If you own a camcorder, you'll probably be putting it to good use this month — capturing footage of a child's frenzied gift-opening, documenting a big family reunion, filming the highlights of that holiday vacation ? maybe all of the above.

Being the parents of two young kids, my wife and I shoot a lot of home movies year-round. When Alexander, our 1-year-old son, systematically pulled out all the low-lying cans from the kitchen pantry and threw each one down the basement stairs, we got it on tape. When, on his 5th birthday, his older brother Ben whacked a hole in the side of his pinãta with a wicked overhand smash, showering party guests with colorful little trinkets, we got it on tape. This kind of stuff is endlessly entertaining (to us). Still, it's not every day — or even every week — that we hook up our camcorder to our TV to actually watch these gems, even though it takes very little time and effort. It's an "out of sight, out of mind" thing.

Sony's top-of-the-line DCR-DVD300

So when I had the chance to check out Sony's new top-of-the-line DVD camcorder, I jumped at it. The concept instantly struck me as a great idea: record your movies straight onto a mini DVD disc, which you can play back on most newer home DVD players or PC DVD-ROM drives. Of course, in typical gear-geek fashion, I had some questions. How would a DVD camcorder stack up against my trusted Mini DV model, in terms of picture quality and ease of use? How well would this unit interface with my PC? I was also interested to see how the inherent convenience of the DVD format might affect the viewing habits of seasoned home-video veterans like us.

Feature-packed, and rarin' to go
Pulling the DCR-DVD300 out of the box, the first thing I noticed was its solid, well-built feel. Despite having slightly greater size and weight than my Mini DV camera, it still certainly earns Sony's "Handycam®" badge, being easily compact enough to tote around and operate with one hand. As Sony's top-shelf DVD camcorder, it retails for about $1100 and comes loaded with perks, including a high-end Carl Zeiss® lens, a very respectable 1-megapixel CCD, and a 3-1/2" articulating LCD viewscreen. Sony also added other popular, time-tested features that hail from their previous camcorder lines, like Super NightShot® mode, which uses infrared light to record in total darkness, and Super SteadyShot® image stabilization.

Choosing blank discs
The camera takes mini (8cm) DVD-R or DVD-RW discs; most people will probably find uses for both types of media at certain times. Mini DVD-Rs are "write-once" discs — footage you've recorded on them can't be erased or undone. They're compatible with a slightly wider range of home DVD players than DVD-RWs, and also cost a little bit less. DVD-RWs, on the other hand, can be erased and re-recorded (up to 1,000 times, according to the specs). When using DVD-RW discs, you can also record in a mode known as "DVD-VR," which allows basic in-camera editing (deleting movies or stills, dividing movies). However, this mode isn't compatible with nearly as wide a selection of DVD players as the standard "DVD-Video" mode.

An unexpected advantage
After giving the battery a fresh charge and glancing through Sony's "Quick Start Guide," I popped a mini DVD-R disc into the camera, flipped open the LCD, and went hunting for video-worthy material. The camcorder took a few moments to access and recognize the blank media; this initialization process is something you don't get with tape-based camcorder formats like Mini DV or Digital8. However, after shooting and playing back a few brief scenes, I discovered one of the neat benefits of a DVD camcorder: you'll never accidentally record over precious footage — when you hit "Record," the camcorder instantly goes straight to the unused portion of the disc. If you've ever missed capturing a scene because you had to cue up the tape, or if you've ever accidentally dubbed over material you wanted to keep, you'll appreciate how cool this is.

In the field with the DCR-DVD300
Sony's designed their share of hand-held camcorders over the years, and playing with the 'DVD300 for just a little while, that experience became evident. I found the 10X optical zoom to be extremely quick and responsive, and the camcorder's auto focus and image stabilization made it effortless to maintain a steady lock on my subject. Trailing a toddler in my backyard, I was able to pop easily between video mode and photo mode (via the dial at the back of the cam), grabbing footage and snapping stills as I went. Only the occasional subtle vibration inside the camera reminded me that there was actually a little DVD burner in there doing its thing while I carried it around in the palm of my hand.

Sony's "Visual Index" screen gives you quick access to still photos and video "chapters."

Shooting video using the large 3-1/2" flip-out LCD felt something like driving a big ol' Cadillac: it might not be as energy-efficient as the little Hyundai you pass on the freeway, but it sure feels good. With the LCD turned on, I was able to record about a disc's worth of material with a single charge of the supplied battery. Undoubtedly, I could have gotten more recording time by using the look-through viewfinder, but I preferred using the LCD — the extra screen real estate made it a lot easier to compose and show off shots. (If you plan to use the camera for extended periods, picking up an optional high-capacity battery pack is a smart move.)

