Superb quality with genuine widescreen imaging, with every feature desirable
Written: Jul 22 '03 (Updated Oct 13 '04)
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Pros: Genuine widescreen CCD, every feature possible, well built
Cons: Slightly chunky, fiddly controls, bottom-loading tape makes tripod use harder, a few quirks
The Bottom Line: At the right price, there's nothing else to beat it. Near-pro performance, amateur price!
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| sprint900's Full Review: Sony Handycam DCR-TRV80 Mini DV Camcorder |
-- quick update October 2004
I've now lived with the '80 for 15 months or so, and so have a few more observations, and will correct a few typos too. I've used it extensively to capture my newborn son who's now 9 months old, so its been used under a wider variety of conditions.
- I've deliberately used a wide mix of tapes, TDK, Panasonic, Sony and JVC. I've read that different lubricants are used in different tapes, and that if you use the same make all the time, then switch, it can cause the tape to jam and potentially damage the head. Apparently, by changing type regularly, you can avoid this; the alternative is to stick religiously to one brand, but then if you run out of tape and not being able to find your favourite brand you'll be out of action. So far, all is well. But then it's probably only run for about 70 hours combined playback and recording.
- I never re-use tapes, my view is the tapes are practically free compared to the value of the material; it also means not having to track how many times a tape has been reused!
- I've had very pleasing results using it to turn VHS recordings into DVDs. On this subject, I've upgraded to ULead DVD Workshop2, which has much better 16:9 support. I've not had problems with loss of sound either, so I guess the mpeg stream problems have been corrected. You'll be wanting at least a 2GHz Athlon or P4 if you're making DVDs, and then be free to leave the computer on overnight.
- I've also bought a basic external stereo microphone, nothing fancy, battery powered, worked just fine. Definitely a very useful item, especially to avoid handling noise when operating the camcorder, or to avoid picking up the slight tape-drive noise (quiet whine). My next buy will be a set/pair of cordless microphones (2 * tieclip, 1 * handheld) I can use as a stereo pair; getting battery-powered receivers is not so easy nor cheap. Recorded sound is very good (I only use the 16 bit stereo mode, the 12-bit four-channel allowing overdub is irrelevant when you're post-producing on computer).
- I bought a monopod to go with it, especially useful when recording for some time, it supports the weight without restricting the easy movement, doesn't get kicked in a crowded room, and is much lighter and easier to carry than a tripod.
- The stills camera feature hasn't been used much; the flash is not as well diffused at ideal, and really should be raised higher above the lens and further forwards for best results!
- Image stabilisation has been tested thoroughly tracking my son on his bouncer, it's very effective, but not intrusive. This also means using the spot or manual focus and exposure, with a moving background; both are very easy to control.
--update December 2003
I've now had long enough to really get to know this camera. I've found it useful to re-scan the manual to find all the extra little features - for example, I wanted to re-learn all the focussing modes recently.
I am definitely NOT disappointed to have bought this baby. I did originally think about buying a really basic camcorder for half the price with the view to upgrade, but now I realise that it would have been a false economy, especially since with this trv80 I probably won't upgrade for a long time. There's also the investment of time learning how to use it, and only when you become really familiar with something this complex can you forget the camera and concentrate on getting the best video.
I use a Pioneer DVR106 recorder. I tried Nero, but it was a bit basic, but unbeatable at the price. Sonic MyDVD mangled the widescreen as did ULead DvdWorkshop v1, but DVDWS v2 solves this and works very well. I did have had oddities whereby my DVD player won't output sound on its digital-out when I encode sound in mpeg rather than pcm, but that's another issue.
Anyway, I digress. My point is that getting a good camcorder is the vital part of getting good material, no amount of creative activity on the computer will make up for a cheap lens, sensor or sound system. People who've watched my DVDs are very impressed with the colours and the sharpness, I reckon the quality is as good as that used by smaller TV companies when doing their outdoor on-location news or weather; however, the camera doesn't compete with the three-chip professional units but then it's only half their price! A halfway decent microphone rounds off the kit.
The still image quality isn't a serious contender, you'd still want a proper digicam, but you can conveniently take nice family snaps with this camcorder. It comes with a nearly useless 8MB stick, formatted with some useful pictures (which I saved) before relegating the stick for my Clie PDA. For the odd shot, I fitted a 128MB stick, there was no point in wasting money on more than one, especially since they're more expensive and a dead-end proprietary standard! It is a "pro" compatible reader, i.e. will go up to 1GB stick, will use but not perform the magic-gate functions; either way for me this feature is pointless as I am unlikely to ever buy another memory stick.
