Sony Handycam DCR-SR100

Pros: Lightweight, Large LCD with record and zoom buttons, harddrive, takes amazing video

Cons: Only records in mpeg-2 which is nearly impossible to edit. No headphone outut or mic input. No software for macs

Summary: I bought this camera in June of 2006, and am very happy with it. It takes amazing video, good still photos. If that is all you are wanting for a camera, I highly reccomend this camera! But, if you are like me, you want to be able to edit your video, and this is not a very simple task... There are not many programs out there that support mpeg-2, the format that this camera records in. Adobe Premiere apparently can edit mpeg-2, but I never had any luck with that. I ended up buying a cheapo program called Edit Studio 5, which did the job, but the quality was sucky. Plus, even if you can edit the video, it's usualy lags when you play it in the timeline of your editor. I'm not going to get into why, but if you look into how mpeg 2 works, you'll understand.

Another problem is that in order for your computer to play the audio, you have to demux the audio with the program Sony gives you with the camera... what a peice of useless junk that was! The program lets you demux it fine by pressing "Convert Audio format" but it doesnt support batch conversion! That means that in order to even start editing with audio, you must go through every clip and convert it!!! One by one! Yes, I could have gotten a program that could do it for me, but I was away for 2 months on a video shoot for a camp, and they didnt have internet available to me. Anyways, I had to convert the video so it could work in Edit Studio. And Edit Studio didnt give the final project the quality that this camera films in.

A few months later I finaly switched from my PC to a Mac, Got final cut pro and am very happy. I no longer use that horrible program sony inculded, but rather convert my video all in a batch list to a free program called MPEG Streamclip. I convert it into Apple HD1080i, which doesnt increase the quality, but definatly doesnt decrease it, and changes the audio, and FCP edits it no problem.

For those of you who are wondering, when I plug in this camera to my imac, It appears on the desktop and i am able to copy and paste the mpeg files.

So ya, I love my DCR SR100, and if you want to edit your video, just get ready to jump through some hoops! Mpeg Streamclip converts files into a number of formats, and is also available for windows! It is also completely free. Google Mpeg Streamclip for the link. It's way better than converting each clip one by one.