Customer Reviews

Sony VRDMC3 DVDirect DVD Recorder

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

I received the Sony VC30 model for Christmas, and enchanged it for the MC3 to get the color screen (and glad I did). I was a bit leary after reading the reviews here, but I've just finished converting our entire collection of home movies from VHS, 8mm, hi8 and miniDV tapes to DVD.

I've used only Sony brand, single-layer blanks (both +R and -R, but +R seems to yield better playback) and have had no problems. I've made close to 200 DVDs with only two "coasters" that would not finalize after recording. I've done most of my recording on the SP mode, putting two hours on a DVD. After testing different settings, I couldn't tell any difference (viewed on 55" and 32" TVs) between the HQ and SP settings for my older videos (some 25 years old), but could definitely tell on the newer recordings, especially those with a lot of motion (such as water skiing and other sports). So for those, I chose only the HQ setting.

All recording is done in real time, and there have been weekend days when the thing has been going all day and evening. I've connected it to a VCR, and 8mm and miniDV camcorders. When using the VCR, the color screen on the MC3 is very handy. Using an S-cable yields slightly better picture than standard video cables. For the miniDV camcorder, I use firewire and this has an added benefit of recording only the recorded video on the camcorder, shutting off when the recorded video ends. (When using a VCR or older camcorder, you have to watch for it to end and manually turn off the burn.)

The menus the MC3 creates are fine for my purposes. It will create a new "title," which shows up as a separate "window" on the start-up menu, every time the MC3 is stopped (if you just pause it, it won't create a new title). I set the MC3 to create chapter stops every five minutes, which is handy when skipping through video on playback. If I'm burning a DVD of, say, my daughter's birthdays, I'll create a new "title" for every birthday. On playback, each "title" shows up separately on the start-up menu, but the entire contents of the DVD will playback at once, with a new "title" starting when another ends. For misc. tapes that have a variety of short segments, I've found it easier to record it all to a DVD, then view it and note the times of the various segments. Then I re-record it to DVD, creating separate "titles" by stopping the MC3 when a segment ends. (I'm keeping the first copies as backups.) I haven't found a way to create a chapter stop manually; there are some instances where this would be handy.

Overall, the MC3 has been fantastic. I've been putting off this project for years, not wanting to have to do it via computer, and now I have it all on DVD, at reasonable cost.

I bought this item at Costco since I wanted to transfer my old 8mm Video camcorder tapes into a digital format using DVD. I didn't want to load any new software on my PC and was intrigued by the ability of this device to be used without a PC.

The best feature on this device is that it's easy to use. I had no problem formatting and recording to my 4.6gig R+ DVD's. I also
liked the fact that it can record from many different devices (memory sticks, Hard disk drive Camcorders, etc...)

I found the recording time to be slow-- taking 1 hour to record an entire 4.6gig DVD. But I believe this is a function of my 8mm Video camcorder and not the VRDMC3 recorder (I can't figure out how any marketing person can name a device "VRDMC3 DVDirect DVD Recorder")

I found the viewing screen on the VRDMC3 to be small. I would prefer to see a larger image. The devices touts that you can create could "Titles" and "Chapters" on your DVDs. Titles and Chapters allow you to skip to these regions on the DVD after recording-- much like the "Add-ons" and "Extras" you see with rented movie DVDs. I could not get this feature to work without stopping the VRDMC3 in mid-recording mode and re-starting.

I didn't like the fact that the counter on the VRDMC3 records how much time elapsed-- versus how much time is left to record on the DVD. If you stop the VRDMC3 in mid-play, the counter resets, so you never know exactly how much time is left until the DVD is full.

I also had problems with playing back the DVD's (made by TDK) on my TV. The DVD would freeze and the playback was jittery at times. Even though the TDK +R DVDs are approved by Sony, I switched to Memorex DVDs and the problem went away.

If you want a simple, easy to use way to make copies of your older format 8mm video tapes, this device works. It can also be used as a DVD recorder on your PC. There aren't many bells and whistles, but it works fine and gets the job done.

This is really a nice multi-function unit. Very versatile.
- Standalone backup of your memory cards.
- DVD reader/ writer for your computer.
- DVD recorder from TV/DVD's/VCR tapes/Camcorders.

Nero 'essentials' DVD editing software is cumbersome to use and lacking many functions compared to the full version of Nero. Need to invest in the full suite of editing software. I picked up the first unit i could find. Seems to be a little glitchy (random freezing) when copying from camcorders using i.link. Preview screen is decent although audio and video outputs for playback and recording monitoring would have been a great feature. More choices for DVD menus would also be nice.

