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 Edited video quality questionable Jun 22, 2008
Sony DCR-DVD308 works beautifully and seems well put together. It's light, compact, convenient and generally well designed. Operation is very easy, though it is so light it is very difficult to keep steady on a long zoom, and the zoom is extremely rapid and difficult to make unobtrusive - both probably what you get in this kind of camera. It may be a wonderful camera if you just want to watch what you shot, conveniently immediately, on your living room DVD player. Not so much if you want to edit it for anything other than YouTube. The problem seems to be the specific MPEG-2 compression for mini-dvd storage (which is not limited to Sony). I shot one dvd and then tried to edit it, which was a bit of a nightmare. I did manage to find a converter so I could edit in Adobe Premier Elements but the result was jumpy movement and otherwise pretty inelegant. I had much happier results from my old analog 8mm tape camera and a capture card. I have seen some references to simple editing software supplied, but couldn't find it on either of the cds that came with the camera. Sony's highly rated Vegas suites were not developed by Sony and reviewers say they don't provide any proprietary advantages for editing these miniDVDs. I eventually found an obscure software that will edit in the camera's native format without conversion, and that might work better - for another $100. These are just moving snapshots for me, but if I put a lot of work into editing (and I do want to edit), I want decent results that I won't be embarrassed to share or hate to watch myself. Reviewers (I later read) say the quality of miniDV format is better though tape is less convenient. So I've stepped back a technology, ordered a refurbed Sony DCR-HC62 miniDV, and if it proves better, this one goes on Craig's list.
 Very Pleased Jun 17, 2008
Very nice camera/camcorder and the price was an excellent deal. The camera arrived quicker than I had expected. I used it this weekend at my brothers wedding and the video and pictures turned out great.
Thanks so much, I am very pleased!!!!!!!!!!!
Easy to use..works great May 24, 2008
I am completely satisfied with the picture quality and zoom of this handy cam. I would completely recommend this handy cam.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 I love this camcorder! Thanks to reviews on Amazon.com! May 09, 2008
Before I bought this camera, I read the reviews of this one and others to compare and I even compared Mini-DV and Digital and thanks to the positive reviews on this camera (and it was in my price range) I bought it. I was not disappointed. I have only had it a month and I have used it many times. The mic pics up well, and the zoom works great (which I use for my kids sports). I have downloaded video to my laptop, and burned DVD's. I took the advice of other customers and bought the longer life battery. The only difficulty I had was in not understanding that formatting meant deleting what you had already recorded on the disc, so I now know. My laptop did not have DVD burning capabilities so I did purchase an external burner and everything works great. I would recommend this camera to anyone who has a budget but wants a quality camcorder.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
good overall; except... May 06, 2008
The picture is clear and recording is easy, the only bad thing is that the discs are so expensive. Deleting is simple and makes recording even easier, because if you don't like it you can delete it.
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