Increasing the Length of Saved Movies

[LowCountryFlyer]

How does one go about increasing the maximum length of a saved movie. I noticed my M2P will not save any kind of 4K movie on a file greater than 5 mins. If the record function is operating longer than that it breaks off the first file at 5 mins and starts a new one. Is this a matter of internal memory available to the drone to record on? Can it be changed?

 

[brett8883]

How does one go about increasing the maximum length of a saved movie. I noticed my M2P will not save any kind of 4K movie on a file greater than 5 mins. If the record function is operating longer than that it breaks off the first file at 5 mins and starts a new one. Is this a matter of internal memory available to the drone to record on? Can it be changed?

It has to do with the way SD cards are formatted. They can’t store a single file greater than 4 GB so it doesn’t have to do with the length so much as the size. It is frustrating but there’s a free program calledMp4joiner which will join two mp4 files without the need to re-render. So it’s not a bad work around.

 

[LowCountryFlyer]

Yeah I can assemble them together in Premiere, but just curious if I could do it with the raw footage to begin with.

 

[brett8883]

Yeah I can assemble them together in Premiere, but just curious if I could do it with the raw footage to begin with.

No. The benefit to the Mp4 joiner is that you don’t have to render or transcode the video. You just put two videos in and POOF one video comes out. Takes less time then then It takes for Premier Pro to open and you aren’t doing an additional round of compression.

 

[Mossiback]

Like @brett8883 said, it's a card/format issue. I think it is a good idea anyway to break up your recordings into smaller files as normal practice. That way you don't lose it all when one file gets corrupted. Video is usually more interesting when it is broken up into smaller segments anyway.

 

[kilomikebravo]

LCF: Not sure why you'd want a quick way to combine video footage when you have Premiere but no doubt there's a reason. My understanding is that most folks who do post processing, only want the "butter at the top," not all the herky jerky camera and aircraft movements of which we're all guilty.

I too prefer to start and stop recording fairly regularly during a flight to create multiple files and reduce the risk of a write error ruining the whole kit and kaboodle. Plus, the little girl heats up a good bit during video recording so no sense in having her do so continuously.

 

[brett8883]

LCF: Not sure why you'd want a quick way to combine video footage when you have Premiere but no doubt there's a reason. My understanding is that most folks who do post processing, only want the "butter at the top," not all the herky jerky camera and aircraft movements of which we're all guilty.

I too prefer to start and stop recording fairly regularly during a flight to create multiple files and reduce the risk of a write error ruining the whole kit and kaboodle. Plus, the little girl heats up a good bit during video recording so no sense in having her do so continuously.

So that you don’t have to keep track of the clips that are segmented. It’s more of an organizational thing then anything else.

 

[kilomikebravo]

Brett: I get that but really, after a day of flying, do you really have THAT many images and clips with which to deal? I don't do hyperlapses very often so if I have more than 20 photos and six-eight clips, it's an unusual day.

 

[brett8883]

Brett: I get that but really, after a day of flying, do you really have THAT many images and clips with which to deal? I don't do hyperlapses very often so if I have more than 20 photos and six-eight clips, it's an unusual day.

If you make a video after every shoot and then don’t ever come back to that footage maybe but if you have a weeks worth of footage or a month or a year then it becomes a cluster. It would be a titanic undertaking just to identify segmented clips and their mate, mark the two videos while still making them visible with the other clips.

Personally I’d just rather join the segmented clips each night that way I don’t have to pull my hair out with 100s of clips named xxxxxx_1a and xxxxx_2b.

 

[kilomikebravo]

Brett: If you're happy with your own procedure, go for it!

To help avoid similar issues, I use the date of the shoot as a folder name under my \MEDIA\MAVIC2\ folder, i.e., 190511. If there are photos, I add an \..\IMAGES\ subfolder. Ditto for Hyperlapses and Panos. It works for me but I completely understand having your own method and procedure.

 

[brett8883]

Brett: If you're happy with your own procedure, go for it!

To help avoid similar issues, I use the date of the shoot as a folder name under my \MEDIA\MAVIC2\ folder, i.e., 190511. If there are photos, I add an \..\IMAGES\ subfolder. Ditto for Hyperlapses and Panos. It works for me but I completely understand having your own method and procedure.

Yea but now it’s 3 months later and you want to find a video but don’t remember the date. How are you gonna find it?

 

[kilomikebravo]

Look back at the folders from three months ago? Wouldn't you have to do this anyway even if you join all the clips from each day of filming? I suppose you could join them all and then give the resulting file a descriptive name. But, you could do that with folders as well and skip the joining process.