4,2 GB limit?

[noka]

Just checking: if I have a long shot, I end up with two video files on the SD card. The first one always is 4.2 GB and the other one smaller. Is that normal behaviour?

 

[Oyibo VFX]

Yes. If that is what you've set up in the settings. Normally it is the max FAT can copy. If you want to have larger size, format your card to exFAT.
When using editing software, you will not see a glitch. I would leave it as it is

 

[noka]

Will do. Thanks!

 

[halley]

I would leave it as it is

One other benefit of having long videos in shorter seamless chunks: if the camera crashes for some reason (software crash or flight crash), the already-completed file won't be corrupted.

 

[Kilrah]

Yep, normal and it will do so even with exFAT cards.

 

[Oyibo VFX]

Mine is exFAT but max 4gb. But I use Mac and FCPX. So doesn't really matter anyway.

 

[SteelFlyer]

Probably TMI, but the reason for the 4.2 GB file size is that this is the largest memory size that can be addressed with a 32 bit processor (2 to the 32nd power). This is common in many digital cameras. Once the max file size is reached, the file is closed and a new one is opened. If you put them together in your editing software, they will be seamless.

 

[Johnmcl7]

Probably TMI, but the reason for the 4.2 GB file size is that this is the largest memory size that can be addressed with a 32 bit processor (2 to the 32nd power). This is common in many digital cameras. Once the max file size is reached, the file is closed and a new one is opened. If you put them together in your editing software, they will be seamless.

It's nothing to do with 32-bit processors, their limitations are for addressable memory not storage so there's no problem having files larger than 4GB each on a 32-bit system. The FAT32 format is limited to 4GB per file but exFAT isn't which suggests there is some other internal limitation.

John

 

[SteelFlyer]

It's nothing to do with 32-bit processors, their limitations are for addressable memory not storage so there's no problem having files larger than 4GB each on a 32-bit system. The FAT32 format is limited to 4GB per file but exFAT isn't which suggests there is some other internal limitation.

John

I stand corrected. I always thought it was because they stored the data in RAM then transferred it to the storage device, thus the addressable memory limit became a defacto storage limit. I shot quite a bit of video on Canon DSLRs that had the same issue. Unfortunately in those, the recording would just stop after the limit was reached.

Thanks for correcting this.

 

[Oyibo VFX]

I agree with Jonmcl7. Nothing to do with your processor. FAT is a File Allocation Table which had its limitations when computers became faster and bigger. Then IBM/MickeySoft came with exFAT. But Apple has a normal table so for OSX this is not an issue. Unless you exchange data with a camera

 

[Johnmcl7]

I stand corrected. I always thought it was because they stored the data in RAM then transferred it to the storage device, thus the addressable memory limit became a defacto storage limit. I shot quite a bit of video on Canon DSLRs that had the same issue. Unfortunately in those, the recording would just stop after the limit was reached.

Thanks for correcting this.

No problem, it's far from simple particularly when as you mention there's a lot of video devices that have internal limitations which place restrictions on the file size which are unrelated to the storage format.