Panasonic VDRM50 DVD Camcorder with 2.5-inch LCD w/18x Optical Zoom

I've had this camera for a few weeks now and have filmed over 10 hours without any problem. I film a lot of kid's sports (football, sailing, etc.) and the picture quality is excellent. I went with the Panasonic over the Sony because of the 18x optical zoom and I just don't think that the Sony name is not what it used to be. The last two Sony products I've bought had problems (computer is a piece of junk and the camcorder's viewfinder stopped working after a year).

If you are going to buy a DVD camcorder, I would recommend using a DVD drive to transfer video to your computer. It's simple and fast. I bought a LG burner and it works great. Editing software programs are a different story but this is a problem with and digital camcorder you buy.

Panasonic's technical support is definately not the greatest but neither is Sony. In conclusion, I'm very happy with this camera and love the DVD concept. I gave the camera 4 stars because of the lack of support from Panasonic and the included software is useless and the instructions are unclear. The software that came with the DVD burner is better but not perfect. At least I could edit and produce a video with music.

As far as DVD players, even if you buy a Sony, not all players support DVD rw, so you have to do your homework no matter what you buy.

I bought this as a gift to my husband before he was deployed to iraq so that we could take dvd's of the children for him to watch. The manual is useless. It is very vague and difficult to follow in most areas. Using the camcorder was easy but when we went to use it with the PC we had all kinds of trouble. The usb cable is really nonfunctional. Panasonic reccomends that you back up your discs to pc...we couldnt even get the hardware to work right on our pc (the tower is brand new) and after calling tech support for help..well..he gave up too and we lost all of the video in the process. (so my husband went to Iraq with just pictures and a major let down.)Then we couldnt uninstall the hardware that was installed improperly and tech support could not help. I am so disappointed with this product that I am returning it to the store where i bought it and trying a different brand.

In short..if your not mechanically/or computer inclined this product will be difficult to use and the directions even harder to follow. And dont dvd record anything you want to keep on this product. It has a problem with erasing or locking you out so you cant get to the images and those precious moments are lost.....

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The camera functioned well, but is in no way compatiable with Vista or and newer systems. Drivers are not available, so thusly this camera is an peice of junk. Would never recommend it or Panasonic to any one.

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PROs: Very easy to operate, even my wife handled it well :). Using DVD-RAM disks saved my budget since I've used a single DVD-RAM disk (app 20CAD$) for the last three years. Software that came bundled ('DVD Movie Album SE' and 'My DVD') is easy to install and easy to learn. Battery life could be better, but it works fine for me (about 1-1.5 hours, screen was on all the time). All cables (TV connection, PC connection, charger) are nicely marked, no confusion here. They even included an S-video cable for TV, so you have a choice of composite or S-video connection. Neat. I like that I can put the small DVD-RAM disk in my laptop, and do all the editing, I don't need to daisy-chain the camera itself to my laptop.

CONs: As you know, DVD-Ram disks need cartridges. For many people this is a hassle, but I'm used to it. I love the additional protection that cartridge offers. Original recordings are in 'raw' DVD format: .vro and they need to be reformated to .mpg. Not a big deal with DVD Movie Album SE, BUT: the size of finished movie in MB is huge. A 2-minute movie takes well above 100MB if you keep the default settings in the software. The price of recordable DVDs keeps dropping, but anyway, the movies could be smaller in size.

Overall, this is an excellent camera if you are an average computer user and know how to get around with movie encoding/decoding.

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Simple to use, great picture quality, and overall a good camcorder for amateurs! I've found the tiny dvd's that it uses to be compatible with most other systems, although not all. You can also re-film over the dvd's and use them as many times as you want before "finalizing" them. I would recommend this camcorder, even for users today. Great product, long-lasting and durable.

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