Sony Handycam DCR-SR35

[John Horovitz]

I have bought a Sony Handycam and I have great difficulty in getting the pictures into a form that I can use. I have an 'Arcsoft ShowBiz' for connecting the camera to the computer but I cannot get a reasonable film out (it breaks up quite badly).

Has anyone got any comments about this set up (and I know that Sony cameras are 'difficult' to connect with non - Vaio computers).

John

[green granite]

I presume it plays back ok on the camera? Have you downloaded the latest windows drivers for it? Suggest you try using windows moviemaker and see what happens.

[Bushfiva]

Try running the movie through VideoReDo (trial version available) and see if it logs any errors in the original file. It routinely fixes up stuff that's been pulled off a Humax and zapped around the planet: most hardware devices don't try to correct hiccups but simply skip through them, whilst Windows codecs will spot an inconsequential problem and bog down.

[Tosh McCaber]

I've found that by far the easiest way to transfer your movie camera tape/DVD, etc., is to hook up to a domestic DVD recorder, using your TV as the monitor. A doddle! Mine has a hard drive and editting facilities. Then, transfer to DVD.

After, you can, if necessary , edit on your computer, but I've never found that my amateur movies deserve this. I just like watching the reasonable images taken of my family! I've very rarely seen really professional movies by amateurs- you've to be very dedicated, and have lost and lots of time, to edit your movies.

[The late XV105]

My wife and I use a DCR-SR100 hard disk camcorder but download to computer is via the ImageMixer software that came supplied with it, not via the software you use.

HOWEVER... playback of the resultant MPEG2 files via Windows Media Player 11 on my XP Pro laptop (whether downloaded to it directly from camcorder or transferred to it from the usual XP Media Center PC we use) is jittery and breaks up in places. Using any other playback tool that I've tried works just fine.

So, like green granite suggests with Moviemaker, try using any other playback tool than Arcsoft's and see what happens. The files might actually be just fine.

Good luck.

BTW - Buying the camcorder has started an addictive hobby. Not only did I buy a powerful PC built expensively to my specification for video editing and DVD authoring, but I now spend hours and hours turning even more hours and hours of family recording in to 45-50 minute "watchable" (by reasonably anyone not just me and the missus with our rose tinted specs on) films that have a flow and central theme. Great fun and really absorbing but hard work, adding pressure to which is the need to "keep on top" of the job (i.e. don't let a huge backlog of source files build up). As an example, from memory at the time turning last year's drive from the UK to Czech Republic and back in to a 45 minute film complete with audio and visual overlays took something like 27 hours of editing (I have a suspicion that memory was faulty and actually it was even more) from 10 hours of source plus 400 .jpgs to trawl through! Factor in that we have 20 month old twins and you will correctly guess most of this has been done working in the wee hours after everyone else has gone to bed.

I've had many kind words about the results from beyond immediate friends (various of my friends passed it on!) so if you decide to let yourself get hooked too rather than end up with a load of .mpg files "gathering dust" never to be watched after the initial enthusiasm of your new toy has worn off, do so, and have fun!

Finally, I highly recommend Sony Vegas Movio Studio (I have v6, which is no longer the latest) for editing and Sony DVD Architect Studio for DVD authoring (ie designing and burning domestically playable, menu structured, DVDs). These low cost tools came bundled together and are fantastic; feature rich, easy to use, utterly stable (not to be underestimated in my experience with video editing software), and devoid of lip synch issues (ditto comment per last brackets)