Location:Home » hdtv » Sony Handycam HDR-SR8 - Camcorder - High Definition - widescreen - 3.2 Mpix - optical zoom: 10 x - supported memory: MS Duo, MS PRO Duo - HDD : 100 GB
Record high-definition (AVCHD) video directly to a 100GB HDD
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ClearVid CMOS sensor; Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar T* lens
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2.7-inch widescreen hybrid touch-panel Clear Photo LCD Plus display
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Simultaneously capture video and 4.6-megapixel still images while recording. 6.1 megapixel still images as camera only
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Includes Handy Cam station; one touch AVCHD disc burn with optional accessory
Editorial Reviews:
Product Description Life's fast-paced but you don't have to miss any of it with Sony's HDR-SR8 HDD Handycam camcorder. Capture your memories in Full HD and relive them years from now in exceptional detail, color and sound. Boosting an impressive 100GB built-in Hard Disk Drive, the HDR-SR8 lets you record up to 38 hours of high definition digital video while its professional grade Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar Lens ensures stunning image quality with 10x optical/20x digital zoom, bringing the action closer to you. Capture both video and still digital imagery at the same time without switching modes with its Dual Record Mode function and eliminate blurring from unsteady hands with the Super SteadyShot optical image stabilization system. Expressing a fuller color range than conventional models, HDR-SR8 makes watching home videos more life-like and colorful. With the HDR-SR8 Handycam camcorder in hand, your precious moments stay suspended in full HD for years to come.
Customer Reviews:
SR8 is one of the best choices available in non-professional product lineupJanuary 12, 2008 7 out of 7 found this review helpful
I bought the camera on december 31st in Amsterdam and used it during the following 5 days of my vacation, including a wild New Year night at Amsterdam. To be very short this choice had been a result of a 3-month analysis. It is one of the best HD cameras available today below $2,000, has a large hard disc of 100Gb, which is more than enough, because it is hard to waste it before you run out of battery, which may run up to 1,5 hours of video shooting and quite long in a standby mode.
The picture quality is excellent, the videos had already been used in a TV report (I work on television).
One of the drawbacks is a poor sound recording in the street, like you hear a fire truck or an ambulance driving in 50 meters from you and clearly hear the sound, while on the tape the sound will almost be non-existent. Morale: use outside micro if you need the street sounds. It worls perfectly with the forest though.
Overall very good, with some reservations coming only from the professioanal field.
My Experience with the HDR-SR8December 21, 2007 36 out of 36 found this review helpful
12/21/2007 I ordered the camera from the SONY website and I JUST received it. I have barely spent an hour with it... but I thought I would throw something on here because there were no reviews. The SR8 is pretty much the same as the SR7 so you could get some good information on that review page...
The camera fits surprisingly small in my big hand. I turned on the camera and first I had to set the date and time... easy.
Then I pushed record and started filming. I did two short clips, took a few photos, and then hooked the camera up to my PC running Vista 64. The camera must be ON the docking station and you must use the USB cable that comes with the camera. One end of the USB cable is regular the other end is a small plug that goes into the docking station. The cord looks just like the one that connects the wireless game controller to the PS3 for charging.
Anyway, the docking station was plugged into the computer. Then I turned on the camera and the view screen came up with a list of choices. I chose the "computer" choice and then the PC recognized the HDR-SR8 hard drive and I was able to look at the photo and video files. The photos looked fine, and I dragged and dropped a video file over to the PC, however, I was not at first able to view the video on Windows Media Player until I selected the player as the choice for playback, then the video played perfectly. (The video will also play on the PC directly off of the camera.)
I plugged my thumb drive into my PC and created a folder called "video". I copied the video file from the camera, through the PC, to the new thumb drive folder. I took the thumb drive and plugged it into my PS3. The PS3 recognized the video folder and allowed the video files to play on my 73'' HDTV.
The video played full screen and was good, MUCH better than a regular camera's video, but NOT the quality I had expected. I flipped through the manual and found that I didn't have the camera set at the highest quality, "xp". I changed the setting on the camera and shot another clip. I repeated the thumb drive process and watched the video on the HDTV. The quality was bit better, but the video file was about two times the size of the first one.
