Video limit 5 min?

[Archileo]

Am I the only one that has a limit of 5 min? For example an 8 minute video is saved on my SD card as a 5 minute file, and a second file for 3 minutes.. Am I doing something incorrect?

 

[Eagle's Eye Video]

That is correct and normal... combine them in a video editor, and it will be seamless.

 

[AeroJ]

Yeah it's a max file size thing, and the same on every device that records video big enough to go over the size limit...

 

[PatR]

It's a condition generated by the FAT32 format.

 

[rdonson]

Whether the SD card is formatted or ExFAT or FAT32 the CGO3+ will break up the video in 5 min segments. Personally I don't see it as much of an issue. In some ways I view it as a positive that you might only lose a 5 min segment instead of a longer video. Either way most of my videos are made from a number of clips.

 

[ShawnIde]

Just call it a feature. If the last file is corrupt, you only lost 5 minutes.

 

[ali_dzi]

It's a condition generated by the FAT32 format.

No, it's not FAT32 file size limit, since it is 4GB per file. This could be "the security feature", so that you don't loose whole footage if battery goes out in the middle of recording.
But AVIDEMUX (http://www.avidemux.org) connects/cuts/edits/filters/whateweryouwant footages seamlessly and its FREE!

 

[Sureshot]

I use this free utility to upload my the card to the PC.
Then the editor can get it as one file.

Free Video Cutter Joiner

Effortlessly cut and join videos on PC!

free-video-cutter-joiner.en.softonic.com

 

[thoneter]

In a way its kinda a cache thing. It's like a database that gets to big. Once it gets big the processor, cache and ram are working hard to process the larger files. And as the smarter guys than me have alluded to it's a fat32 / storage thingy!

 

[NorWiscPilot]

Recording in 4K, 30 frames per second, gives me files under 2gb. Since the file size limit for FAT32 is 4gb, file size is not the issue here.

The makers decided to store recorded video into 5 minute chunks. Plain and simple. (There may be other technical reasons, but my short search did not reveal any, as yet.)

As stated before, this should be considered a nice feature, for reasons already articulated by others in the thread and elsewhere.

Just sayin’

Jeff

P.S. just noticed @ali_dzi posted this same rebuttal a few comments above. Giving credit where first credit is due!

 

[Fred Garvin]

.....Recording in 4K, 30 frames per second, gives me files under 2gb. ......

The final, written file, yes. MP4 and MOV is a very “lossy” format that uses a great deal of compression.

However, when that file is open and being written to, as the sensor is dumping data into a memory cache, it can and will approach that 4Gb limit.....at which point the system starts a new file and writes/compresses the previous file and releases the memory that was being used.......until this new one approaches the limit and it happens all over again.

When you start dealing with lossless formats, like FLAC, ALAC, CinemaDNG 4:1, ProResRAW you use different file system formats to support larger file sizes. (I know C-DNG and ProRes are not purely lossless; just used for example)

 

[jcommstudios]

The final, written file, yes. MP4 and MOV is a very “lossy” format that uses a great deal of compression.

However, when that file is open and being written to, as the sensor is dumping data into a memory cache, it can and will approach that 4Gb limit.....at which point the system starts a new file and writes/compresses the previous file and releases the memory that was being used.......until this new one approaches the limit and it happens all over again.

When you start dealing with lossless formats, like FLAC, ALAC, CinemaDNG 4:1, ProResRAW you use different file system formats to support larger file sizes. (I know C-DNG and ProRes are not purely lossless; just used for example)

Various pro video cameras will shoot XAVC-S mp4 at 100 mbps with no file length limitation. Consumer rigs like our drones and most, if not all, DSLR & M4/3 cameras including the Panasonic G series will break up files so they are not considered "video cameras" which have a higher licensing fee (exFAT) than still cameras. And fat32 is the culprit. Beyond that 29 min is also a stop point for most rigs if you are shooting in anything other than AVCHD which still breaks clips at 4 gigs during longer shoots.

 

[ali_dzi]

The final, written file, yes. MP4 and MOV is a very “lossy” format that uses a great deal of compression.

Just to clear the terminology:
MP4 and MOV are not the 'formats' but containers. Inside them you can code audio&video in any of many 'formats' (or codecs), either lossy or losseless. In Breeze 4K we have h264 as codec, with (unknown but seems pretty high quality) fixed bit-rate, which is the main parameter for size and video quality.

Since 5 minutes of 720p@60fps produces cca 700Mb (I mostly use that mode because of 60fps), in max battery time of 15 minutes, it couldn't be larger than little over 2GB. Since 1080p format has the similar size, it's probably using parameters for higher quality because it has twice lower fps (30). Haven't tried 4k recording since it is not stabilized, but I can bet that the parameters in h264 codec are fixed so that max timed recordings have the similar size (cca 700MB).

However, when that file is open and being written to, as the sensor is dumping data into a memory cache, it can and will approach that 4Gb limit.....at which point the system starts a new file and writes/compresses the previous file and releases the memory that was being used.......until this new one approaches the limit and it happens all over again.

The technology of coding lossy format, like h264, is that it writes full image (so called keyframe) every so (various condition, fixed or variable, in Breeze 4K every 2 seconds). Every frame between 2 keyframes is recorded as a relative difference to the previous frame (highly sofisticated algorithm, in h265 even more), so it is a pretty low data written. Five min. footage has cca 150 keyframes (full size images), and all other 17.850 frames @720p (or 8.850 @1080p) are only the differences.

So the FAT32 and its 4GB limitation is surely NOT the reason why the video is set at 5 min. max. It could be the tax/import/export laws, but as I know that has been set at 15 or 30 minutes, depending on the country.

The only logical reason is that it's for security of not losing the footage.