Exlim - 'Taking longer than 30 sec movies' ?

I know its not supposed to be a video camera but I sometimes find the 30 second limit annoying. Granted its better than other cameras that offer 10, 15 or 20 seconds.

My reckoning is if we want to fill a memory card with a movie we should be able to (things like going to a concert and getting a bands whole song down as opposed to 30 second snippets).

Any ideas on a possible upcoming update, workaround?

I'm not too well versed in the technicalities, but my guess is that it's a limitation of most cameras' ability to write the data to the flash/SD memory in real-time. Maybe the camera stores the video data in a temporary buffer which is filled by the end of 30 seconds, at which point it writes to the memory card.

As such, I don't think a firmware would be able to overcome the 30sec limitation? Just my guess, I'd love to hear what others think.

Gerry Quach said:

I'm not too well versed in the technicalities, but my guess is that
it's a limitation of most cameras' ability to write the data to the
flash/SD memory in real-time. Maybe the camera stores the video
data in a temporary buffer which is filled by the end of 30
seconds, at which point it writes to the memory card.

As such, I don't think a firmware would be able to overcome the
30sec limitation? Just my guess, I'd love to hear what others think.

Click to expand...

This explanation sounds essentially correct to me. It also explains
why other digital cameras that create movies with different resolutions
have different recording lengths. For example, the Canon S330 can
take movies with 640x480, 320x240 and 160x120 pixels, with
maximum lengths of 4, 10 or 30 seconds respectively.

It is interesting, however, that the EX-M2 can stream a certain amount
of data to flash/SD memory in real time. Recently I recorded my students'
speeches, and had a file that was over 10MB -- well over the size of
the buffer, I would suppose, since the still photos I take are about 1MB.

I seem to recall a cheap digital camera which overall had much worse
features and resolution than the Exilim cameras, but was able to
take videos of unlimited length (probably of fairly poor resolution).
I certainly hope for longer video lengths in the Exilims to come,
though I'm overall satisfied with what mine can do today.

Gerry Quach said:

I'm not too well versed in the technicalities, but my guess is that
it's a limitation of most cameras' ability to write the data to the
flash/SD memory in real-time. Maybe the camera stores the video
data in a temporary buffer which is filled by the end of 30
seconds, at which point it writes to the memory card.

As such, I don't think a firmware would be able to overcome the
30sec limitation? Just my guess, I'd love to hear what others think.

Click to expand...

Good thinking!

Im not technical minded either but I was figuring if the Camera has 12Mb of on board memory (as it does) and most of us add in the extra SD or MMC card then the 12Mb could surely be used as a buffer of sorts prior to the copying to the SD card (after taking a 30 second clip theres probably a 4-5 second pause whilst mine copies to the SD card). That'd have to triple the size of vids that it currently does.

If it comes out in another version then so be it but if its possible to change or modify this one then it'd mnake my grand little camera, just that little more grander.

The problem is that just taken picture of movie is stored in a buffer - if you open camera, you'll be able to see chip of usual DRAM. And before it is writed to memory card, movie is processed with internal processor to compress it and convert. Camera is unable to convert movie "on the fly" and write directly to a card. So you can't write more than buffer can store.

And there are no big difference in speed between memory card or 11Mb of internal memory - it's also relatively slow "flash" memory, not a fast DRAM...