use for me. For india color system, it doesn't works. So I don't want rate it at all for india.

I agree to the previous comments.

Why NTSC to PAL aprox 50 u$s and PAL to NTSC 150 u$s (or more)?

If anyone knows any PAL to NTSC converter in the price range of NTSC to PAL please e-mail me (pedro.rosenfeld@t-online.de).

Can I use it to convert PAL to NTSC?

I bought one of these over a year ago when I could not find any reviews or any explanation of how the "zoom" worked. Boy, did I feel ripped off. I meant to warn others about the product but it got buried and forgotten until I ran across it today while cleaning my office.

Although some may like the convenience of no cables with the smart shoe connection, the audio quality is really quite abismal. It actually makes the on-board mic of my TRV27 shine. I was pretty naive about camcorder audio when I bought the ECM-HS1 but the fact that Sony doesn't publish any audio specs on the unit should be a big red flag to avoid this one. At best, this should be considered a speech only mic; forget music.

Although I've since moved on to pro audio equipment, you don't need to go to this level to get decent audio. After making the mistake with the ECM-HS1, I bought a Sony ECM-MS908C. It's compact and has a camera shoe mount although not the smart connector. However this means it will work with any camcorder that has an external mic mini-jack. The published audio specs are still thin but the audio quality of the ECM-MS908 is markedly superior AND it's stereo. I've gotten decent musical recordings with it and I've read recommendations from others who have used it for mini-disc recordings at concerts. Much more bang for the buck.

Amazon.com guidelines state "your review should focus on specific features of the item and your experience with it." Unfortunately, four out of the five previous reviewers DID NOT ACTUALLY USE the microphone. Here are my experiences, under four major points.

First, you need a Sony camcorder with an "intelligent accessory shoe" on the top. This resembles a hotshoe for a 35mm still camera, but has a sliding plastic door that exposes contacts to match the 8 pins on the bottom of the mic. There's a logo that looks like the letters "i" and "A" together toward the back of the shoe. The shoe is used to hold and power other Sony accessories such as the PVPMSH color printer, HVLFDH3 video light, and HVLIRH2 NightShot infrared light. The microphone has no cord and no jack for attaching a cable, so don't try to use it on non-Sony camcorders, or on Sony ones without an intelligent accessory shoe.

Second, about its physical characteristics. It's about 5 cm (2 inches) high, 7 cm (2.5") wide, and 13 cm (5") long. It weighs about 60 grams (2 ounces). It's made of not-very-strong-looking plastic. There's no battery in it (the electret condenser is powered by the camera). The rotating collar locks the mic onto the shoe securely. It swivels in a horizontal plane through 270 degrees, with indents / stops at 0 degrees (facing forward) and 180 degrees (facing backward).

Third, how it works. There's a three-position "mode" switch (zoom/off/gun) at the back. It seems like the "zoom" is done electronically. In "zoom" mode, when the lens is wide-angle, you hear mostly the on-board omnidirectional mic in stereo and very little of the ECMHS1 mike in mono. As you zoom in to telephoto, more and more of the directional mike comes into play. If you're recording live music, it's probably "disconcerting" to zoom around because the sound will appear to switch from stereo to mono and back. In the "gun" mode, you hear no onboard microphone at any time (similar to how it sounds when the zoom is at the longest focal length possible) and the sound is totally mono.

Finally, about the sound quality in "gun" mode using a DCR-TRV240 Digital Handycam, which uses "Digital 8" tapes. YMMV. The low frequencies could use some boosting, but are only slightly weaker than the onboard mic. For classical music and speech, the bass is acceptable. The microphone does not totally eliminate sounds coming from the periphery, but overall is better for faint distant subjects than the one on the camcorder because it (a) records a stronger signal onto the videotape, (b) does not pick up too much ambient sound occurring away from the field of view, and (c) causes less tape motor noise (which is a problem with my onboard mic in quiet situations) to be recorded. (Zooming is very quiet for my camera, so neither the built-in mic nor the ECM HS1 picked up any significant zooming sounds.)

A few minor points: There is no instruction page (you have to figure out what the "zoom" and "gun" settings mean, and how to mount the thing onto your camcorder). The "specifications" lack a frequency response and other useful info. A provided storage pouch gives protection from dirt but not water or shock.

In conclusion, this shotgun-style microphone is worth the money for subjects that are not producing much sound, that don't need to be in stereo, that strong bass is not critical for, and that are on screen. (If you're taping loud concerts for which you want to hear the music in stereo, with plenty of bass, and all the time even when the performers are not in view, the mic that comes with the camcorder will work fine.) Buy it at Amazon.com!

I have owned one of these for over 3 years and are very happy with it. I use it frequently when I need to get the sound from a distance source rather than the environment that I am in. Some examples are:
- someone giving a speech without amplification
- picking up the sound of a waterfall rather than the crowed at the overlook jabbing through the whole thing.
- picking up a conversation of people walking towards you (from a significant distant to directly in front of you)>

For an overview of the features and how they work see the review of 'A customer from California'. The only thing that seems to be different with my PC110 is that I only get one mono channel when the mic is in use (either as zoom or gun) and nothing from the internal mic.

Albeit this mic goes very well with my PC110. It complements the internal mic very good and it is also small enough to fit into one of my pockets.

Last but not least I would like to react to some of the reviews that you can read here, which are so useless that they forced me to pitch in my 2 cents:
- of course you need to make sure that your camera is hotshoe compatable. Just as you need to make sure that any filters or lenses you buy fit the thread on the lens... (probably intelli means only for people that can make that distinction).
- when I bought this mic in 2000 I was also a little bit concerned about it being mono. I also had some reservations about the sound quality which didn't seem to measure up. When using it I realized that this was a non-issue.
1. The sounds that you want to record with this mic are typically mono aural and pretty far away.
2. When editing the video I also edit the audio, dropping most of the non-essential sound and putting a music track in the background. This typically comes out very well for recordings with this mic.
3. If you need to record ambient sound (amplified events), use the internal mic or an external mic which is non-directional.
4. If you have a static setup use remote (wireless or otherwise) mic. I use a good mono Sennheiser for recording speeches or presentations.
5. Lastly for those that want to record concerts, use professional audio recording equipment and do your sound engineering the way it should be done. If you are just taping something from the audience (make sure it is legal) the internal mic in your camera will be more than adequate.

its gos in safeguard mode and the door is open
e02

this is a very easy camera to use but we have had lots of problems with it. i think it is a very cheaply made camcorder and i would advise buying another. about 1 year after we bought it just stopped working. we took it to be repaired and it cost [$$$$] to fix it and it took 4 weeks. it was the one time i wished i had bought the 'extended warranty' from the store.
soon after that the light stopped working--it actually still records ok in low light but it's kind of annoying to not have it for some things. then, 3 days before this christmas it started acting up again and all of a tape we shot came out with half the screen distorted and unviewable. when i took the tape out to investigate there was a wire sticking up which obviously was not supposed to be there. rather than pay and wait for repair we just tossed it. i'm very suspicious of JVC now.

WOW,WOW THis thing is GREAT!!!!!!!!!!!!<(§º¿§º)>Its DA BOMB BUT IT