Summary: Correction on May 16th Review

Comment: The software mentioned on my May 16th review IS called "AVID Xpress" -- not "AVID Express" -- when my review was edited someone changed the spelling, possibly thinking it was a typo/mistake?

Summary: GREAT CAMERA! A DELIGHT! FUN ! A PLEASURE!

Comment: I bought the TRV 900 in September of 1999 and have been very pleased these past few years. This camera is lightweight enough to travel with...with me, it's been from Italy to Arizona...and produces clean, colorful pictures. I can also grab "still" pictures from my videos and have a perfectly captured photo (i.e. the perfect smile on someone's face or a moment in which a bird dives into a shot etc.) My only wish with this photo function is that the still photos had better picture quality...as good as the video. Nevertheless, it is still a fun function and allows me to send my photos from trips to others via email. The camera has many special effects which are fun to work with such as black and white, sepia tone, negative (great for manually made titles), slim (make yourself thinner!), stretch (make people on the beach fatter!), posterized effects etc...if you can edit in your head, these effects can save rendering time later. (For editing, I've used AVID EXpress DV. The Sony TRV 900 footage loads nicely into the AVID Express DV editing system and is a pleasure to work with. AVID Express DV editing software is expensive (2K) and does have somewhat of a learning curve but with time and effort is well worth the money. If you get this software and you're new to editing, get a turnkey system from a place such as Promax. )

Summary: Sony Handycam [messed] up my computer

Comment: The USB software bundled by Sony for transferring images to computer COMPLETELY [MESSED] UP MY SYSTEM. The installation is very dicey. You need to do things in a precise order. It is prone to getting [messed] up,... it can't be fixed. As usual, the Sony software is a mess.
Their instructions for unscrambling the mess don't work. They just get you deeper into the woods.
Be sure to get the extended warranty if you buy this product. You will probably need it. As for the computer, it may require a complete disk wipe and reinstallation. God help you if you have RAID or something else. WHAT A MESS. Sony is big enough that they don't care. They don't have to.

Summary: Great - without a single doubt

Comment: I find myself using the DCR-TRV900 as a digital camera almost as a matter of course. I purchased the Sony 64Mb memory card (you need to also buy the PCMCIA attachment that it fits in) and taking pictures is a veritable joy. The supplied floppy drive is next to useless - in fact, I don't know how you'd use it in an active environment. There are manual options: aperture setting (depth of field) and shutter speed (great for darker environments)among them. You can also record stills right on the tape and later extract them on your computer. Transfering video and stills to a PC is effortless; I use the IEEE 1394 (Firewire) interface. To make great movies, including voice over (if needed) and background music, I'm happy with Ulead Video Studio rather than the Microsoft XP Windows Movie Maker program - which appears to be a minimal implementation of Ulead's program. Adobe Premier 5.0 might still be better, but I'm not professional enough to shell out [that kind of money] or so for that program. By the way, Ulead also allows you to create NTSC VCD files, which, once downloaded to a regular CD-
ROM (I use Easy Cd Creator Platinum), can be played on your DVD player (not all of them, but certainly those produced in the last 2 years). Anyway, a great camcorder and camera; I find myself walking around with it for hours on end - it just feels good!

Summary: Be causious of reviews

Comment: I find it helpful to read the reviews of consumers that have already bought the product. But click on the review from Wayne C4 listed here where it says "Wayne C4 (see more about me)" and he has reviewed 40 + items with many of them using the same words in the review or with only a few words changed. And the items are similar that he reviewed. So he has obviously not purchased these items. So be careful what you read here. Shame on you Wayne C4.