Customer Reviews

Canon DW-100 DVD Burner for Canon Hard Drive and Flash Memory Based Camcorders

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I purchased this as soon as it was available. I was looking for a way to archive the original footage that was recorded on my Canon HG10. It is a little quirky to use. You need to create a playlist to record if you are not backing up the entire camera. Once you get used to using the burner it is a great utility. I was unaware until after purchasing that you can put the disks created by the burner into a Blu-Ray player and watch them in full HD.

At home I have an iMac and when I insert the burned disc it shows up in iMovie just as it would if the recorded video was still on the camera.

I have had no issues burning to RiTek RiData 8x DVD-R. I cannot vouch for other brands as I haven't used any others yet.

I absolutely recommend this item to anyone looking to archive their videos in their original format that does not want to rely only on keeping it on local hard drives. After having a hard drive in the past fail and losing some info that had not yet been backed up I am a firm believer in that you cannot have enough backups. Especially when the subject of most of our video recordings have been of our daughter.

I only gave it 4 stars as I wish the drive itself could be used to playback the burned discs.

I bought the DW-100 burner to go with our Canon HF-10 HD flash based camcorder. I'm not so disappointed with the performance of the burner itself, but rather the misleading description by Canon of what this thing actually is. According to Canon's website, "...DW-100 allows you to connect to a Canon VIXIA HG10, VIXIA HF10, and VIXIA HF100 as well as the FS11, FS10 and FS100 camcorders to download video and burn AVCHD or Standard Definition DVDs." This is not exactly the truth. As it turns out, the ability to burn Standard Definition DVD's is dependant on the camera's ability to record in Standard Definition (and vice versa). For example, Standard Definition is not a recording option with the HF-10, and thus I am unable to burn Standard Definition DVDs.

This issue leads me to the whole point of me buying this burner. I wanted to have the ability to create Standard Definition DVD's on-the-fly (i.e., encode DVD mpeg-2 from source AVCHD) so I could share videos with those friends and family that don't yet have blu-ray playback technologies in their homes (including ourselves at this point in time). Unfortunately there is NO on-the-fly conversion from AVCHD to mpeg-2 at all.

So I'm stuck with a $200 stand-alone DW-100 burner that isn't really anything more than what I already had in my desktop PC, which I bought for $30 about 2 years ago. So be informed as to exactly what you are buying. This unit will not burn Standard Definition DVDs when coupled with the HF-10 as the description implies.

This burner creates an AVCHD-formatted disc from a DVD-R or DVD-R(DL) blank DVD. You have to have a Blu-Ray player to play this disc, and one that specifically can handle AVCHD-formatted discs.

The software you get with your camcorder (ImageMixer) also easily creates an AVCHD-formatted disc from a DVD-R or DVD-R(DL) blank DVD.

If you have a computer with a writable DVD drive (and don't mind using it), then you absolutely do NOT need this burner. You only need this burner if you don't want to run ImageMixer to create AVCHD-formatted discs.

Better idea (IMHO) is to use your computer to burn DVD's and use the money saved to buy a Blu-Ray player.

After all the so-so reviews, I thought this would not be so great, I was pleasantly surprised. It took less then 5 minutes reading the manual to have it and running and operated flawlessly with my Canon HFG-100 camcorder. The disk it makes used ing Standard DVD-R disks work perfectly with my sons PS3, playstation 3 game system / Blu-Ray player. The video of the DVD's it makes are superior in video and audio quality due of course to the HF100 camcorders high quality.

When using standard DVDs you can only get about 20 minutes of HD video on a DVD because your making HD (high definition) DVDs not SD (standard definition). It take about a minute to burn a minute of video, so a full disk takes about 20 minutes. To me this is good speed.

If you don't have a Blu-Ray HD player that is AVHCD compatible (most are if not all now) you can hook up the camcorder to the to the Canon DW-100 and play it thought the camcorder hooked up to your TV.

Burning a DVD is simple. Connect camcorder by USB cable to the DW-100 turn camcorder on in play mode. Then push one button (which is also play/record button) so record light is on press the start button on DW-100 and its automatic from there and your camcorder tells you when it is complete. Eject the DVD you burned put it in a Blu-Ray player and enjoy. Or use the DW-100 camcorder combo for playback.

I have a Canon Vixia HF20 and decided to order the DW-100 so I could easily transfer video to disc. It does this task quickly and rather simply. Our computer does not have a blu ray burner so this was a great way to maintain a hi def transfer and much cheaper than buying a new computer with a blu ray burner with all of the power needed to run and edit these videos. The problem I ran into was that I bought the camcorder first and shot the highest quality video option. MXP on my HF20. When I received the burner, there was an insert that said that the unit could not burn MXP content. If you even try, it gives you an error message. I then switched my recordings to the next highest setting, FXP and was able to burn these recordings no problem. But, as far as I know (as of now), there is no way to down convert the video I had already shot. So, if you're looking at this unit for an easy way to make DVDs with hi def quality, just make sure that you know ahead of time that it is not capable of recording 24mbps. For me, it's a non issue now because I have switched to recording in only FXP (17mbps) and can transfer to discs and the quality is still very good. But if you want to transfer the best quality available, you might consider adding a blu ray burner to your computer instead.

I recently purchased the Canon DW-100 DVD burner to partner with my Canon HF-100 High Definition video camera. I knew from previous reviews that it would only record disks that play on a Blue Ray player. I tried it out on my son's college graduation video and it worked like a charm. I couldn't believe how easy it was and the disk played perfectly on my Blue Ray player. The only disappointing thing was that the disk will NOT play on a computer with a Blue Ray drive. It says it doesn't recognize the file format. Also, from past reviews I heard it will not record standard definition DVDs, but from what I read in the user manual, it says it WILL record in standard definition if it was recorded in standard definition. I have no way to test this, but good luck to those of you who can.

Overall a good device but beware it does not tolerate any disks but Verbatim. I have tried Sony, LG, TDK and all fail. Use Verbatim and all goes smoothly.

Instructions in the box are not written for the HF10 and are more for the HG10. Some of the translation to English is not well done.

I bought this product to save time. Initially, I used a laptop to transfer video from my FS 11 to DVD. It required my time and a lot of the computer's time. The DW 100 did it fast and efficiently. I don't deal with HD or big editing jobs so I have no input in those areas...and I certainly did not wish to view the video using the DW 100. It did exactly what I wanted it to do.

This Canon DVD Burner works about 10 times faster than the software provided with the HG10 camera. The software took 6 hours to reformat to a 4x3 DVD, which was OK, but not as clear as the original. The DVD made plays on standard DVD players. THe DW-100 DVD burner took 40 minutes for the same content, formatted to AVCHD 16x9 HD DVD which worked great with a BluRay player. My BluRay player was provided by the Sony PS3. The downside is that AVCHD does not play on standard DVD players.

Plays right on Sony ps3 or blue ray player. Better quality picture than blue ray disk .