A USB all-in-one card reader is ideal for copying the data; saves messing about with cables and the Sony drivers.
* the sample pictures, which nearly fill the stick, are of masks and frames, simple cartoon-like scenes etc, designed for use with the in-camera chroma-key (for still or video work).
--update 21st August 2003 - after using in Antigua on holiday and at wedding
--quick update 28th July - remote control, usb notes.
--quick update 23rd July
I've now had it for just about a month, with the real "combat testing" taking place at my sister-in-law's wedding in Antigua.
The TRV80 is a new Sony product, released sometime in June or July 2003, and follows the conventional "horizontal" style, rather than the "upright" (book-shaped) design. I'm reviewing the "PAL" version (I mean in the sense of the line and frame rates and ability to generate 625/50 interlaced recordings), but there are "NTSC" versions too. There's also a TRV75, which is identical except that it doesn't have Bluetooth to be sold in countries where the 2.4GHz frequency spectrum hasn't be opened for it. Whether you can somehow enable it on a TRV75 to make it a TRV80, I don't know, but I suspect that the units are identical except for the indicator light on the outside and the radio function being disabled in software (as well as perhaps hiding the email and web-browser functions)?
The key point about the TRV80 is that the single CCD in it is a genuine wide-screen one, ie. 16:9, and the unit is still priced at (high-end) consumer levels. You can of course stick to normal 4:3 ratio, but then you might as well have bought a cheaper model!
If you can't quite stretch this far, the TRV60 has many of the same features, the lens and CCD that is, which is the important point. It only cost me an extra $100 (£75 in UK) for the 80 over the 60, so it was worth it.
The TRV80 can also be an A/V hub, because it has digital and analogue video in *and* out... it has IEEE1394 output (aka firewire), as well as S-video and composite video plus stereo audio. The key point here is that as well as recording from firewire, S-video and composite, it will also act as an analogue-to-digital converter because it has a pass-through mode, and would thereby allow you to connect a TV tuner or older camcorder to it, thereby saving money on an analogue capture card. I haven't had the opportunity to see if you can use it in reverse, that is to feed it with firewire and get compositive video out, and thereby give me a better TV-out function on my computer (my Asus 7100deluxe is OK but not wonderful). I found myself wondering why they don't fit S/PDIF digital audio in/out on these things; I suppose you'd use firewire instead, but it wouldn't cost too much, and be especially useful for dubbing.
I used to use a Hi-8 camcorder and the s-video capture function on an asus/nvidia 7100 deluxe; it was ok for video CDs, but resolution sucked, colours were a little washed out. The trv80 coupled to a VCR acting as tuner, or tape playback, is far superior, and the 7100d is now languishing in a drawer!
The lens on this camcorder is top-notch, offering a genuine optical 10x zoom, the zoom speed is variable, according to pressure on the lever, and at its fastest is almost too much! The maximum aperture is very good, and gives respectable performance at all settings, even in poor light. There's the normal Sony "nightshot" mode, which loses the colours (almost sepia-tone) but movement is smooth, and this can be combined with "slow shutter". Slow shutter, used with or without nightshot, has four settings, the first level gives useful colour results in poor light without causing too much blurring. The second level has noticeable blurring/jumping of movement, and three and four are more like special effects with blurring and "strobe" jumping of the image.
Image quality is absolutely superb, even in low light, aided no doubt by the lens. I'll probably tweak the colour saturation somewhat, because like many consumer devices, they're set to look sharp and colourful in shops, but when in real use seem "over-cooked".
As well as straight cuts, you can have a variety of fades (pixelation, fade, bounce etc).. not all of these work in 16:9 mode, for no apparent reason.
The control buttons are slightly fiddly, perhaps more so than the TRV60, but everything's to hand, especially the "backlight" button. It's better than the TRV60 in that there's less flaps and covers to mess about with as most of the connectors are under one flap. These are
* firewire (small 4-pin),
* CV+audio 3mm multijack,
* S,
* USB (as far as I can see, it's a standard mini socket),
* headphone (listen in on recording),
* microphone (stereo, powered)
Like most of Sony's recent models, the tape loads from the underside, and unless you have a special tripod which doesn't obstruct the cassette loader (simple sliding release), you'd have to remove it from the tripod to change tapes. This *has* caught me out, meaning either you waste tape having to change before the end of the tape when convenient early; or, run out when inconvenient!
