Sony DCR-TRV120 Camcorder -- As of Spring 2001, the Best Deal on a Digital Camcorder

Author's Rating:

Pros: The Lowest Priced Digital8 Camcorder

Cons: There Are More Economical Alternatives with the Same Image Quality

The Bottom Line: 
Now that the TRV120 is being replaced, you can find it for sale at prices around $550, making it a GIANT BARGAIN!!!

Author's Review
Update: As of 14 March 2001. Sony is bringing out a replacement model for the TRV120, the TRV130. From the information in the Sony Web site, it appears that the TRV130 is almost identical to the unit it's replacing. For the money, the TRV120 is the best digital camcorder out there. You can find some other camcorders (MiniDV units) which are around the same price, but they don't compare that well to the TRV120 in terms of features and quality.

Because of the new model, some retailers have dropped the TRV120 price down to $550 (maybe even lower in some cases). BhphotovideoDOTcom has a good deal on it. Keeping its limitations in mind (especially that it's a single-CCD-chip unit), the TRV120 is now pretty much the best deal available in its class (i.e., under-$1,000 single-chip digital consumer-level camcorders).

I hope to review the TRV130, as soon as I can get my hands on one and as soon as Epinions once again begins to add new products to the lists. In fact, the site is long overdue for adding new products, so you might want to drop them an e-mail to point this out.

**********


The Sony DCR-TRV120, the entry-level camcorder in Sony's Digital8 line, gives you the advantages of digital video recording, combined with a street price of about $750, one of the lowest prices around for a digital camcorder. But, if you're on a tight budget, and want to stick with a Sony, one of their Hi8 camcorders, which sell for about $200 less than the TRV120, might make more sense for you.



Alternatives to the TRV120

A less-expensive Hi8 camcorder, such as the Sony CCD-TRV67, would provide an excellent alternative to the TRV120 since the image quality you'll get from a camcorder with a Hi8 recording section, all other components of the camcorder being equal, will be almost as good as what you'll get from a Digital8 or MiniDV camcorder. Also, you can get an entry-level MiniDV (the standard consumer-level digital video format) camcorder from Panasonic or JVC for about the same price as the TRV120.



Don't Be Scared by Digital8

Technically, the Digital8 format is almost identical to MiniDV, with a recording section that can resolve a bit more than 500 horizontal lines (if the camera section, the lens and the CCD, deliver that many, which is not always the case with inexpensive camcorders). However, Digital8, instead of recording its bits and bytes on a MiniDV tape, records them on a Hi8 tape.



Yes, it has IEEE-1394

If you're interested in non-linear digital video editing on your PC or Mac, the TRV120, like most other digital camcorders, whether Digital8 or MiniDV, will provide seamless connection to your computer's hard drive via its IEEE-1394 Firewire interface (or, as Sony calls it, "iLink").



One of the Best Digital8 Values

If you want digital, and you'd prefer to stick with Sony products, the TRV120 gives you most of the features found in the higher-level models of their Digital8 line (the TRV320/520/720/820). Because of this, it's one of the best camcorder values in this line, since the features you get in the higher-priced Digital8 units, such as larger LCD screens, generally have no impact on the final quality of your video footage. The TRV120, with its Firewire jack and input for a higher-quality external microphone, would make a nice semi-professional camcorder for a low-budget event video business or a cable-access producer.

The Sony camcorders, in general, are a bit pricey, though Sony pays attention to detail and their camcorders have a solid, good-quality feel that's missing in some other brands (such as the lower-priced Canon and JVC MiniDV camcorders units). If you really want a MiniDV camcorder, and there are some advantages to this format, you can one, such as the Panasonic PV-DV100, for about the same price as the TRV-120.



About Digital8

Sony's Digital8 format converts the analog image and audio signals from the camcorder's camera section and microphone to digital information and records this information on Hi8 tapes. However, since the tape is moved twice as fast as in Hi8 recording, the maximum recording time, using a two-hour Hi8 tape, is one hour. Although the Hi8 tapes were originally intended for recording analog information, they function identically to a purpose-built MiniDV tape and there's nothing inherently of less quality about recording the digital information onto these kinds of tapes. Since the cheapest MiniDV tapes are about $8.00 for a one-hour tape, while a decent two-hour (i.e., one hour of Digital8 recording time) Hi8 tape runs about $5.00, the Digital8 format will give you moderate savings on tape stock. Since the average camcorder user probably shoots less than an hour per week of video footage, this price difference isn't terribly significant.

