I have the DCR-DVD300. All in all you are probably better off getting a DV camcorder in the same price range. I would return mine but it is too late. Here are the answers to your questions:

While I cannot compare the picture quality of the MiniDVD cam with a DV cam I can tell that when playing back the MiniDVDs in my Sony XBR Wega TV the picture is very good (assuming good light). But this is the video recorded by the camera (first generation).

The bundled Pixela software absolutely sucks, so you will have to get something else to do editing. I played with Vegas and with Ulead MediaStudio Pro. Ulead MSP produce a slightly better quality MPEG-2 render than Vegas but it is not as friendly and easy to use. Ulead MSP also can handle the MPEG-2 clips from the camera on the time line including the AC-3 sound. Vegas cannot import the sound from these clips. On top, when I had more than a few MPEG-2 clips in my Media Library the performance of Vegas went down the drain. Switching back to Vegas from the Help window or from a Windows Explorer window took a lot of long minutes on a P4-2.8 GHz HT with 512 MB RAM. Having MPEG-2 clips on the Vegas timeline will also give you lots of black frames. I had to convert all my MPEG-2 clips to AVI Type 2 with PCM sound before I could use these in Vegas.

The cam will only allow you to transfer the files out of it via the USB 2 port. The Sony driver that is installed from the bundled CD will only make the camera visible to the Pixela software. But once I finalized the MiniDVDs I was able to read them in my laptop with Easy CD & DVD Creator installed (including Drag-to-Disk).

The camera can record in 2 modes: DVD-Video which can be recorded on MiniDVD-R and on MiniDVD-RW discs. To view these discs on your home player you have to finalize them. Once you finalize the MiniDVD-R discs you cannot record on them anymore. MiniDVD-RWs can be reformatted though. They can also be unfinalized. DVD-Video puts regular VOB files on the disc. The other recording mode is DVD-VR. This can only be done on RW discs. These discs have to be finalized too if you want to view them on a home DVD player (not all players will handle this format). You can continue recording on these discs without unfinalizing them. In fact, once you finalize a disc in DVD-VR it seems to remain finalize even if you reformat it. DVD-VR puts VRO files on the disc.

To convert the video on these discs I used the Ulead -VR Capture utility. This gave me the MPEG-2 clips which then I converted to AVI Type 2. You can also copy the VOB or VRO files into your computer and even place them on the Vegas timeline but in that case you will not have sound, and since the files are actually MPEG-2 you will get the black frames and generally it will be a royal pain in the ass to edit them.

Post here if you have more questions.

Thanks for the info guys. I'll definately stay with the DV!

Recording to tape give to you some risk of not recording clear when tape was used many times and heads get dirty, but I take this chance to avid recompresing to AVI. I never capture in MPEG- too messy.

Just wonder -how many min of video will fit in uncompress AVI format on that minidvd.If you have to film a wedding, better have 10- to 20 minidvd`s.
Depend how soon you get drunk at wedding-you my have to change a tape once.

rebel44,

Uncompressed NTSC video is 31,072,896 bytes per second (not including 192,000 bytes per second for 48k stereo audio.) You could put about 2.6 minutes of uncompressed video on a standard 4.7 gigabyte DVD.

John

To further John's comment, there is virtually no such thing as uncompressed DV. The letters "DV" immediately call forth a compression of 5:1. There are rare exceptions, but DV is compressed at the camera, period.
I just have to chuckle at how many folks don't get this. Jan Ozer of PC World and other magazines wrote a not-so-good review of Vegas because HE, a writer of reviews on DV, didn't understand the uncompressed formats, and complained how long it took to render to uncompressed from 'uncompressed DV footage."