 "Less than ok for beginers; not par to advanced users." | 2009-08-07 |
| - Reviewed By alexdelara |
Bought it for my wife who is trully a complete newbie and I regret the decision. Ok when one learns the basics to shoot film and take pictures.
The quality of still pictures is ok when good lighting is present, otherwise, expect grainy images for under less than excellent light. I am not kidding. Indor pics will need a lot of light.
I thought that using mini dvds would be a blessing compared to cassete tapes but found out that 20 minutes is awful. Should I investigated better, I would never buy devices using this type of media. And speaking of media... you can't edit your dvds using your PC or MAC unless you go to a third party software.
USB connectivity seemed flaky in the begining but was ok after I replaced the cable I was using. Be forewarned though, it is only useful to transfer pictures from the card to the computer... video ??? Forget it....
Someone complained about the mini sd card... well we bought a SanDisk Mini SD 512 Mb at Circuit City and it works fine. Why 512 MB ?? Well, that's the only capacity they had at the time... Don't go with the cheapos at eBay... it seems the camcorder is kinda of picky.
On the other hand, had no problem at all with "other brand" dvds media... I bought a 50 disks pack from the same store and they work pretty fine (tepito DVD-R, 4x speed, 1.4 gig, 30 minutes).
The more start-record-stop operations you do, you will create new chapters and this fragmentation consumes space on the DVD. Not much but measurable in a small disk like this.
Finishing the dvd won't happen if you don't plug the power supply but it should be informed in the on screen menu. Yeah, I had to read the manual to find that out....
Like someone else said: if you plan to edit your movies on a computer, aim for something better.
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 "Great camera for the money" | 2009-06-29 |
| - Reviewed By User: A30SD3HRLG1CZS |
We bought the camera at the last minute for a trip to Alaska. Didn't have any time to read the book other than to see how to charge the battery. Without a lot of trouble we were able to operate the camera and most, or some, of it's functions on the fly. It worked perfect. Great zoom.
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| "Great VHSc replacement" | 2008-10-01 |
| - Reviewed By User: A2XVU2RBSWKKM3 |
This is a great inexpensive camcorder. MUCH easier than our VHSc camcorder that has been sitting in its bag for 5 years now and also better than the short videos we can record on our digital camera. After you are done you can just "finalize" the DVD, put in in your DVD player and watch the movie.
I blank miniDVD-R are inexpensive (I got 50 for $20) and very easy to store.
One minor complaint. The "finalize" option is only available if the camcorder is plugged into wall power. This is no problem but there is no way to know that unless you read the small comment burried in the manual somewhere that mentions that. Having that comment on the camcorder "finalize" menu would have been a lot more stright-forward. |
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 "Disappointed, frustrating - its painful." | 2008-05-25 |
| - Reviewed By normdonovan |
I have had a DC220 for a couple months and I am growing to dislike it more and more although some of this is due to frustrations with the mini-DVD format.
The DC220 records on mini-DVDs. These cannot be viewed on a DVD player or transfered to a computer until they are "finalized". Once finalized you cannot record any else on a mini-DVD. I have been using the included DVD-Rs and have been forced to finalize a couple with only a few minutes of video so others could watch them. Kinda wasteful.
You can use DVD-RWs, which can be un-finalized, but in my experience these have only 30 mins of recording time while a DVD-R will record 60 mins.
The finalization process seems very touchy. The camera will not even allow you to select this option unless it is connected to the power cord, not the battery. The process can run for a long time (6 min for the disks I did, which had 5 min of video) and there are warnings all over the manual to not touch the camera while it is finalizing or permanent data loss may result. Also you are warned to only attempt the finalization when the camera is at room temp.
I tried to play un-finalized movies back on a external TV. Eventually I was able to but the process is not straight-forward.
The manual is 100 pages of extremely small, dense text, small pictures and references pointing to other areas of the manual. It lacks any kind quick start guide and I am unwilling to read the whole thing through.
The controls are located in three areas: A circle on the side, a push button on the back and buttons along the bottom of the view screen. It is not clear when each control should be used so each time I want to do a function I need to flip the camera around pushing buttons trying to find the appropriate control, finally having to dig out the manual and reading glasses.
The viewfinder looks into the camera at a slight down angle instead of the more normal (for me at least) straight through. This proved very awkward when I was trying to film from from a deck looking down.
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 "Met Expectations" | 2008-05-09 |
| - Reviewed By User: A3S155EVRZX3EU |
| This product met my expectations. It is inexpensive and easy to carry along. It allows me to take pictures while I am I videotaping although they aren't as high of quality pictures. |
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| "Impossible to Copy Mini DVDs After shooting" | 2008-02-13 |
| - Reviewed By imapiper2 |
| Great idea! Shoot your memories to mini DVD-R. Right? Well, nice camera, nice idea, records to mini DVD-R, but when you are ready to copy the disks, forget it! You have to BUY expensive software to do this, and any demos I tried don't work. I've now been over three weeks trying to copy my mini DVD-Rs (which record as MPEG4 (.vob)) to full sized DVDs that will play in any player and I still can't do it. Also, the stills suck. 640x480 and I can't get it to snap stills at the same time as you are recording, as the camera boasts you can. |
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Expedited Available
