First two weeks with my SR7
 

I got my SR7 a couple of weeks ago and thought it was time to write up some of my impressions. In good light outdoors the picture is beautiful, my wife thinks better than my FX1 probably because the colours are a little more saturated more like the HC96 that I have. Playback is easy using the menu system and remote control on my HiScan Sony. I went to a friends wedding a week ago and shot a lot of video at the service , outside and later at the reception. As expected the reception video is not good ( to be honest I could hardly see when the dancing started. I was there to enjoy myself not shoot an official video!!!) the grain at wide open, max gain gives the encoder and auto focus a real problem. But it was better than nothing at all and Nightshot solved the problem!!!!. I don't think any of my cameras, even the FX1 could have taken good video in the conditions and I just used as a point and shoot. Characteristics are much like the HC96 in that when it gets darker conditions the camera seems to set its self up to provide video that is brighter than reality. This is sad because it doesn't reflect reality and causes too much gain to be used. Stills with auto flash were very good though.
The Sony software is another thing altogether. It took forever to load onto the PC. Total time to load software and capture a couple hours of video was just over an hour!!! At first I couldn't get the software to make a DVD without crashing. Then i realized that it doesn't like grouping files, just add one file at a time and it is happy!!!! IT made a short 15 min DVD Ok but took long enough I just didn't time it. IT has now been running for just over 4 hours trying to make a DVD of 3.8G from the wedding shots. I have an AMD X2 4200 with 2 G RAM, it shows only one processor being used and that at just 50%!!! no wonder its slow.
Tomorrow I will try importing into Vegas and exporting as MPEG. At least I have a number of options to edit and export rather than someone who has just bought this camera and has just the Sony software on a low end machine.
So far love the camera, fits in a small Sony case with a spare battery( you don't need anything else), stills are good too rather than take along a still camera,software support is poor.

Ron Evans

An update. The encode was still showing only 34% done so I stopped it. Decided to try about 1/3 of the clips from the first try and it made a disc is 40mins!!!, the second third of the clips are now half way through too. There is obviously an optimum size that I will have to find!!! Must be better documentation somewhere. First DVD looks quite acceptable, obviously not as good as HD but OK.

Ron Evans

thn x for you early adopter report!
i am about to get the SR7 as well. since you mentioned you own a hdv cam....does avchd and hdv match when you put it in a timeline?
I edit in final cut pro 6.01 so it ougth to be possible to combine hdv with the translated avchd. ( apple intermediate codec)
I can t fin d reports yet on this....i am very curious because using a mini camera opens camerahandling possibilities which i can not achieve with a z1 .

I too wanted a smaller cam to use as general cam in HD and second cam for FX1 events so that I can video all in HD ( at the moment its all in DV with TRV50 and HC96 as other cams. I will try in the next few days to match on timeline. I have both Edius and Vegas that can do this so will take some and try.
An update on the DVD creation. IT goes reasonable speed ( about 40 mins ) if the DVD size is below the 1G capacity though I doubt this indicator is correct. At least it works and does a simple menu structure. Vegas and Architect should do a better job that I will also try later!!!

Ron Evans