The battery mechanism is very good, clips in solidly under the viewfinder, but is very easy to remove. I bought the oversize Q71D battery to go with it, as the F50 battery is neat and light but of course doesn't have the same capacity. There are several variants of batteries, varying in size/capacity, some have a simply bar graph showing charge state too (quite useful if you had several spare batteries and you mixed up the full and empty ones). The camcorder itself has a battery test function, a button behind the screen which you press and it shows charge level, and estimated recording times with and without screen; it's quite useful, especially since you don't have to turn the camera on. One of Sony's real skills is in battery management, giving good estimates of the remaining usage time, and enable fast charging, and as far as I can tell minimising ageing.
The bright and clear viewfinder has a dioptre adjustment so if your have spectacles, you won't need them to operate the camera; it also extends for when you have a big battery.
The LCD screen is a touch screen, and this replaces many of the buttons seen on older Sonys. They provide a stylus for this, with the TRV60 you don't get one (which is odd, because the 60 has the smaller screen and therefore harder to read and touch), but I was never use the stylus and I have middling-sized hands. The screen seems huge in comparison with other camcoders, apparently it's same resolution as the TRV60's but the pixels are larger, but since you have to use the touchscreen to do anything other than the most basic configuration, the larger screen is a win. When you first get it, it gives feedback by bleeping musically, which soon gets annoying! You can turn off all the bleeps (choice of melodic, bleep or none - no volume as far as I can tell), which is essential if you're filming and want to go through the menus! The screen seems quite tough - and is easy to clean with a gentle wipe.
The screen is quite sensitive, just as well as if you're filming you'd jog the camera if tweaking anything or setting a spot exposure or focus point; even so a tripod would be helpful if you're working in difficult lighting or focus conditions. Since most settings are accessed this way, you tend to use the screen much more than the viewfinder because
if you had to fold out the screen during recording, it'd be heard or jar the image.
The remote control you get with it is not very exciting, in contrast to their TVs and hifi - plain square black, a little bit chunky, not backlit. You can only do the basic things with it, can't get activate the touchscreen menus etc, so you still have to use the touchscreen for that sort of thing.
The four-way control knob (playback, off, video camera, memory mode) has a simple mechanical interlock which can be set to stop you accidentally rotating it too far from video to memory; otherwise it's easy in a hurry to accidentally go too far, and then only record 320x240 mpeg movies to memory stick!
The TRV80 will act as a still camera in two ways. The first allow you to take a snap-shot whilst recording or playing back video (but not if using 16:9 mode, which is odd, given that usb streaming in 16:9 is possible!), and the second is in a specific still image mode.
In still camera mode it's quite good, the pop-up flash seems quite powerful, and will operate in various resolutions and quality: 1600x1200 or half that resolution, and standard or fine quality. It and has some interesting chroma-key features, whereby you can use a picture of a window frame filled with solid blue colour (examples supplied on the stick) and super-impose your own picture on it - so that say a portrait appears in the window. Or, replacing a colour or particular grey in the live image with parts of a picture in memory. Superimposition is done by colour or brightness, and you can mask it either way, and your own pictures can be turned into masks). I think, but am not sure, you can use these masks when shooting video too - but to be honest, you really want to apply these things at the editing stage!
Stills are written to the memory stick, and can be captured in camera mode, when recording video to tape (but the res is lower), or playing back tape. Image format is, thankfully, jpeg, and not that odd proprietary format they used on Clies, PictureGear.
Like many digital stills cameras, in memory mode it will also capture low quality mpeg movies, in 320x240 I believe, and store them on the memory stick. It will also act as a web-cam (given the right driver) and provide sound over the same USB connection (which is novel), but the manual doesn't recommend overusing this feature as it's not designed to capture static images for hours on end. The movie quality was on a par with my Olympus 3040Z, perhaps slightly smoother, but neither are more than a gimmic in my opinion, unless you really just want something you can email off quickly. Windows media player 9 was able to play the short movies created on it, as is Quicktime. Quicktime Pro would be a good investment if you intend to make use of these movies extensively.
Interestingly, when using the USB streaming function, and the camera is thus behaving as a webcam, in 16:9 mode the image delivered by the webcam is anamorphic widescreen too. This might be a good or bad thing, depending on what you want; I would say the latter, because the computer won't realise it needs to stretch the image (dunno why Sony didn't make it say 400x240 rather than squishing it), and thus anything you record or stream would have to be scaled! Or, you have to tediously change the setting each time... however I've got a webcam so I don't care too much! Also, perhaps of more interest, is that sound is streamed over the USB connection, whereas with webcams you have to rely on the sound card for audio functions.