I bought this unit instead of a seperate DVD burner for my computer and a DVD recorder for my home AV system. The bonus is the stand-alone copying of memory cards. I recommend it but it could be better.

I received my Sony VRD-MC3 unit this afternoon. I immediately hooked it up to my Sony DV Camera (Model DCR-TRV900), using a Sony i.LINK cable (#VMC-IL4415/IL4435/2DV/4DViLINK).

Once connected, all I had to do was push one button to copy DV tapes onto DVDs. I copied three 60-minute DV tapes onto Sony 1x-16x DVD-R blanks (#10DMR47l4) and experienced no problems whatsoever. I tried the DVD copies on three different DVD players and they worked perfectly.

Image quality was every bit as good as the original tapes and looked really sharp on our Panasonic 50" plasma TV. One of the DV tapes was of my granddaughter's recent school band concert and the sound quality of the DVD copies was excellent.

I can't imagine how this type of transfer could get any easier!

First let me say, this would have been a five star product if it was small enough to take on vacations. The unit is on the bigger side, similar to a thick laptop, and it can not run off of batteries. Too bad, this would have made a great way to save your memories if ever on an extended vacation or if your hard drive gets full.

I bought this model to go along with my Sony DCR-SR100 hard drive camcorder. I chose this model over the VRD-MC1 because this model supports wide screen and 5.1 dolby digital sound. This model also has a USB connection and the MC1 does not. Since Sony is not including firewire ports on their HDD Camcorders, the MC3 is my only real option besides downloading and using a computer.

I connected my camcorder, via the USB2 wire/port (my camcorder and the MC3 recognized each other immediately) and simply dropped in a DVD, selected if I wanted to record my camcorder's entire hard drive or parts that have not yet been recorded (Sony calls it the incremental recording feature), and then pushed the record button. After that, the screen tells you how many DVD's it will take to record the video and gives you a constant percentage throughout its progress.

I played the DVD's using my Samsung, Toshiba, and Panasonic DVD Players, no issues with compatibility. The picture and sound turned out great...much better than what I was hoping for. I was considering if HD camcorder/ burner was necessary for my 62" DLP screen, but the picture and sound turned out to be very respectable, especially for home movies.

I am very happy with this product and have used numerous kinds of DVD's to test it out. I have tried the TDK, Sony, Verbatim, and even Office Depot DVD's all without a problem.

This selection makes burning DVD's as easy as I could have asked for, I'm not very computer savvy and don't have a fancy computer with hundreds of gb space. Even if I did, all I want are my home movies on a disc for easy watching, not really into editing and turning home movies into movie productions. In the stand alone version, there is no way to edit the footage, but for me that's perfect. For those interested in editing, this can still be connected to the computer and used as a burner.

Also forgot to mention that there are various other input selections that allow you to burn DVD from other sources i.e. RCA, S-video, DV-IN. I will probably start to burn shows that I repeatedly watch off TIVO and onto a DVD.

Hope this helps

If you want to use this to record video from pretty much any source, then it seems to be a good product. However if you want to use this product to save your photos to DVD, then I suggest you look elsewhere, because:

1. It only copies picture files in the "Photos to DVD" choice. If your camera also creates videos on its removable media they will not be copied. (It may only copy JPEGs files too -- I didn't test this.)

2. It *renames* the picture files on disc! If you want to burn, say, files DSCN300.jpg through DSCN400.jpg, they will show up on the disc as DSCN001.jpg through DSCN100.jpg in a new folder. It may even do this for each disc -- I didn't test that. For pity's sake: WHY DO THIS? How do you keep track of all your photos if they get renamed (perhaps on each disc)?

3. It only burns DVD discs (in stand-alone mode). This is a minor quibble, but if I have a 512MB SD chip and want to burn it to a CD-R disc (or if I ran out of DVD discs) then I should be able to do so. (It works fine with CD-R media when used as an external drive though.)

4. It doesn't indicate any progress or have a "I'm reading/writing to the disc" LED. With a lovely video screen on top a simple disc activity message would be nice. This would have been helpful the few times it stopped burning something for various reasons, or (especially) when you are burning something to it as an attached drive. You have to depend on your monitor screen to tell you the drive is in use.

5. It prefers to work with discs created only by itself, so discs created otherwise (Nero, commercial(?), etc.) don't work in stand-alone, which is also annoying. (Wouldn't it be nice to pop in *any* disc -- even if only to confirm what's on it? Oh: The MC3 didn't create this so I can't read it. Huh?)

