SONY HDR-SR1 HandyCam (MSRP 1499.99
Buy Now from the HT Guys Store) - Thank you Greg from Greensboro NC
Well the finance committee approved it. We have a little one on the way and we needed a video camera so I got the go ahead on this one.
First impressions, awesome! We took it on a trip a few weeks ago and it was flawless. My wife commented several times about how easy it was to use, both taking video and still pictures. We came home and plugged it into the HDTV via HDMI directly out of the camera and it is a beautiful picture. The A/V output options are very simple and can adapt to pretty much any TV. It outputs HDMI, component and composite.
So after watching the video clips directly off of the camera I wanted to create a DVD. This is officially where the honeymoon ends. There is an option called Disc Burn and 1 Touch Burn. Good idea, bad implementation. The best part about this feature is, from what I can tell, it tries to burn the video at the highest quality it can. Unfortunately you cannot pick which clips to burn. Whatever is on you camera it tries to burn. When I first tried it, a window came up and said it would take12 DVDs to burn all the video; about 40-45 minutes of video. Although I really didn't want to burn 12 DVDs I pressed ahead anyway just to see how this process worked. And that is where this process comes to a grinding halt. Files are corrupt, cannot find file xxx. I tried reinstalling the software about 4 or 5 times with no luck. My burner is an external one connected via firewire. Maybe that's why it won't burn, I don't know. I don't have an internal one to try it on.
So then we move on to attempt two. There is an option to export the video (once you've copied it from the camera to your hard drive) to MPEG2. BTW, the raw video files that get copied off of the camera seem to be in a proprietary format (.m2ts). Only their video player can play the files and when I say "play" that's hard to say. Granted I have a 1.8 GHz processor and its not the fastest thing, but the video played choppy; full screen, though it was an option, was not an option.
So back to exporting to MPEG2. All of my video was recorded at 16:9 aspect ratio. Unfortunately when viewing the exported MPEG2 video on any player it displayed it at 4:3 but not pan and scan; it had the 16:9 squished into a 4:3 frame. So after many nights of banging my head against the wall I decided to call Sony tech support. I must say, their tech support was very good. The people I "spoke" to (I'll reveal later why that's in quotes) were very friendly, helpful and showed a genuine wantonness to help me solve my problem. I got escalated up the tech support tree about 3 times. Apparently what was happening is clearly stated in the manual their software cannot do. So after about 3 hours of being on the phone the last guy said that I was the only person that has ever had the problem. He was going to forward it to his supervisor who is a video guru and he would contact me via email to schedule a time to call me back in a few days once he had a resolution for me. This was a Friday night; yes Friday night and I am on a tech support call. So Monday rolls around, I'm still at work but my wife is home. The "guru" calls back. And what were his words of wisdom? 4:3 is not letterbox. Really, no s&%$! If only someone during my 3 hours of phone calls would only have said those simple words, I could have slept so much better that weekend. All is right in the world because 4:3 is not letterbox. Revert back to the "spoke" comment earlier. Everyone that I spoke to was very helpful. This so-called guru is either an idiot or cannot read a trouble ticket; not sure which is worse. Anyway, the problem still exists with no resolution. I got an email a couple of days later asking me how my technical support experience was. I was no where near as kind in that response as I was in the above paragraph.
But wait, there's more. I started downloading trial copies of video and DVD software trying to trouble shoot things myself. Nothing wanted to read the MPEG2 in its correct aspect ratio. Ulead came close but was unable to render the video as a DVD volume. The only software I could find that would reliably and correctly read in the MPEG2 was software made by, you guessed it, Sony. Vegas and DVD Architect were the only programs that read the MPEG2 files correctly. So I built my movie files in Vegas Movie Studio, exported them to DVD Architect and was able to create my DVD. Their software is easy to use and very powerful. If only the software they bundled with the camera has as much thought put into it.
I would like to throw in here that this was my first real experimentation with digital video. My only other experiences are ripping shows off my TiVo. Maybe that had something to do with it, I don't know. I'd love to hear from anyone else that has this camera.
Overall, the camera really is amazing and extremely easy to use. Certainly an A+ for the hardware. The software, on the other hand, scores a solid D. Sony needs to do A LOT more work on this and make things not so proprietary. Or at least make the camera work on a Mac where everyone knows their video software is rock solid. Now that I know what software I HAVE to use in order to create my DVDs, it will certainly be simpler to do. I can only imagine if a non-technical person tried to do this. They probably would have taken the camera back.
