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The digital video revolution is charging forward, driven by some key advantages over conventional analog technology. With the latest DV camcorders, you can capture professional-quality video that surpasses that of analog, and then upload it to your PC or Mac for editing via a fast IEEE 1394 connection--without any degradation of quality. You pay a price for that quality, though: Digital video cameras cost considerably more than their analog counterparts, and digital cassettes, like those in the popular MiniDV format, are much more expensive than analog formats.

Sony wants to meet you halfway. Its DCR-TRV310 camcorder ($800 street) uses the company's Digital8 technology, which lets you record digital-quality video on low-cost and easy-to-find analog Hi8 and 8mm cassettes. (MiniDV cassettes cost about $15 for a 60-minute tape; Hi8 60-minute tapes cost $5 to $10 each.) This ergonomically designed midrange camera is also loaded with high-end features, and is reasonably priced for its capabilities.

Usability Counts

Digital8's cost effectiveness won't cost you much in video quality: Although MiniDV proponents claim that MiniDV offers higher-quality images, both MiniDV and Digital8 support a resolution of 500 horizontal lines, and we could discern no difference between the two.

The DCR-TRV310 stands out from the pack for several reasons beyond its use of Digital8. For one, the camera has sharp output, thanks to its 460,000-pixel CCD image sensor. The camera also has a large, 3.5-inch color LCD monitor; a Steadyshot optical/electronic picture stabilization feature; and more than a dozen built-in special effects. And it has a port for connecting virtually any video source--such as a TV tuner, a VHS VCR, or an analog camcorder--which you can use to make digital, archive-quality copies of your older tapes.

The DCR-TRV310's built-in special effects were a surprise. Many of the effects--such as sepia tone, solarization/posterization, and cross-dissolves between scenes--are typically available only on high-end video editing packages such as Adobe Premiere. Integrated special effects allow you to add transitions as you're shooting, so you don't have to wait until you're editing on a PC. One effect we liked in particular lets you grab a still, gradually key out brighter areas, and then superimpose the resulting altered image over another scene--sort of a reverse chroma-key.