Sony DCR-SR100

Background

Following the birth of my daughter, I thought it was about time that I got myself a video camera. I'd often thought about getting a camcorder, but I'd always been put off by the high cost, middling video quality, the need to buy loads of DV tapes or DVDs, and the messing around getting the video off of the camera and onto a PC in a usable format. However, with the arrival of the newish HDD recording camcorders, all of my objections were pretty much void. After a bit of research on the web I decided to go for Sony DCR-SR100 which, at the time of purchase, was Sony's top-of-the-line non HD camcorder although it has now been replaced by two newer models. I didn't go for a HD model because they're vastly more expensive and I don't actually have any HD equipment yet anyway.

I bought my camera over the internet from a shop in Japan and had it delivered to my mother-in-law who brought it over to London on her next visit. The camera cost 330 GBP to buy in Japan vs. Sony's RRP of nearly 1000 GBP in the UK which was quite a difference even by Sony's usual standard of UK price gouging. The Japanese version of the camera has two minor drawbacks. Firstly, it records video in NTSC format which means that you need a NTSC capable TV to view the video, but most TVs can handle NTSC and PAL these days. The second drawback is that, unusually for Sony, there's no option to change the camera's language setting and you're stuck with Japanese. The North American user manual for the SR100 includes a section on changing the language, but that option simply doesn't exist on the Japanese version. The bundled software, ImageMixer, is supplied on a CD with an English version present, so that's not a problem, but if you can't at least read Katakana you'll struggle to use the camera and I wouldn't recommend buying a SR100 from Japan.

On the plus side, of particular note amongst the SR100's abilities is the fact that it records video directly as MPEG2 files, that it mounts as a mass storage device, and it can transfer videos to a PC over a USB 2 interface. All of that means it's an absolute doddle to use with your PC, regardless of the OS.

Does it work in linux?

Yes, it does - it mounts as a regular mass storage device. On Open SuSE 10.2 I see this ..

dell kernel: usb 2-7: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 5
dell kernel: usb 2-7: new device found, idVendor=054c, idProduct=028e
dell kernel: usb 2-7: new device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
dell kernel: usb 2-7: Product: Sony Camcorder
dell kernel: usb 2-7: Manufacturer: SONY
dell kernel: usb 2-7: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
dell kernel: scsi1 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
dell kernel: usb-storage: device found at 5
dell kernel: usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
dell kernel:   Vendor: Sony      Model: Camcorder         Rev: 1.00
dell kernel:   Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 00
dell kernel: SCSI device sdb: 58605120 512-byte hdwr sectors (30006 MB)
dell kernel: sdb: Write Protect is off
dell kernel: sdb: Mode Sense: 00 32 00 00
dell kernel: sdb: assuming drive cache: write through
dell kernel: SCSI device sdb: 58605120 512-byte hdwr sectors (30006 MB)
dell kernel: sdb: Write Protect is off
dell kernel: sdb: Mode Sense: 00 32 00 00
dell kernel: sdb: assuming drive cache: write through
dell kernel:  sdb: sdb1
dell kernel: sd 1:0:0:0: Attached scsi removable disk sdb
dell kernel: sd 1:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0
dell kernel: usb-storage: device scan complete
dell hald: mounted /dev/sdb1 on behalf of uid 1000

You can watch the videos using Mplayer. I did notice some odd artefacts on one recording I played back with Mplayer, but that may have been due to a bug in one of the video drivers. When I changed the video driver with Mplayer's -vo switch, the artefacts disappeared. I've only ever had to do that once, every other video has played back with no problems at all.

Putting the video on the web as a Flash video requires some fiddling, but nothing too tiresome. Here's what I do:

• In Windows, import the video(s) using the ImageMixer software supplied with the camera
• Optionally double click on the imported video to play it and then click on the "Convert audio" button to create a new file with a stereo soundtrack instead of the original 5.1 audio.
• Optionally run the video through Womble's MPEG Video Wizard DVD software to cut, splice, add effects etc.
• Switch to Linux and use mencoder to create the FLV file with the command line below ..

mencoder INPUT.MPG -o OUTPUT.FLV -of lavf \
-lavfopts i_certify_that_my_video_stream_does_not_use_b_frames \
-oac mp3lame -lameopts abr:br=56 -ovc lavc -lavcopts \
vcodec=flv:vbitrate=250:mbd=2:mv0:trell:v4mv:cbp:last_pred=3 -srate 22050

You end up with something like this ..

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

.. I stripped the audio out of this one because it's just wind noise ;-) Another example can be found here.

If you're looking for something to encode Flash movies in Windows, I can confirm that ..

• The Flash Video Encoder from Adobe Flash Professional 8
• The Sothink Video Encoder for Adobe Flash from SourceTec software

.. both work with the raw MPEGs from the SR100 without having to mux the audio.