One drawback of Digital8 is that it is not an industry standard, as is MiniDV. All the major camcorder manufacturers, such as Canon, JVC, and Panasonic, use MiniDV for their consumer-level digital video products. Sony also uses it for all of its consumer camcorders which list for more than $1,400.

There is one significant bonus with the Digital8 format: the Digital8 camcorders accept the Hi8-size tapes, meaning these camcorders will play back legacy 8mm and Hi8 tapes. When you're considering the purchase of a Digital8 camcorder, you should keep in mind that, once you've recorded your video onto a Hi8 tape in this format, it's kind of stuck there. If your Sony Digital8 camcorder dies, you'll have to replace it with another Digital8 camcorder or you'll have no way to play back your tapes.

On the other hand, with a MiniDV camcorder, you'll be able to play your currently-recorded MiniDV tapes back on future models of MiniDV camcorders and tape decks (there are no VTR decks for Digital8 tapes, though playing back Digital8 footage is as simple as connecting a cable from your camcorder to your television, typically made even easier by the front-mounted A/V inputs on many TV's).

There are a couple of ways around the lack of Digital8 VTR decks. First of all, you could transfer your Digital8 footage, via the Firewire jack, to the hard drive in your PC and then output it to a regular MiniDV recorder. Second, if you could afford a DVD-R drive (they're currently selling for about $4,000), you could transfer your footage to your hard drive and then burn it onto a DVD-R disc. Of course, you can always use the analog outputs of a Digital8 camcorder to dub your digital footage onto VHS or S-VHS tapes, but going from digital to analog would result in a generational loss in image quality.



Ergonomics

The TRV120 weighs about two pounds and measures 107 by 106 by 233 mm (an inch is 25mm). It fits nicely in the hand, but it's so light that you'll have to hold it very carefully to avoid camera shake. The optional, higher-capacity batteries, such as the NP-F960, will ad as much as a pound to the weight of the camcorder, making it much easier to hold steady. Except for the gadget-loaded TRV820, all the camcorders in the Digital8 line, the TRV120 through TRV720, are of almost identical dimensions. The size of the LCD screens varies, but this doesn't affect the overall dimensions of each camcorder.



IEEE-1394, Firewire, iLink -- One and the Same

Let's get one thing out of the way here. The little four-line jack on the TRV120, which Sony calls an iLink jack, is officially known as an IEEE-1394 jack and Apple calls it a Firewire jack. The jack here itself isn't the big deal. It's a just a four-line connection. What is a big deal is the IEEE-1394 standard, which allows for the two-way communication of data at 400Mbps, which is over 100 times more bandwidth than is available with a USB, parallel, or serial connection. Digital video, with its huge appetite for bits and bytes, requires this kind of connection.

Since the IEEE-1394 standard provides two-way communication, it not only provides a pathway for raw digital video data to feed from a camcorder, but allows the computer to send control signals back to the camcorder (or any other piece of computer or video gear using the Firewire standard). Thus, if you have a video-editing expansion card installed in your PC, and the appropriate software, you can not only feed the digital video stream into the computer, but you can also control the functions of the camcorder from the computer, allowing you to specify in and out points for editing and then set the software to command the camcorder to feed the appropriate scenes, in the proper order, from the DV tape in the camcorder to the hard drive in your computer. Once "captured" to your hard drive, you can manipulate the scenes in your computer with your editing software, just as you cut and paste sentences and paragraphs with word processing software. Naturally, you can manipulate the audio with equal flexibility.

One of the drawbacks to this kind of video manipulation, known as non-linear editing, is that it takes a large amount of hard drive space to store video (for a good quality image, you need about 13 Gigabytes of storage space per hour of digital video). However, with prices of large, high-performance IDE drives dropping precipitously, non-linear editing of digital video will continue to increase in popularity.

In the Mac world, the new iMac's have provided quite a boost to digital video editing, since these machines come with integral Firewire ports. Some of the all-in-one iMac's, the DV models, are bundled with basic video editing software. Apple has also introduced its own contender in the high-end digital video editing software marketplace with their Final Cut Pro ($1,000). Between the basic digital video editing software you'd get with an iMac DV, some of which is available as freeware, to the high-end programs like FCP and in-sync's Speed Razor, there are some excellent mid-level products like Digital Origin's EditDV which is now in Edition 2.0 with versions for both the PC and the Mac.



