Hi, Ive been looking at the 330 for some time and might be purchaseing one next year if the price drops some. (or if nothing better comes out) I want to use for a dual purpose digital video cam and digital camera. I currently lug around a Digital8 TRV520 and a 3.3mp DSC-S70 digital camera, both over 3 years old.

1. Does it take a long time to boot up - auto focus - snap picture? My Digital camera DSC-S70 takes forever to take a picture so from the off position and I miss a lot good pictures becuase the moment has passed.
2. How many stills resolutions are there to choose from? Some info I have seen only says 2, the highest and 640x480. Im interested in some intermediate resolution like 1600x1200 or 1280x960.
3. Has anybody tried putting a wide angle or zoom lense on it if possible?
4. Can you take stills while captureing video or will it interupt the video?

Hi

2 days before i got the new pc330. the fine still in maximum pixel limit is not at all appealing. it has lot of white grains and totally bad looking. the movie is fine when connected to TV. i am yet to find some better s/w to get good qlty (need to invest some more bucks for getting a good video editing s/w) . at any time the cheap 200$ digital camera scores better than the dual one. sony pc330 is not worth in many like no manual control, not good editing s/w, not a better battery. i am totally dis-satisfied for the money that i have invested in it. other features seem to be okay. reserve some money for battery, good editing s/w, iLink cable etc. Most editing s/ws do not work with usb u need to buy a firewire(iLink) cable seperately. The imagemixer is only a piece of junk,dont install it and waste ur time. on seeing its o/p i was horrified. i am yet to try in other video editing s/ws.

My experience with PC330 is somewhat different to yours. It produced excellent videos and stills on 3.2 meter screen using a Sony projector. However, when it is not bright, still photos tend to produce grain although the video is excellent at that light level (without any grain). This may be the effect that you are describing.

The pop-up flash can correct this problem for stills if the subject is within about 2 meters. I have used a large slave-flash successfully to brighten a large room for stills. Check whether you get this problem under bright-light conditions. If this is the case, there may be an issue with your particular camera. On a sunny day in outdoors, it should produce excellent stills without any kind of grain.

Regarding manual controls: It has less manual controls in comparison to other cheaper cameras such as DV953, however, IMO, the higher picture quality of 330 out ways this limitation. PC 330 has some manual controls: It has full aperture/gain control and some ability to control shutter in the manual mode. Do you have any particular manual controls in mind?

Computer connection and editing: The USB connection of the camera is limited to about 10 Mbit/s which is not sufficient to transfer MiniDV video in real-time (which runs at about 26 Mnit/s). So, it is essential to get a Firewire cable and a card for your computer. You can use Image mixer to transfer in avi format and store it in your computer temporarily (if you have a large HDD), before converting to MPEG2 for DVDs and to MPEG1 for VCDs. 5 minutes of video requires about 1GB HD space. You will need to get software for editing, rendering and burning to DVDs. If you are purchasing a DVD burner, you can get free bundled software for this purpose. Pioneer bundles Ulead software and that gives satisfcatory results.

I have produced excellent quality DVDs without any visible quality loss (in comparison to direct camera connection) on a 3.2 meter screen. In fact, in some cases, DVD quality appears to be slightly better than direct camera connection! This may be due to the RGB connection from the DVD player rather than the S-Video connection from the camera to the projector.

Hi

I really do not get satisfactory videos and photos as you say, even in bright conditions it has grains all over.

Indoor video & photo (using flash and room lights) also has grains and dark. The photo is very less quality not even like 300KB regular jpg. outdoor video is okay.

may be it is with the camera. How to check it ? (I dont have iLink and I am planning to get one next week after coming from my holiday trip).

Please post some samples of your camera. I will upload some samples from my camera and give the link later today.

How could I check if there is any thing wrong with my camera only ? I have not yet registered the product, Do I have to return it ?

Thanks & Regards,
Sridkar.

Any answers to the origonal questions 1-4? I don't doubt the video quality since I also can produce excellent DVD's from my 0lder Sony digital8 cam but Im more interested in the Stills functionality. I wan't to know if the is a true dual-function Video/stills cam or just another Video cam with half-*** still capability.