Sony SX65 and SD Cards and . . .

[Dean W.]

Hello Forum Members,

I need some help in regards to my Handycam SX65 please. I bought it new back in 2012. It served me well as my kids were growing up (all three are in college now). When I first used it those many years ago, I would record movies only via the SX65’s internal memory. Once that memory was filled, I used the Sony DVDirect Express to create my home movies onto discs. This worked well. I had about 50 of these home movies. Some of them were starting to show their age. That being the case, I became concerned about possibly losing some of my home movies due to the deterioration of some of the disks.

The above being the case, I recently looked for, and found software (Prism Plus by NCH Software) that easily converted my above-mentioned home movies – to a digital format (.mp4). I put the home movie into my PC’s disc drive, opened the software, performed a few clicks, and within 15 minutes the home movie was converted and placed on my HD. I have viewed all of the converted home movies I have made (around a dozen of them). They all look/sound great! They all are 1 hr and 1 mn in duration.

It has been about a decade since I have actually used the SX65. So long, that I had basically forgot how to use it. So, I printed out and read it’s “Handycam” Handbook. Of course, many things in that handbook are now obsolete, I was excited to learn new things about the camcorder (new to me anyway!). For example, I now know and use SD cards. That was not the case in the past. P. 56 shows that I can use a 32GB SD card. That excited me. So, I got one of my 32GB cards prepped for use by clearing all the data off of the card via my PC. I did not format the card in my PC, per the instruction I found in the Handbook.

I put the above card into my SX65. Then I switched the media in the camcorder to SD card. I had read in the handbook to “format the card” in the camcorder. I’m not sure if I did that properly. Shortly after inserting the card into the camcorder a message on the LCD appeared. It mentioned something about ‘this card does not have a database would you like the camera to build you a database?’ The LCD displayed that to build the database would take about 7 seconds. I affirmed ‘YES’, that I wanted the camera to build my database. It affirmed that I had.

The first (and only, for reasons you’ll soon find out) ‘movie’ that I shoot with the above configuration was about 150 minutes in duration. That was NON-STOP recording. The LCD never presented to me any error messages. The red ‘REC’ was displayed the whole 150 minutes.

Now, some of my questions:

1.) Was the SD card formatted correctly? Because if it was not, I will learn an important lesson and will most likely have to Re-record the 150 minutes.

2.) How do I get my movie off of the SD card and into my PC?

3.) What format will the movie be in once the card is removed from the camera?

4.) When I view the card in File Explorer (Win 10) what will it look like? Just one long file? At least two files (one for the video and the other for the audio)?

5.) Can I convert that movie into mp4 format?

6.) If I wanted to add an hour movie each day to one SD card, how will I be able to distinguish one movie on the card (‘movie A - recorded on 4/11/24’) from another movie (‘movie B – recorded on 4/12/24’) on the card, when viewing the card’s contents via File Explorer – Win 10?

7.) On page 56 of the Handbook – I do not understand how they make choices of: ‘HQ, SP, and LP’ when all three have the same data (720 pixels x 480 pixels/16:, 4:3). I do note the differing sizes of the three – 9Mbps, 6Mbps, 3Mbps – yet that just makes the ‘issue’ all the more confusing to me.

7.) The SD card is still in the SX65. And, I have added no more material to it. It still has (at least in my mind) my 150-minute movie on it. My goal is to have this movie on my PC. Be able to view on my PC. And, have others be able to see it on their PC once they are given a copy of the movie.

Sorry so long but can someone please help a brother out?

Thank you.

Dean W.

[philipus]

Hello Dean

I realise this is an older thread and hope that you have already sorted this out. I can't answer all your questions but a few at least. I have the same SX65 but use Mac so this is fwiw.

On no. 1 I'd say that the card was formatted correctly. That the card lacks a database is basically camcorder talk to say that it misses a structure in which to store the movies you shoot. If there was no further error it ought to be OK.

On no. 2 I simply connect the camcorder via the mini-USB that's behind the LCD. The camcorder shows up in the Mac equivalent to Windows and the files can be copied via drag-and-drop. If that doesn't work on your PC you could use an SD card reader.

On nos 3 and 5 the filetype will be .MPG, which should be readable by your computer. I ran into trouble because I use Davinci Resolve which doesn't understand that format. But I found that it was easy to convert such files using FFMPEG. The guide I followed for Mac was this one, but there should be similar ones out there for PC.

On nos 4 and 6, each time you press record on the camcorder there will be a new file created. At least with my camcorder the files are distinguished by an alphanumerical filename, such as M2U00097.MPG.

On no. 7 I don't have the answer but from reading the manual I believe it has to do with the way in which the camcorder stores the video on the card, using higher or lower bitrate. I have decided to always use the highest settings because there's plenty of space on the card (I use a 64GB Sandisk Ultra card) so I'd rather get the best video the camcorder lets me record.

Cheers
Philip