Hitachi DZMV550A DVD Camcorder

Rating:
Summary: DVD Finalizing Problem
Review: Decided to buy the DZMV580A just before my wife's birthday so we had great quality movies during our 8 day Mexican Riviera Cruise. Regretfully, I have had to twice exchange my camera for a new one (Thanks to Circuit City's 14 day exchange policy.)

Had two problems: The first camera failed to finalize two irreplacable discs citing disc errors in Memorex (1 disc) and Maxell DVD-Rs (1 disc.) Two other Memorex discs wouldn't work in the camera even though initialized OK supposedly. For both the finalizing and initializing, I did just as the manual says and used the charger and power adapter and not the battery.

Circuit City said had to be a camera problem so gave me a new one. That on just went back last night after I found my Christmas video going in and out of focus, even though my wife was sitting in one spot taking pictures of our grand daughter decorating our Christmas tree in the same location. The new camera we picked up seems to have overcome that auto focus problem.

But for solution to the Finalizing issue; RECOMMEND STRONGLY THAT NOBODY REPEAT NOBODY FINALIZE A DVD-R ON THEIR HITACHI 550A OR 580A OR ON A PANASONIC V50 OR V70 UNTIL THE IMAGE IS TRANSFERRED TO YOUR COMPUTER HARD DISK. DON'T COUNT ON BEING ABLE TO FINALIZE THE DISK AND MOVE THE IMAGES TO YOUR COMPUTER BY THE DVD IN YOUR CAMERA.

THERE HAS TO BE A FIRMWARE OR HARDWARE PROBLEM IN THE CAMERA.

Other than that, I am continuing to fight out of sync audio with video recorded on a DVD-R. Seems like the sound starts recording immediately when a scene starts, but the video is delayed, and the video when it starts up is exactly the same point as the audio which recorded a couple of seconds sooner. Take a picture of somebody talking and see what I mean.

Chuck