Sony Vegas Movie Studio 8 (PC)

July 20, 2008 | By Doug In Digital Camcorder |

Sony Vegas Movie Studio 8 (PC)
Customer Review: Worth persevering - unless you have a short fuse
Good stuff first:

The user interface is easy to pick up, and very intuitive. The range of tasks you can do is wide enough to satisfy most users, and the tutorials are clear without being over-burdened with detail.

Output quality is great.

Now the bad:

Unless you drive a graphics workstation, the lag on anything - and I mean even the slightest adjustment - will drive you crazy. I have 1Gb RAM, and 2GHz processor, and a 256Mb graphics card, and each time I move the cursor a few frames along the timeline the program stops to think for up to two minutes.

Next, the reason I bought a Sony product was to get around the stupid Sony format that the transferred files are in when you download them from the DV to the PC. You know, Video_TS etc.

This application doesn’t recognise these files!

So you still need to do that nonsense of saving the files without having finalised the disk, and them re-save them with a different file extension, ie save as .wma instead of .vob.

Why, you dumb-bells, did you not fix this, so I can use my SONY camcorder with the SONY software…

However, once I get over the angst of this latter issue, and once I get my new speed machine, this is the best sub-?50 editing suite, IMHO.

Learn all about the world of digital home recording with the GR-D720E from JVC! This easy-to-use camcorder comes with a number of useful focusing modes and a wide range of programmes that will help you take your first steps as a bona fide film director! This family-friendly camcorder has an 800,000 pixel CCD sensor, so you can record whatever you like onto tape, and a powerful 28x optical zoom, allowing you to take close-ups as if you were in the front row of the theatre. You don’t have to miss a thing! Plus, the GR-D720E comes with a host of handy programmes, including automatically adjustable white balance and several special effects that will spice up your audiovisual creations! The GR-D720E also switches itself on automatically when you open its large 2.7″ 16:9 format screen. If you’re after a user-friendly camcorder that guarantees great results, then you don?t need to look any further! The GR-D720E has it all!
Used Price: ?100.99
Customer Review: Bad sound, you get what you pay for
The sound quality is really bad and you can’t connect an external microphone to it. Image quality not great either.
Customer Review: Good price for what you can do
I bought this camcorder while on holiday in Singapore, just for the 2007 Sepang Maylasian Grand Prix (Came home and two months later most camcorders were becoming cheaper, Amazon sell this cheaper than what I payed! DOH!) I have never owned a camcorder before but it has good quality and does the job. It does have a lot of camera shake but I’m working on this, sure there is a function somewhere. Works well with Windows movie maker so need to buy expensive software if already got it. It has good playback on the tv too but I felt that when downloaded on the computer the image was a bit naff but again I still need to play about with it. Good thing to have if you are starting to make movies. Good value, what else do you want?
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Ex-Pro Battery charger - Ultra Pro Travel Charger - Simple design including In-Car Adatper, European and UK Plug. Charges in an average of 2 hours ! Automatic Cut-Off on completion of charge, Charge indication lights. Works on 110-240v, Travel anywhere and use with ease ! 1 Year Warranty.
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Say goodbye to clutter with the DCR-SR32 from Sony! Equipped with a 30 GB hard drive, the DCR-SR32 lets you record over 20 hours of digital video in three different quality modes, while its 800,000-pixel CCD sensor, renowned Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar lens and 40x optical zoom make sure your recordings come out sharp and clear each and every time. The DCR-SR32 is really easy to use and has a 2.5? LCD screen, as well as 10 scene modes that adapt to any situation. You can even film in VGA resolution and save your creations directly to a Memory Stick Duo memory card, while its USB 2.0 connection transfers your films to your computer for easy editing. The high-performance and user-friendly DCR-SR32 lets you capture life?s best moments, without the clutter of tapes or DVDs!
Used Price: ?199.99
Customer Review: edit impossible
This camera seemed fine, pictures and film downloaded and viewed on my PC OK But I’ve tried three diferent video edit programs on 2 different PCs and all the programs have frozen after inserting a couple of clips from this camera. They don’t like it. Unfortunatley Sony Contact is down under high volume of communications at the moment, now I think about it they didn’t reply to a querry I made a year ago about something else. I’m not quite sure what to do about it.
Customer Review: MAC USER? AVOID! But great camera for PC users
I bought this camera a few days ago and I loved it. It’s size, it’s price, it’s features, it is a great entry level HDD camera. I was in love. I made some great videos on it. But then it came to getting the videos on to my Mac… I could move them over fine, but the mpeg2 format caused me problems. I paid for and downloaded the mpeg2 add on for quicktime and I could now view and edit the movies. But the quality is abysmal, the videos are horribly (re?)compressed and horizontal lines destroy every clip I ever made. Even when I burned a DVD containing the files, I found that it played back even worse and every fault, line, pixellation and frame issue seemed magnified. I tried a variety of solutions but nothing worked. Research has led to the same avenue every time. INCOMPATIBLE WITH MACS. I researched this before buying it but obviously not enough. I never imagined that I would have issues. I plugged the camera into my housemate’s PC and watched and edited the files and it all worked beautifully. The small print on the box says that the supplied software CD is windows only, but that didn’t bother me as I already had some nice video editing suites on my Macintosh and didn’t plan on using the supplied software. But what they failed to mention on the box is that the files are NOT MAC COMPATIBLE. A lovely camera with great features, I just wish I could use it. I would give this a 5 star rating if it wasn’t for the compatibility issues. It should be made clearer on the packaging.
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