Sony TRV-30 Corner

This corner of my site is for snippets that might be of use to those who, like me, own the Sony TRV-30 camcorder - voted camcorder of the year (2001) by one of the leading UK camcorder magazines.

I've been constantly amazed at how often I've thought "how nice it would be if.... " and find later that I could do what I wanted to do had I known how. Unfortunately, though the manual often mentions these "buried" features in passing, it doesn't explain in what circumstances you might use them. Here, I'll try (time permitting) to expose and explain some of these uses.

If you have discovered a use of any of many TRV-30 features I'd be glad to hear from you so that I can include them here.

For readers who have camcorders other than the TRV-30, you may find that some of the features mentioned here may be possible on your camcorder.

To try to keep things as simple as possible, some items are described in the table below. If a longer explanation is appropriate you'll see a link indicated in the table, which will open a pop-up page (close it in the usual way to return here).

Using your TRV-30 as a VCR	I've traveled to India and back four times in the last 18 months and used my TRV-30 as a portable VCR on the 9-hour journeys. You can use this to occupy your kids on long rail or road journeys. To use the TRV-30 as a VCR recorder, you must activate analogue in (rather than the default i-Link in) : Select VCR and use the menu to set A/V --> DV-OUT, Set the selector to CAMERA and use the control panel RECORD while pressing the unmarked button next to it. This can be used with inputs from both consumer VCRs and DVD players (though if the DVD disk has copy protection it may not copy - if so first use the free cladDVD available from http://clonead.cjb.net and use your video editor to create your video tape). You can use extended play for movies up to 1.5 hours long, or use two tapes.
Wallace and Grommet Productions	Using play-dough available from places like Toys R Us or Wilkinsons, you can produce Wallace and Grommet productions. Ideally you'll need Flash (available as a 30-day trial from http://www.macromedia.com). Make your models in play-dough and use the Interval Recording feature (0.5 sec recording time) described on page 71 of the Sony manual. Output as AVI and import into Flash. Flash allows you to smooth the transitions then output as AVI, so you can produce a very professional W&G movie using the editing and sound dubbing of (say) Pinnacle Studio 7.