I was expecting more amazing clarity, but during all my research on the SR7 before purchasing the camera, I did read where a lot of folks said the indoor quality was where the camera was weakest. SO, when I get home from work today I will start with some outdoor video and let you know how that goes...
I did take a few more pictures while filming video, and they were not very good due to the lighting. I also took a few when the video filming was turned off and the flash automatically went off and those pictures were great.
I got a copy of Sony Vegas Pro 8, and will try that for editing on my Vista 64 and see what happens. I have a PC with XP set up on it and will default to that if 64 bit doesn't work...
I also read in the manual that the charging cord can be plugged directly into the camera, bypassing the docking cradle. I hadn't read that in my research, although the docking cradle is very low profile.
12/21/2007 I recorded outdoor video at highest quality and played it back off of my thumb drive through the PS3 and it looked GREAT! Much better than what I got from indoor video.
Somewhat confused with Vegas Pro 8, have a lot of work to do yet to even get a playable output..
12/22/2007 Vegas Pro 8 is running fine on Vista 64. The program is complicated and can do a lot more than I even understand at this time. There are a lot of choices for "rendering" video, which means how you want it to end up: avi, mpeg, mt2, etc., and then each extension has a lot of choices that go with it! I don't even know what a lot of the choices mean or are...I have a lot of learning to do, but it appears that rendering video takes about as long as the video clip is in length.
While the video does play straight off of the camera with Windows Media Player, you must choose another extension while editing with Vegas for your final product. I don't know what I am doing so this is just the results of my experimentation:
----The original 1:21 minute HDR-SR8 video clip = MTS @ 156 MB opened with Media Player
----Rendered to: MPEG2 HD @ 254 MB, opened with Media Player Classic ----Rendered to: WMV HD @ 81.9 MB, opened with Media Player ----Rendered to: AVI Uncompressed low quality @ 3.14 GB, Media Player (yes, Gigabytes!)
The MPEG2 and WMV look very HD on my 30 inch Apple monitor with no discernable difference from the original MTS. The AVI looks like the old video we are used to, but I can't believe how large the file was, maybe has something to do with the "uncompressed" part... I still have a lot to figure out. The WMV file is a lot smaller and looks great, but I don't know if that is the one to use for editing and saving or not.. confusing.
I plan on trying the three renders I created with my PS3 and try to make a DVD of them for a regular DVD player.. we will see.
I was able to use Vegas Pro 8 to manipulate video also. I "trimmed" and added one transition that worked for a short time and then I got confused and closed the whole program in annoyance. But it is good news that it is working with Vista 64. I know that it is NOT a 64 bit version of Vegas, but Vegas seems to be able to take advantage of some of the abilities of my PC... I have a quad core pc, a high end video card, and 4 gig of RAM, and for the first time since I got the computer, all four cores of processing power were slammed up to 100% during rendering of HD, and the RAM went up to 3 gig! For the AVI it wasn't stressed at all.
12/23/07 I tried to create a DVD with Windows DVD Maker with all four of the above formats on it, but only the AVI and the WMV HD were accepted by DVD Maker. I first tried the DVD on a regular DVD player hooked up to a 30'' HD television. They both played, and there was a BIG difference between the lower quality AVI and the WMV HD. They both also played on the PS3 as well.
The MTS and the MPEG2 wouldn't go on the DVD with Windows DVD Maker. So we watched the two that did go on the DVD, the AVI and WMV, and then compared them to the MTS and the MPEG2 that wouldn't go on the DVD but played with my thumb drive on my 73'' HDTV through the PS3. The MTS and the MPEG2 were WAYYY better than the AVI or WMV.
It is hard to tell the difference between the MTS, MPEG2, and WMV on my 30 inch Apple monitor, but on the 73'' HDTV and PS3 the MTS and MPEG2 are perfect and seem identical.
