Sony DCR-TRV240 Digital Handycam

Charging The Battery

To charge the battery, or operate off of AC power, the jack is located on the back of the camera, protected by a rubber flap. A charger/AC adapter is located in the case.

Turning the Camera On

To turn the camera on, locate the power switch, located on the back, right of the camera.
Depress the green locking button, and slide the switch to the “camera” position to record, or to the “vcr” position to play the tape.

Inserting a Tape

To insert a tape, locate the eject switch on the bottom of the camera
Slide it forward to unlock the door, then swing the tape door open (the hinge is at the top of the camera).
ONLY SWING OPEN THE DOOR, THE CAMERA DOES EVERYTHING ELSE. The camera senses when the door is open, and will automatically eject the tape.
To insert a tape, put the tape into the compartment, then press down where the word “PUSH” is engraved on the casing. Press down GENTLY until you hear a locking “click”. You may need to press more on the corner than where the word PUSH is engraved, but it doesn’t take much pressure to make it lock.
Once it locks, DON’T TOUCH IT. The camera will cycle the tape in on it’s own (hence the label that says “do not push this part to close the cassette compartment”).
Once the tape has been cycled in, close the hinged door and make sure the switch is in the back, locked position.

Viewfinder v. LCD Screen

When the handycam is in the “camera” position, there are two ways of viewing what the camera sees

the black and white viewfinder (you will extend the charge of the battery by ~40 minutes)
or the color LCD screen (drains the battery at a fairly rapid rate)

If, for some reason, you are recording in a pitch-black room, there is a backlight for the LCD that will make it slightly more visible. This button is located on the left of the camera, near the bottom, and is labeled “Backlight”.

Recording

To begin recording, press the button with the red dot, located next to the power switch.
- This will begin recording, or stop recording once you’ve begun
To zoom in or out, use the slider switch located on the back, top of the camera (labeled with W and T).
- W zooms out, T zooms in.
To take a digital still photograph, press the Photo button located next to the zoom switch
- NOTE: the pictures are saved directly on the same cassette that the video is stored on, as a 2 second clip of the same frame, with a brief blank spot before and after each picture. Keep this in mind when snapping pictures, so that you don’t record through the middle of an important video.
This camera also has a wonderful new feature known as “Nightshot” which works on the same principle as night-vision goggles. Using internal electronics, the camera is able to amplify the available light, to allow you to record things that wouldn’t normally show up due to darkness. This will put a slight greenish tinge to your picture, but it is often better to have a slight tinge as opposed to no picture at all.

The Camera as a VCR

When the handycam is in the “VCR” position, the controls are located on the top middle-left. They’re standard VCR controls, including stop, play, rewind, etc.

Connecting to a Computer

Locate the Firewire cable in the side pouch of the camcorder bag. It’s the dark gray cable with the purple tips.
This cable plugs into the Firewire port located on the front, left of the camcorder (labeled with a lowercase “i”). The Firewire port on the T3 center mini lab computers is located to the left of the floppy drive.

Now What Can I Do?

Once the camcorder is hooked up, there are several things you can do with it.

It can be used as a super-high quality webcam, producing live video.

To do this, simply turn it to the “Camera” position.
To see the video that is being captured, open the Sony DV Camcorder icon in My Computer.
To take a still picture, click the “Take a New Picture” option on the left of the window, located in the “Camera Tasks” section. NOTE: these type of still pictures are different than the ones taken using the “photo” button. Those are stored as brief video clips, while those taken by clicking “take a new picture” are stored on the computer’s ram, thus never taking up room on the cassette. Because of this, pictures taken using the photo button will NOT show up in this window with the other pictures, but will instead show up as video if you set the camcorder to the “vcr” position and press play.

You can transfer the video from the Handycam to the computer.

The software I used for this process was Adobe Premiere. Pinnacle Studio will also work, but I have more experience with the Adobe line. Click here to read the Video Capture tutorial.

This is meant, of course, just to get your started. You should consult the camera manual included in the bag for more information.