Affect Your Video with Effects

As previously mentioned, the TRV120 has a Firewire jack. This makes it compatible with all kinds of video editing cards and software and, of course, the new iMac's. However, you don't need external video editing software to get special effects with the TRV120: it has quite a few built in.

Francis Ford Coppola once said that someday young film makers would carry an entire movie studio in their hands. Coppola was looking to the future, and I'll bet he was imagining camcorders like the TRV120. To aid in your video expression, this camera includes the following digital effects: slow shutter, motion trails, luminance key, flash motion, and still. Slow shutter is an especially cool effect, because it lets you bring the shutter speed as low as 1/4-second, creating cool, pulsing images and light trails and letting you shoot in very low light. The motion trails overlay a series of ghost images as you pan the camera. Luminance key captures the image in the viewfinder the second that you start shooting and then keeps a ghosted version of this image superimposed over whatever you shoot next. Flash motion changes what you get on tape from a continuous image to a series of one-second stills. Still gives you a freeze frame.

Picture effects include slim, stretch, solarization (that artistic, cruising-city-streets-at-night, 20/20 look, if you know what I mean), monotone, sepia, and negative, pastel, and mosaic (the image is turned into a set of colored squares). Transitions built into the camcorder include fade to black, fade to mosaic, bounce, monotone, and overlap. You can also fade in with these same effects.



The Cam in CamCORDER

No matter what method a camcorder uses to record the video, digital or analog, or how many fancy effects it has, the video you get will never be any better than the raw material, i.e. the signal that comes out of the camera section of the camcorder, which consists of the lens and the CCD (charge-coupled device) which changes the visual signal from the lens into an analog video signal (which, with a digital camcorder, is then changed into a bitstream by an analog-to-digital converter).

The TRV120 has a 25x, 3.7-92.5mm (the 35mm camera equivalent of approximately 30-750mm) optical zoom lens, meaning there's a 25-times ratio from the wide angle lens setting to the highest level of zoom. The lens takes 37mm filters -- and you should always buy a UV filter lens with any new camcorder, $5.00 insurance against lens mishaps. The TRV120's 25x zoom factor provides ample magnification. While camcorder shoppers obsess over the level of zoom a camcorder has, when you actual start using a camcorder you'll probably find you're more interested in how much of a wide angle factor you have. Generally, you'll probably end up wishing you could go wider, rather than wishing you had more zoom, but you're not stuck -- you can always get an after-market wide-angle enhancer for about $50. In case you want to have enough to look through your neighbor's window and read the newspaper he's reading, the TRV120 also has a digital zoom feature which takes you up to a zoom factor of 450. While this kind of feature appeals to people shopping for a camcorders, it's not something you'd really use much since it would increase hand-shake so much that you could only use it with the camcorder on a tripod. Also, at this level of zoom the image would begin to pixilate.

Speaking of hand-shake, the TRV120 features Sony's so-called Steady Shot image stabilization system. This is a digital image stabilization system. You shouldn't expect much from it. Digital is inferior to the other image stabilization scheme, known as Super Steady Shot, which Sony uses in their more expensive camcorders. Super Steady Shot works with optical image stabilization, which is a system of sensors and tiny motors that move mirrors which affect the light path of the image in the camcorder, thus compensating for shake. None of these systems will really do much to overcome sloppy camera handling. If you really want stabilization of a handheld camcorder, you'll need a Steadicam, which will cost $400 or more, in most cases much more. The best option for a steady picture is an old-fashioned bit of motion-picture technology known as a tripod.

For turning the image from the zoom lens into an electrical, analog video signal, the TRV120 uses a 1/4-inch CCD with 460,000 pixels. This CCD will give you a fairly detailed video image, though it will fall well short of providing the 500 lines of resolution that digital video is capable of resolving. Since this CCD's is the same size, and has about the same amount of pixels, as the CCD in a better-quality Hi8 camcorder, you'll probably get about the same 400 lines of horizontal resolution that you'd get with a good Hi8 camcorder.



Control Freaks Take Note!

