Review on 📹 Canon DC220 DVD Camcorder 35x Optical Zoom (No Longer Available) by Kevin Mckechnie

I've had the DC220 for a few months now and I'm disliking it, although this is partly due to disappointment with the mini DVD format. The DC220 records to mini DVD. DVD. They cannot be viewed on a DVD player or transferred to a computer until they are "finalized". Once complete, you cannot burn anything to the mini DVD. I used the DVD-Rs that came with it and ended up having to watch a few minutes of video for others to watch. Pretty wasteful. You can use DVD-RW discs which may be unfinished but in my experience they only have 30 minutes of recording time while DVD-Rs have 60 minutes. The finalization process seems very delicate. The camera won't even let you select that option unless it's connected to the power cord and not the battery. The process can take a long time (6 minutes for the 5 minute video discs I created) and there are warnings throughout the manual not to touch the camera while the process is completing or permanent data loss may result. You are also advised to only lock when the camera is at room temperature. I tried playing unfinalized movies on an external TV. Eventually I was able to do it, but the process is not easy. The manual consists of 100 pages of very small, dense text, small pictures, and links that point to other sections of the manual. It lacks any quick start guide and I don't want to read the whole thing. The controls are in three areas: a circle on the side, a button on the back, and buttons at the bottom of the view screen. It's not clear when to use which controls, so every time I want to perform a function I have to turn the camera over while pressing the buttons to find the appropriate control, and finally I have to read the manual and the dig out reading glasses. The viewfinder points at a slight downward angle to the camera rather than the more normal (to me at least) straight-line. This proved very inconvenient when trying to shoot from the deck while looking down.