In-camera access to movies and photos
Whereas most tape-based camcorders with digital photo capability save your still photos to some kind of memory card, this one burns both video clips and photos onto the recordable DVD media. Every time you hit "Record" to capture a video sequence, the 'DVD300 logs it as a separate "chapter." When you put the camera in playback mode, you get a "Visual Index" screen containing one tab for movies and another for photos. Both your video chapters and still photos are indexed with thumbnail images for easy identification.

For still photo playback, this kind of navigation felt like familiar territory … no surprises there. But having my video footage automatically separated into individual scenes, and being able to jump from one to the next without having to fast-forward, rewind, or scan through tape was definitely something new — another nice benefit of recording straight to DVD.

Convinced that this camera was just as easy to operate in the field as any Mini DV model I'd ever used (even easier in some important ways), it was time to move on to the next phase: finalizing a disc and playing it back on my home DVD player.

Finalizing the disc
To play back a disc you've recorded with the 'DVD300 on any player besides the camera itself, you need to finalize the disc first — a step that essentially makes it readable by a wide range of home DVD players and PC DVD-ROM drives. For the discs I created, finalization only seemed to take a few minutes per disc, but as stated by the manual, the duration of the process will vary depending on what you've recorded.

During finalization, the DCR-DVD300 creates a DVD menu that allows you to quickly navigate from scene to scene with your DVD player, very much like the "Visual Index" screen you see when viewing content in-camera. The camera also automatically creates a "photomovie" — a DVD-Video slideshow consisting of all the digital still images stored on the disc. (The actual JPEG files remain on the disc, too, and can be easily accessed when you pop the disc into your computer's DVD-ROM drive.)

The 'DVD300 sports lots of useful features, like a large 3-1/2" flip-out LCD.

The proof of the pudding...
With finalized mini DVD-R in hand, I called the family over to the living room; I wanted to not only judge the picture quality with my own eyes, but also get a feel for what my wife thought. So how did it look? In a word, excellent. Maybe it was due in part to the 'DVD300's high-end optics, megapixel CCD, (or possibly other factors that Sony engineers could explain), but we both agreed that the scenes we were watching looked as crisp and colorful as any we'd ever taken. Since DVD uses a heavier form of compression than the DV format (used in Mini DV and Digital8 camcorders), I figured I'd be seeing a noticeable quality drop-off — on this score the 'DVD300 completely exceeded my expectations.

And here it's important to note that I recorded this disc using the camera's default setting, or "SP" mode, which gives you 30 minutes per mini DVD. Even better quality can be had by using the camera's "HQ" mode, which nets you 20 minutes per disc. Later on, I recorded some footage in "LP" mode (60 minutes per disc), and even that looked really good — certainly good enough to come in handy when you need maximum recording time — though I did notice a couple of minor video artifacts.

Digital photo quality
As mentioned earlier, the DCR-DVD300's higher-end lens and 1-megapixel CCD chip help produce better-looking still pictures than you get with a lot of camcorders, allowing a top resolution of 1152 x 864 pixels. While that won't out-do many stand-alone digital still cameras, it's still a big improvement over the 640 x 480 shots I'm used to snapping with my current Mini DV model. I found the photos I took with the 'DVD300 to be quite usable; I even made several shots of our kids into 4 x 6 prints and sent them to adoring grandparents (to the satisfaction of all).

PC editing and connectivity
Sony's DVD camcorders include a PC software package (not Mac®-compatible) that allows you to send video clips and still images to your computer for editing. High-speed USB 2.0 compatibility makes transferring footage from the camera a quick affair, I'm sure — but since I don't have USB 2.0 yet, I downloaded scenes at regular USB 1.1 speeds. This seemed to proceed at slightly faster than real time, which really isn't all that slow.

The editing package is somewhat basic, but gets the job done — you can trim and arrange scenes, overdub sounds, and incorporate transitions from scene to scene. Movies I transferred to my PC from the DVD camcorder could only be edited with the Sony software; Windows® Movie Maker 2 didn't recognize them as compatible movie files. Anyone who wants to get really hands-on with PC-based movie editing will still want to use their Mini DV or Digital8 camcorders, since DV video can be used with such a wide range of editing software.

Summing up
But, of course, the beautiful thing about DVD camcorders is that you can take a disc straight from your camera and pop it into your DVD player (or Grandma's, or a neighbor's), without spending a bunch of time editing the video and transferring it from medium to medium. Movies I shot with the DCR-DVD300 are already getting more play time around our house than recent Mini DV footage, and it's not hard to imagine that trend continuing, considering the convenient disc-based playback, and great-looking picture quality.