As for controlling exposure, the TRV120 provides 7 automatic modes with names which generally describe their intended purposes: portrait, beach & ski, sports, landscape, spotlight, and sunset & moon. There are limited options for manually controlling the picture parameters, such as focus and exposure. Unfortunately, and this is true throughout the Sony Digital8 line, there's no manual white balance setting. This is a terrible oversight. Manual white balance is crucial to getting accurate colors. For example, I have some footage I shot of an NYPD cruiser with sky-blue lettering. I forgot to manually set the white balance and the lettering came out mint green. This is something that will only bother people who are seriously into video. For the average home camcorder user, the automatic white balance will probably be satisfactory. If you have video manipulation software, such as EditDV from Digital Origin, it's easy to fix color balance problems in post.



Different Points of View

To frame your shots, the TRV120 includes a 2.5-inch color LCD screen and a 0.5-inch black and white standard viewfinder. The LCD screen, which has a built-in speaker, will come in handy when you're on the road and want to preview each day's footage. Keep in mind that, due to the greatly-increased power consumption you'll have using the LCD screen, shooting with the viewfinder will give you much more battery time.



Inputs/Outputs

The TRV120's analog audio and video inputs (including S-Video), allow you to dub, making Digital8 copies of your tapes which are in the analog Hi8, 8mm, VHS, VHS-S, S-VHS, or S-VHS-C form. These inputs will accept analog signals from any source, such as another camcorder or a VCR. Digital video recorded onto Hi8 tapes will be just as durable as on regular MiniDV tapes, meaning that they'll have the potential to last for years. As long as the digital information can be read at all, it should be of equal quality to the video on the day on which you recorded it.



Standards Conversion

A pass-through feature means you can use the TRV120 as a standards converter, feeding an analog signal in, via the A/V jacks, and feeding a digital video signal out via the IEEE-1394 connection. This means that, if you've already got a collection of analog tapes (in VHS or 8mm format), you could play the tape back on your analog tape deck or camcorder, run it into the TRV120, and then run the converted digital video, via the IEEE-1394/iLink/Firewire jack, into your computer and onto your PC's hard drive, from where you could edit it with non-linear video software.

As mentioned before, you can play back analog 8mm and Hi8 tapes on the TRV120, since this camcorder uses this kind of tape stock to record its digital video. However, when you play back one of these tapes, you'll just get analog output, the same as if played them back over a regular analog camcorder. But if you have 8mm tapes, you probably have an 8mm deck, so you can just play the tapes on the 8mm deck, run the analog signal into the TRV120, and run the DV output into your PC's Firewire jack (if your PC has a Firewire jack, that is).



Nightshot

The TRV120, like many Sony camcorders, features a gadget known as Night Shot mode. Through a combination of a relatively-low shutter speed and monochrome-only infrared CCD operation, the Night Shot mode, according to Sony, will get an image with 0 to 4 lux of light. An optional infrared Night Shot light, the HVL-IRC, will extend the range of action the camcorder can catch in Night Shot mode from the standard 10 feet to 100 feet. Although the Night Shot mode is essentially a gimmick, and of limited value for serious videography, it could actually extend your pallette of video expression options. It is reported that, under certain conditions, when shooting subjects wearing light-colored clothing in Night Shot mode, the warmer parts of their bodies will appear darker on the final video, creating a see-through effect. I've also read that Sony has tried to minimize this phenomenon, so your results may vary.



All About Audio

The TRV120 has a built-in microphone, but it also has a mini-plug (3.5-mm) stereo mic-in jack, meaning you can use a Beachtek adaptor (about $200) and run high-quality, XLR-connector microphones into the camcorder. As per the DV format, audio is recorded in either 16 or 12-bit mode. In the 16-bit mode there are two tracks, total. In 12-bit mode, two tracks are recorded live while two tracks remain blank, allowing you to later dub background audio onto them. The audio is recorded with Pulse Code Modulation (PCM), allowing for a 96dB signal-to-noise ratio, which is even better than the audio quality from a stereo VHS tape.



Still Shots Too

A Photo Mode allows you to record still shots. Along with each of these stills, you can record 7 seconds of background narration.



Laser Link, Useful or Gadget? -- Epinions Readers Want to Know!

