I've had tooo many experiences with eaten tapes, both on professional equipemnt and home equipment, interestingly Sony camera never ate sony tapes which may have been my problem as I like Maxell. Just look inside a camera and a tape to look at all the moving parts.

I am leaning toward the new hitachi 750 (not available unitl july) or the 780 (short optical zoom and realistically won't do alot of editing, I have too many other things to do as a working parent, but I do want to be able to copy dvd's does anyone have a recommondation for the easiest way to do that either in camera or through the pc w/ a burner?

You may use provided software picture package to download clips into computer for any editing like trimming, deleting, cutting unwanted portion of video or for convertion of AC-3 Dolby digital to MPEG audio. Later you may use same provided software for writing back the edited footage to mini DVD.

For writing back to full size DVD, record in miniDVD-RW and import VOB files (video mode) or VRO file (VR mode) to compatible softwares to add chapters, titles etc. (and you may delete/cut the unwanted scenes using software before burning into 12cm DVD.

Such softwares are basicaly three types:

1. Video editing & rendering
Eg. Pinnacle Studio 9 Plus with 5.1 ch plug-in

2. DVD authoring
Eg. Nerovision (provided with most of the DVD-RW drives)

3. Both of the above
Eg. Ulead DVD Movie Factory ver 3.5 and above
& Cyberlink PowerDirector 4.0.

choose 1st pass encoding only for faster rendering into combined full-size DVD-R.

You may get the trial versions on the respective websites..

Can anyone tell me how to take files off the Sony dcr-dvd300 and import them into Avid Express DV?

So far i have just been able to watch the dvd and open the VOB files without having any audio.

Any help is must appreciated.

Your system probably does not have a AC3 sound codec insalled. Download and install it here:
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/AC3_Filter.htm
then rename the XXXX.VOB file to XXXX.MPG. your editing software should now import it.
For MPEG2 editing from miniDVD, the best apps are Womble mpeg wizard and Ulead VS10. Both have 30 day free trials if you want to try them.

Regards

Mike

I Purchased a DVD-201 ( Sony ) about a year & a half ago ..
For the first 8 months I was sure I had made the wrong desicion ..
However .. Then I got Sony Vegas6 movie studio + DVD and Now I feel better about my purchase .. it is very easy to edit & burn DVD's with this software .. The mepg files are much easier on the Gigabites than AVI files .. I find no loss of quality when I Edit & burn to a DVD ..