Saturday, January 15, 2011

Sony Handycam easy on Ubuntu Linux

When I was lucky enough to have my Father-in-law buy me a Sony Handycam, the guy at the shop told us

"Ah, you'll need a Japanese version of Windows on your computer if you want to turn your videos into DVDs"

Having previously owned a Sony mp3 walkman, I'm well aware of Sony's tendency to release propriety software with their gadgets, but being an Ubuntu fan, I also found a nice little java program that bypasses that necessity (called symphonic), and so I figured that the Japanese Handycam's requirement for a Japanese OS could also be bypassed fairly easily.

... In any case, there is always my wife's Japanese VAIO...

As expected, it was fairly straightforward. Indeed, I didn't even need any dedicated software to get everything working. I just used VLC to view the videos (although they run mighty choppy on my poor ickle netbook) and Kino video editor.

In fact, I get the feeling that it would have been more difficult to get the camera going in Windows.

No comments:

Post a Comment