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Sony DCR-TRV250 Digital8 Handycam Camcorder

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mcvickj

mcvickj

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Over the Easter weekend I did some wheeling and dealing. I ending up trading some computer items for a Sony DCR-TRV250. It should be here by the end of this week at the latest. According to the current owner he just recently purchased this camcorder but he received a higher end model for a gift so he didn't need this one. I've been told it only has about 3 hours of use on it. It is in mint condition with all of the orginial packaging. He is evening throwing in a pack of brand new tapes. :)

Does anyone have this particular model or anything in this line? How do you like it? Most of the reviews I have read mention is a great beginners digital camcorder.

I have to thank Sky and Error for giving me the video bug. :-p

What kind of video editing software is everyone using? Pros? Cons?
 
Dude, don't blame me.

Any of the current Sony cams are solid. If your computer doesn't have a firewire port, you're gonna need to get an expansion card, and a 4-6 pin firewire cord. XP handles firewire real good if that's your OS.

As for software, I do all my vids on a mac, but I have used several packages on Windows in the past.

XP has Windows Movie Maker 2 included with the OS. Pros: it's free, and it'll get you started, and it does a fair job at editing videos. The down side is that it is fairly limited in some respects, namely transitions and the depth of titling. Also limited on format output (wmv and DV I think are the only options)

Pinnacle Studio 8. A step above WMM2. More output format options, some effects and transitions out of the box, fair price (~$100) and sort of user friendly. One boxed version comes with a firewire card and is about $130. It can take some getting used to, but when I used it, it did an ok job of crunching vids. What pissed me off was the teasing that the program gave you. It would show you all the cool effects and transitions that were not included with the version I got, and linked you to where you could buy them on Pinnacles site. Kind of crappy IMO. Sound editing was kind of funky too.

Ulead VideoStudio. Hmm. Does an ok job, but isn't user friendly. I used it for like a day or so (I forget where I got it, but it wasn't much).

Adobe Primere LE and Pro: Probably the best I've played with on a PC. The LE version came installed on my Sony laptop, and it's what I used to do my first vid (on the construction site) and the Sandbox vid (with Sky and EP). The LE version was a bit limited compared to the full version, but still a damned good editor. Some camera come with the LE version, so you might get lucky with your recent acquisition. Like all Adobe products, it's 3 degrees out of "normal", but once you get into it, you won't want to go back to anything else.


That's about all the ones I've played with on the PC. There are some others too, but I'm kind of sketchy on them.

Hope that helps, and congrats on the cam.
 
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I'm covered on the firewire port. My computer has both the 4 pin and 6 pin. :)

I am currently using Windows XP Pro.

Thanks for the info Error. I was just at Adobe's website. It looks like they offer a 30 day demo of Primere Pro. I'll download that and give it a shot.
 
mcvickj i am using Pinnacle studio 9. It works well. Have not too many videos to edit but the outputs and transitions are pretty cool. It will output most anything you want. Comes with some pretty good standard transitions. Newayz it's not all that bad despite what the error says. Nah he's crappin on Pinnacle 8
 
Like I said, I'm on a Mac now. And yes, it was Studio 8 I had. I gave it to EP, but he used WMM2 to do his vid. Hell, I use WMM2 on the final recompress on my vids. I save the files on the Mac as mov, then convert them to avi in Q-Time, copy to an XP machine, import to WMM2 and save as wmv. Sheesh, the things I do for you PC guys. j/k. I wish the mpg4 format was more prevalent. Good quality, small size, better than wmv.
 
Ya know that would be good. It's hard to find a format that is small enough for download times and leaves good quality. Take most any of Wasteland's vids they have huge downloads for what like 10 seconds of vid. I know no matter what you do someone will bitch but it's nice to be somewhat pro active about the situation. Later
 
There's a couple tricks to getting the filesize down for online distro. I usually resize the frame to 320x240 and cut the framefrate down to 15 fps. This alone will make a vid 1/4 the size of the original. Then I play with the compression. I try to shoot for 1.5-2 Mb per minute of vid.
 