If you really love gadgets, you might consider purchase of the Laser Link wireless connection system (about $60). This little box, designed to sit atop your TV set, allows you to beam the video and audio output from the TRV120, from up to 16 feet away, without, as the Sony literature states, "cables or cassette adapters." However, if you're intelligent enough to connect the Laser Link to your TV, you'd be smart enough to directly connect your camcorder. So, unless you just love the convenience of being able to play back your Digital8 videos over your TV without having to stop a second to plug the camcorder into the A/V jacks on the TV, the Laser Link probably wouldn't be the best value for you. The paradoxical nature of the Laser Link reminds me of those gadgets that were supposed to allow you to set your VCR for time shifting by just punching a six-digit number into the box. The only problem was that programming the box to control your VCR was more complicated than programming the VCR itself.



Intelligent Accessory Shoe

The Intelligent Accessory Shoe, which sits atop the front of the camcorder, allows you to connect accessories, mainly lights, to the TRV120 and have their various parameters controlled by the feedback from the camcorder. In other words, when using a light, the camcorder will set the brightness level of the light according to the level of light sensed by the meter in the camcorder. As far as I know, none of these lights are over five watts, meaning they're limited to use as "eyelights," with just enough brightness to ad a little sparkle to the eyes of a subject a few feet in front of the camcorder. To really illuminate the area you're going to shoot, with a portable light, you need a separate, professional video light of at least 20 watts, powered by its own battery pack.



Control-L, 16:9, Titler, Edit Search

The Control-L jack on the TRV120 allows remote control of various functions (play stop/start, record stop/start, zoom). This will let you use the camcorder with an edit controller, such as those sold by Videonics, for linear, tape-to-tape editing which, despite all the high-tech advances in non-linear PC-based editing (NLE), is still a viable, widely-used post-production option. The Control-L jack (a.k.a. LANC) will also let you use the TRV120 with one of those tripod-handle-mounted controllers that let you control various camcorder functions, such as zoom and rec start/stop without actually touching the camcorder. Sony sells a series of tripods (the RM series) which have these kind of controls built-in. If you're on a budget, you can use the supplied remote control, the RMT-814, to control all of these functions and more, without touching the camcorder. In fact, you can do some pretty fancy editing work just by simultaneously wielding the camcorder's remote and the remote for your VCR (with the camcorder connected to the VCR input jacks, of course).

Some other built-in features include 16:9 mode, a digital effect which changes the aspect ratio of the video you record from the NTSC-standard 4:3 (the same as a regular television screen) to the wide-screen, HDTV-style aspect ratio of 16:9. This might come in handy, some day in the far future, if you ever end up purchasing an HDTV set.

The titler allows you to superimpose text on your video image. It operates in several languages and colors, but only one point size. If you really want high-quality titles, you need to have a separate titler or NLE software with titling capability.

The Edit Search feature will come in handy, as it allows you, without leaving record mode, to preview what you've just shot, allowing you to quickly back up over newly-recorded footage that you want to get tape over.



A Battery of Batteries

The standard NP-F330 lithium-ion battery, which has about 1,000 milliamp hours (mah), will give you about forty minutes of running time, depending on whether or not you shoot with the LCD screen on. Various other, larger lithium-ion batteries, running from about $50 to $150, will give you more recording time (and weight), going up to the NP-F960 which, according to Sony, will give you 12 hours of recording time. The so-called Info-Lithium power system in the TRV120 constantly monitors the battery level, giving you a readout in the viewfinder, in minutes, of how much running time you have remaining. The battery charger, unfortunately, is built-in on the TRV120, meaning you can't charge a backup battery while you're using the camcorder.



Accessories

The TRV120 comes with an A/C adaptor, the NP-F330 battery, the wireless remote, an A/V cable, a shoulder strap, 2 AA batteries, and a lens cap. Beware of camcorder retailers who try to tell you that you have to pay for these items separately. They're just ripoff artists who are taking apart the camcorder kits when they get them and reselling the accessories as separate pieces. These are the same sellers, almost never authorized Sony dealers, who run the colorful ads in the camcorder magazines with really low prices. Keep an eye on the newsgroups to read about the worst of these scam artists.



Conclusion

Sony covers the TRV120 with a one-year parts and 90-day labor warranty. Generally speaking, Sony camcorders are well-designed and carefully constructed. Since the TRV120 gives you all the essential features of the Digital8 camcorders, with the lowest price, it's a good value. If you want to get a Digital8 camcorder, this should be one of your top candidates. If you're on a tight budget, there are other, less-expensive options, such as a Hi8 camcorder or an entry-level MiniDV camcorder from one of the other manufacturers.