All videos play great with no stuttering on my Vista 64 bit quad core, but on my other, older PC with XP, the higher quality videos stutter a lot, and for some reason the MTS won't play with the same version Windows Media Player 11 that I have on the Vista Computer. The AVI file plays fine on the XP machine, but it is not great quality.
So, based on my fooling around and not knowing a darn thing to start with, and still not knowing much, it looks so far like the MTS video that is taken with the HDR-SR8 looks best on my Mitsubishi 73'' and PS3 when rendered in "MPEG2 HDV 1080-60i" on Vegas Pro 8. But then of course, I am wondering what is the best format to save in for future years and technological changes...
12/24/2007 I found out that I can copy video from my thumb drive to my PS3's hard drive by using the green triangle on the game controller. But I want to be able to transfer video from my computer where I manipulate video and photos. I decided I would like to have an external hard drive hooked up to my PS3 that I could take and hook up to my computer whenever I wanted. However, I quickly found out that ONLY FAT32 partitioned hard drives will work with the PS3. That was a problem for awhile as the PCs would only format in NTSF. After much searching I found a program that will allow the formating of FAT32, "fat32format". I downloaded it and it worked. I copied my video, photos, and music onto it in "video", "photo", and "music" directories, and the PS3 recognized them and I am up and running!
12/26/207 I got married today! We did a very simple ceremony at the courthouse. I brought along the camera on the off chance someone would hold it and film whatever happened.
The ceremony took place in a small room and there was a tripod there where they would film us with a Video Tape Recorder if we wanted to pay $20 dollars. I asked them if I could just use our camera and they said, "Yes". So I quickly hooked up the camera and they said we would still have to pay the $20... but they were kidding, we didn't have to pay extra.
Anyway, the video is AMAZING! We will always be glad of the HD video we have of that short four minute ceremony. The ONLY mistake I made is that I also had purchased the Bluetooth remote microphone, DVR-DVD405, which I had only had a chance to try once. (It works GREAT and records the middle channel remotely on your subject while letting the sound around the camera fill in the other channels.) Anyway, I SHOULD have clipped it on my wife or I before the ceremony because the sound of the Justice of the Peace was about twice the volume of what we were... we could be heard fine, but I should have used the microphone... but, hey, I am glad I got what I got.
My wife's family was anxious to see the video so I spend a FEW HOURS and made two products. I screwed up several times doing it, so my time was a lot longer than an expert would have taken, and I probably accomplished VERY simple things... but this is what I did:
I used Vegas Pro 8 on my Quad Core Vista 64 PC. I added text at the beginning and the end of the video. I added a transition between the text and the video. I added a second layer of sound, a "Chicago" song, that played for a bit during the text at the beginning and end of the video, and the program allowed me to easily adjust the volume to match the vocals on the other track so that the music wouldn't be LOUD and clash with the soft spoken words of the ceremony. I was also able to fade the music down when the video started and fade it in at the end.
I made a MPEG2 HD to keep for my fast computer and the PS3. I rendered a second one at "WMV-HD-720-25p Video". This WMV video plays with a high definition picture but at a much smaller than full screen size.
I sent the WMV five minute video (I can't believe our entire wedding was only about four minutes long!) through Windows Messenger to my wife's parents... it was 136 MB vs. the 826 MB MPEG2 version. (The four minute and twenty second Sony MTS original video was exactly 500 MB)
They received the video and watched it on their old PC and said it played fine and sounded good. So, I claim SUCCESS on my first real editing and rendering attempt on Vegas Pro 8!
By the way, I used the program "PQ DVD to iPod Video" to rip the wedding WMV to iPod format, and then put it on our iPod videos. While Vegas Pro will render a video file to MP4, I recommend the PQ program. Not only has it ripped every DVD that I have wanted to put on my iPod, but it also allows the video to be clipped to fit the square iPod screen.
I don't know if this is all too much information or something that anyone really cares to read, but I know when I was researching I would have liked to read something a novice was able to do with the camera...
I can't think of anything else I will need to post here... I hope to get better with the equipment and have fun and create memories for my life with my new bride... and maybe family? Good luck with your purchases!
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