Firewire just plain rocks. I have a firewire card in the wifes old 700mhz Athlon. We useit for an external network drive. We sote all our movies/music/backup/public files.

I dont know if it ispossible, but the new firewire drive seems to unload data faster than the one hardwired to her computer. It's hot swap/plug and play, and doesn't even touch the procesor when transfering files. I can burn a cd off the firewire drive, over the network at 48x.

I also play movies on the tv/divx box from that firewire drive. If I have a chocie fro mnow on every accesory is going to be FW.
 
Another nice thing about FW is how you can chain stuff. Unlike USB, you can daisey chain alot of perephrials. Right now on my system, I have the main trunk going to a 6 way FW hub. One line goes from there strait to an iPod, 1 to an ADS external box with a 48x CD burner, 1 to another box with an 80 Gb HD, and a cord dangling for another portable drive. The other FW port on the computer goes strait to the vid cam. The ADS boxes can be chained to other devices, or chained together, but since they're powered repeaters they have to be powered on in order for the computer to see what's on the other side. I used to have them chained, but got tired of powering one on just to use the other. But the point is, that you can both chain FW, or run them on hubs like USB. USB you can't.

The USB2 rocks even harder as far as speed. 480Mbits instead of 400 for FW. But, there is a FW 800 out now too. Only seen them on Macs so far, but I'm sure that they'll hit PC's soon.
 
USB seems to be processor dependant for the periphrials. Like some if not all USB modems are software modems, they require use of the CPU. Is USB II different? Less processor dependant?
 
I'm not terribly sure on that Lykan. I put a USB2 card in my G4 and so far it's done some strange stuff. OS X had drivers for it, but the system will no longer enter sleep mode reliably. So, you may be correct about it (USB2) being more software driven than hardware. I can't say what it'll do in a PC (the card), but it's probably built on the same sw/hw archetecture since it's backward compatible with USB1.1.

I will say that file transfers are somewhat faster than FW. I have an ext. USB2 HD that I back up the raw footage for my vids on, and the files can run in the Gb size range. The USB2 drive is a bit faster than the FW drives I'm running.
 
I own 2 Sony camcorders; a Hi-8 purchased about six years ago and a DCR-DVD300 that we picked up this past Christmas. Both video cams are bullet proof as is all of the other Sony equipment that we own. Both create high quality video and are very easy to operate. The editing software included with the newer models is a big plus.
 
Well it finally arrived today. Just as I was getting ready to leave for work the post man arrived. :) I haven't had any time to play with it yet. I am sitting here reading through the manual and noticed I can use either USB or i.LINK (I'm assuming i.LINK is just another name for Firewire???) The unit comes with a USB cable only.

My question is why would I want to use the i.LINK vs the USB? I am guessing speed because the manual doesn't mention this uses USB2.

So if I were to switch to the i.LINK do I want a 4 to 6 pin cable or a 4 to 4 pin cable. My motherboard supports both. What is the difference between the 4 to 4 and the 4 to 6.
 
woot! Glad it came in.

My dad just got a new cam too, and it has USB and iLink (1394, Firewire, etc). I think the USB is for transferring still pics from the memory card (Don't know if yours has that) and using the cam as a PC webcam. The FW is for the DV dumps.

FW, like USB, is a powered line, but only 6 to 6. 4 pin connectors are data only. so a 6 to 4 won't have power on the 4 pin side. For DV work that's not an issue. Some devices can be powered thru the 6 to 6 connection, but not DV camcorders. Other than that, you just need a cord that will work, sounds like either a 4 to6 or a 4 to 4, your choice.

Dad also got Sony's Screenblast Movie Studio software with his cam. I've played with it a little and am very impressed with it. Easy to use, decently fast on the edits and output, lots of features (transitions, effects, format support), and very affordable ($99 at bestbuy). It even supports DVD authoring. I would recommend it to anyone that's looking for a good editor and authoring program.
 

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