6. It has no sound-out capability! Your video may look great, and you won't know the sound is horrible until you put the newly-burned disc into a DVD player. Monitoring the sound via speaker (or better: headphone jack) seems a pretty needful thing when burning video.

7. (Quibble) The slideshow option isn't bad -- it even adds some background music -- but the pictures are of course shown as-is, so you get the good with the bad, and any that are sideways stay that way. A simple rotation option for the pictures would've been a *real* bonus. Nothing fancy: just a "rotate this picture L/R before burning it" choice. Some cameras do it -- why not this? (I can delete the bad pics beforehand.)


I had hoped to use it on vacation, coming back to the hotel room each night (it's a bit too posh and bulky to use in the field) to save off photos I had taken that day to a more-durable media, but it won't do this as needed. If Sony had included a simple "burn everything AS-IS from the inserted chip to the disc" feature then I would likely have not returned it, even with my other issues.


So in summary, it works fine for unedited video and photos if you want to create a playable DVD from them. If you want to save all the file types your camera produces to optical disc for later editing though, then this probably isn't the device for you.

It worked right from the get go as far as recording my VHS tape, very easy to figure out. And I had no problems with formatting my DVD (I used Windata DVD-R) or recording. What I DID have a problem with is that the final result drops frames, resulting in a jerky stop-motion look. Also, there is no way to tell how much time you have left to record until it just suddenly stops recording. Seems to me a DVD should hold at least two hours, but it only held about an hour and a half. I was really excited at first when it seemed like it would work perfectly, and then so disappointed with the poor results and the inadequate information needed for stress-free recording.

I have been looking for a fast way to backup my PAL mini DV tapes to DVD. Several hardware and software options were tried in the past months. Finding a DVD recorder that supported PAL was very difficult here in the U.S. Some of the software solutions worked, but for good image quality they would keep my PC busy for 8 to 10 hours per tape.

The VRD-MC3 does exactly what I want, it provides a direct, easy and fast way to transfer my mini DV tapes to DVD in realtime without blocking my PC. My technophobe wife has even been using it. The recorder does not do much more than the backup, editing functions are limited, it does not have a sound output or a way to replay video on a TV, but all I need is in the unit.

The device burns a coaster every once in a while, but it normally hapens within the first minute and the rate is less than 10%. I have tried various DVD makes - the cheap Sony D1 16x DVDs have worked well, so did Memorex 8x. Some of the others did not burn ok, even though they were on the recommended media list.

If you are looking for an easy to use backup tool for your mini DV tapes, the Sony VRD-MC3 is the ultimate solution for now.

I bought this right after Christmas. Went through several brands (Sony, TDS, Philips, Fuji,etc..) of disks. Had about 10-12 coasters. Either received "Failed to format." or "Failed to finalize." I grew so frustrated that I wanted to throw it away.

Well, I returned it and got another one. Nothing but bliss. Everything I taped has worked. Would give 5 stars, but I had to take the first one back.

If you want to understand how Sony lost its vaunted reputation and leadership role in consumer electronics, look no further than the VRDMC3. It's a smartly packaged great idea that has been ruined by poor quality execution that will waste your money and MANY hours of your time, as well.

But first, some background: as a professional television network exec, I'm actually more forgiving than the average consumer when it comes to understanding the still imperfect process of burning DVDs. Even from pro production companies, I receive burned DVDs that either will not play or have problems when playing. So when I ordered the VRDMC3, I wasn't expecting perfect performance, especially at the price. If it worked as advertised 80-90% of the time, I would have been happy. However, the success rate I've had with it thus far is more like 33%. Two-thirds of the time, it will begin the recording process, continue anywhere from 30 to just near completion at 60 minutes, and then abruptly quit with a "Failed to Record" message. All you can do is toss the disc and start all over again. It has turned the process of using this machine into one of dread--everytime you load a new disc, you wonder if this time it will make it through.

This is not a compatibility issue--I have all Sony equipment and have been using Sony DVD blanks. It quits when dubbing from my Hi 8 camcorder as well as my mini-DV camcorder. It quits regardless of whether the connection is component video, S-video or Firewire, and it quits no matter if the blank is a +R, -R, etc.

The one positive about the VRDMC3 is that when it does work, it actually does so quite well. In fact, the video quality of a recorded DVD actually exceeded my expectations. If this deck worked consistently, I'd be giving it four or five stars, which it would deserve given the modest price for the functionality offered.

But no product can be excused when it fails to perform most of the time. And many other reviews here (and elsewhere) report a high rate of failure. Sony should be ashamed for selling a product to consumers that was clearly not ready for the market. So save yourself both money and angst and steer clear of the VRDMC3.