Sony HDR-UX10 AVCHD Camcorder

Chris Gerhard

I haven't followed consumer high def camcorders and decided I wanted one without doing much research. I purchased this camcorder since it records to DVD writable media and I can just take the disc from the camera and play it my PS3 or other Blu-ray player that plays AVCHD. I didn't want to have to mess with hooking up a camcorder to the display or downloading from camcorder hard drive to a PC before playback. The camcorder does not have a hard drive but does record to Pro Duo memory stick if needed.

I didn't find a lot of options for recording directly to DVD so I assume flash memory and hard drive are the preferred options now. I did install an AVCHD player in my laptop and it apparently doesn't have the horsepower to play AVCHD, video is chopping and stutters, completely unusable. I also assume this means I can't edit using the laptop, other than directly writing to other media.

It seems to work great, at least so far. What kind of accessories should I get, lens, light or other? I picked up another battery. Have DVD camcorders fallen out of favor because of length of recording time? Are there questions about how long DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW media will last? I admit I don't expect consumer recordable DVD media to have a long life based on complaints I have seen about CD-R problems over the long run.

Chris

oblioman

Chris,,,your laptop should have no problem editing your video,,it's the rendering where one needs the muscle. DVD camcorders were always considered, to be mild, not in favor by the enthusiast's. Having to finalize, reformat, etc. just to play back what you recorded is the major downside. Not to downgrade your purchase. Me thinks you will be amazed at the vid quality, the color and clarity are striking and will deliver home vids as they were meant to be seen. For editing, me prefers Vegas pro Platinum (try the trial) and if your laptop has a 2 gig or better processor, you should have no problem editing. But rendering is a toad with big warts,,,this is where your machine needs lots of muscle.

Chris Gerhard

Finalizing the disc in the camcorder is simple, just hit a couple of buttons and sit it down for a couple of minutes then remove disc. I am delighted with the quality by just taking the DVD out of the camcorder and playing it. Reformating a DVD-RW takes only a few seconds. I have players on three displays that play AVCHD so we can watch the video anywhere. I did record video to a memory stick once and then copied it to DVD-R and that was a pain using the software supplied with the camcorder. That took forever and I feel certain I did something wrong, my Oppo player identified the disc as a data disc and I didn't see how to play the video. The PS3 identified it as a data disc but it played fine.

As far as editing, I just don't want to mess with it unless there is some special event I have recorded and I want to give it to family and want something better than just a raw recording.

Chris