Hello everyone,
My wife and I recently bought a Sony Handycam DCR-SR200 camera and we're having a lot of problems with it. First of all, we can record (file format is mpeg) and take pictures (file format is jpeg) fine. Downloading to the computer is not a problem, either.
However, the first problem is that we can't view the video files in all software. We tried the files in Windows Media Player, which works fine. But we tried them in Winamp, and the files will play for two seconds (no audio), then freeze the software. I tried other mpegs on Winamp to see if Winamp was the problem, and those others work fine. It's just files from the SR200 that won't work. I use Winamp for pretty much all audio/video doin's on my computer (save for DVDs and maybe a couple of things here and there), so Winamp problem is irksome. My worry is that the files won't work in just about anything except for Windows Media Player, and maybe eventually be fussy about that.
The second problem is that I'm playing around with editing videos, making montages and whatnot. A new hobby. I'm a newbie, so please bear with me as I may sound totally out-to-lunch here. Anyway, I tried to make a video slideshow in Windows Movie Maker. I know that WMM isn't great--as I said, I'm a newbie, so I'm trying out my new hobby in low- cost or free software at the moment--but it's what I've got right now. When I tried to import an mpeg, WMM couldn't read it; I got an error message. So I used some software to convert it to an avi. I got the same problems with the avi (won't work in Winamp though Winamp never had a problem with avi's before), but now the new avi won't work in Media Player either. I tried it out in Movie Maker, which read it... with problems: suddenly Movie Maker thinks a 4-minute video is 8 hours long. This 8-hour video plays fine for video (4 minutes is 4 minutes), however the audio is so out-of-sync that stuff at the beginning of the video starts playing at about 4:15. Also, when I compiled my movie, the video was grainy and jumpy, no matter what aspect ratio, size, or frames-per-second I converted it from mpeg to avi with. I wasn't using the audio for this particular project, but I'm sure the audio would still be out-of-sync in the compiled version. WMM never had this problem before.
Has anybody had these problems with the camcorder? This is my first camcorder purchase, so maybe this is a problem with the whole technology. But it just seems like such an expensive product shouldn't come with so many limitations and problems. We can still view the videos and pictures, but with such an expensive piece of equipment, all the problems I mentioned above are huge deal breakers.
Any ideas?