When in use for stills, the camera behaves as a mass-usb storage device, but (unlike many digital still cameras which are genuinely plug and play with Windows 98se/me/2000/xp) you need Sony's drivers for it. Once loaded, you can then read/write images on the memory stick as you'd expect through the F: drive (or whatever) - there's actually no need to install the Sony/Pixela image transfer software. Personally, it's just as easy to get a $5 USB memory stick reader; and this also means there's no need to worry about a proprietary lock-in here, or OS-dependency.
Sony provide some basic programs to copy images and movies from the camera's memory stick to your computer when it's in "network" mode using USB, but to be honest you can do all of this from the Windows file manager. I recommend the fantastic freeware program IrfanView (find it via TuCows) is a far more powerful and flexible way of doing basic picture conversion/manipulation/management and printing. Get a copy of PaintShopPro if you want to do any real image editing, unless you're an Adobe wizz that is!
The camera also has Bluetooth, and in theory you can push images to other BT devices which support the Bluetooth Imaging Profile. I have a Motorola A830 3G mobile phone, but although they paired with each other, it wasn't BIP compatible. The camera can also use a bluetooth modem to dial up the net, web browse, and send emails. The email feature is probably genuinely useful, as you can email images and (the lower resolution movies) via a bluetooth network device. I couldn't make this work, mainly because as far as I can tell, my network provider "three" (www.three.co.uk) simply hasn't finished their network yet, as although the camcorder initiated a data dial-up, the network refused to allow the call to be made.
Sound seems pretty good, tho' I've not used it in the real world enough to give it a proper test. The microphone is v sensitive, and since the tape transport and zoom lens are quiet, I haven't had any problems with noise pickup. For best possible results, you'd have to use the separate microphone input, so this also gives lots of options for wireless remote microphones etc. Like most miniDV systems, you can record in 16 bit mode (best), or 12 bit mode, the latter of which allows you to overdub another two sound channels (thus giving four sound channels). The manuals says that in long play mode, you'd probably have problems overdubbing unless you use the self-same camcorder to do it, as variations in tape drive mechanism might ruin the recording.
On the subject of compatibility, I played back tapes recorded on my brothers Panasonic NV33 (about three years old), and it was no trouble at all. I haven't tried this the other way round. The manual does indicate that LP mode is less likely to be compatible between cameras - I am generally going to use only SP mode for important recordings, to ensure longevity. I also wonder what my brothers camcorder would do if faced with a 16:9 recording - if I get a chance to try, I will add comments about this.
I suspect this camera would last you many years before the upgrading would win you much, only perhaps when 3CCD hi-definition surround-sound widescreen camcorders are available for sensible money. Until then it's built well enough to last if treated with reasonable care. It's quite solid - in particular the LCD hinge and the tape door mechanism seem quite robust. Like most miniDV camcorders, there's warnings about where to push when changing tape, but it doesn't feel like anything will break when you do it right.
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So, in short, I've not found anything wrong with this camera, other than being pernickety. Naturally, you'll pay a premium for it because it's new and relatively unique, but I just didn't have the timescales to wait for the price to drop, and I think it was worth breaking the budget for it. Probably only when 3CCD widescreen high-definition is achievable at a sensible price, and is widely adopted, will I ever consider upgrading. In the UK, where we use PAL with more (625) horizontal lines, the image quality is much better than the NTSC (525) lines, there seems to be no move towards hi-def tv; I find that an NTSC dvd on my Sony 32" wega (100Hz) does show up the lines somewhat but not at all on PAL dvd. In the UK, the transition to widescreen is pretty much complete with nearly all TVs on sale now being 16:9 typically 24 and 28"; this is at odds with my last trip to USA in late 2001 where the emphasis was on 4:3 screens but huge screen sizes.
Finally, remember, that it's worth scanning the whole manual to get an idea of what can be done with it, and also getting a good book on general camcorder usage, because otherwise if you use it like a beginner, you'll have wasted your money. Enjoy!
Paul
p.s. I am not an employee of Sony, nor is anyone in my family such, nor have I any contact with Sony apart from owning this camcorder and a Sony wega 32" TV.
p.p.s. I often think Sony are overrated, they do get things wrong sometimes, they have too many different models, and are too arrogant with proprietary lock-ins like memory stick. But, their good stuff is unbeatable!
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 1350
Recommended for: Professional Videographers - Broadcast Quality Videos
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Epinions.com ID:
sprint900
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Reviews written: 14
Trusted by: 2 members
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