Posted by Percival P. Cassidy on 09/21/07 15:03

I am trying to help a non-profit find a way of producing better training
videos. They have a Sony DCR-DVD403 camcorder (already a bad choice,
IMO, because it has to be used in the lowest video-quality mode to
record an hour-long session without changing discs), and the built-in
microphone picks up far too much extraneous noise. It has no microphone
input connector other than via the Active Interface Shoe (AIS).

Sony does list a zoom microphone (ECM-HGZ1) as compatible with that
camcorder, but it gets pretty bad user reviews. I see that Sony also
lists a wireless (Bluetooth) microphone (ECM-HW1) that claims
compatibility with many of the other recent Sony camcorder models and
gets mostly good user reviews, but the list does not include the DCR-DVD403.

Has anybody used this combination, and how satisfactory is it?

Yes, I could contact Sony and ask, but the one truly negative review of
the ECM-HW1 is by somebody who called Sony to ask about its
compatibility with a particular camcorder, was told that it was
compatible but found that it was not. When he complained to Sony, they
said, in effect, "Not our problem."

Perce

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