E-PM2 video recording duration

I have been using an Ipad as a video recording device for few years. It works fine for what I am doing, but the level of grain is too much. I was hoping that maybe using E-PM2 with lower ISO, noise reduction, bigger aperture size may help improving the video image quality.

I usually leave the machine running (recording video) for about an hour.

Today I have tried using E-PM2 instead of Ipad, but it had powered down by itself after about 25 min into recording, missing another half of what I wanted to capture.

The memory space is mostly empty 3.6GB video recorded on 32GB SanDisk Extreme PLUS (80 MB/s).

I was able to power on the camera and the battery showed "full" on the screen, probably 1/5 gone, for the camera runs about 150 min.

I want to know if anyone else is experiencing the same thing, if anyone is using this camera as a camcorder.

A quick Google search would have found your answer. This is from the Imaging Resource review of the camera

"The continuous movie recording duration limit changes depending on file format and bit rate setting. For both 1080p and 720p HD video, recording is limited to approximately 29 minutes for Normal bit rate and 22 minutes for Fine bit rate. For M-JPEG format, the recording time is limited to 7 minutes for HD and 14 minutes for VGA. The maximum movie file size is 4GB for MOV format videos and 2GB for M-JPEG. Olympus recommends use of at least a Class 6 Secure Digital card to avoid issues with write speeds during video capture."

You didn't say where you bought the camera but the EU limits recording limit to 29:29. Some companies (in fact, most companies, it seems) extend that limit to other regions; some apply it to all of the codecs on the camera and some only the better codecs. For unlimited recording you'd have to get something like the GH3/4 cameras (sold outside the EU), which is one reason that I've kept my GH3 despite preferring to use an RX10 for most outings. With some cameras you can get around the limit by outputting the video to a recorder via HDMI.

Yes, but that link is 2 1/2 years old and there doesn't seem to be any progress on ending the recording limit in the EU. What's worse is that some companies are applying the limit universally and there's been a lot of speculation as to the reasons. For example, all of the RX10s have the limit and, when asked about it, a Sony rep said (per the Sonyalpharumors site) in an interview something like "most companies do it," which is not an answer, or course.

I have followed this topic because, like the OP, I must occasionally record, sometimes unattended, for extended periods of time - once I recorded for about three hours with a GH3 on a tripod.

There are other issues with recording limits, a principal one being battery duration. Luckily for me, the GH3 (and GH4) uses a big battery and also offers a grip to hold a second battery. The three hours mentioned above was with one, third-party battery (Watson), and the battery still had life. Unfortunately, even if my RX10 (and RX100M3) had no time limits on recording, the battery issue would still be a sort of limit with those cameras which use smaller, weaker batteries.

If anyone else has any news on this topic, please share it, because for some of us it's a consideration when buying hardware.

yjaquinas wrote:

I have emailed Olympus tech support asking:

1. what is limiting the longer video recording,

• The EU, one of the largest consumer electronics markets in the world, levies a 4.9-12.5% duty on video cameras manufactured outside the EU; video cameras are defined as cameras capable of continuously recording a video of 30 minutes or longer.
• The FAT32 filesystem used on SD cards has a technical limit of 4gb per file regardless of EU taxation or video codec. More mature, professionally-oriented video systems are better at starting a new file once the 4gb limit has been reached.
• Overheating would be another limitation of recording time, but that would only come up situationally.

Most consumer video codecs are not constant bitrate, but adapt to the amount of detail in the scene (more detail is harder to compress and requires bigger files) so it would be impossible to say how long it will take before a given video bumps into the 4GB limit without additional information, and that's information only the camera itself has.

Big companies like Olympus are doing cost-benefit analysis on everything, and most of the time they decide it's not worth it to release different firmware versions for different regions. AFAIK, only Panasonic, and possibly Sony, both consumer electronics giants that have been deeply rooted in video for decades, have decided it's worth it to do anything along the lines of concurrently releasing both a US model of a camera that records NTSC frame rates and no limit of recording time, and an international model that records PAL frame rates and EU's recording time limit.

2. can I remove the "software cap" on the maximum length of the video recording.

No. If you could, it would be defined as a camera capable of recording 30 minutes or more at a stretch, the EU would be collecting a duty on the camera and it would cost more in the EU anyway.

Ironically, video cameras aren't manufactured inside the EU, so the tariff doesn't make a lot of sense. It's not protecting any EU industry. Yet, still cameras are manufactured inside the EU, and no tariff is levied against foreign still cameras. But it is what it is.

They only answered about the shutter count rating... which is not tested, but PEN line cameras will have somewhere around 50,000 ~ 100,000 shutter counts before they die.

By the way, I don't think that estimate is a very good one... 50k to 100k. It sounds like he pulled out that number randomly... not very technical answer from the tech support.

That's actually a pretty typical estimate for consumer grade focal plane shutters. With a high-precision high-energy component like that, that could wear differently depending on manufacturing tolerances, dust inside the camera body, and even humidity levels, it's not possible to say how long it's rated to last outside of a pretty broad range.

When shooting on a tripod you can get around battery life limitations by using an AC adapter, I bought a third party one for my Panasonic and I don't remember it being very expensive... I actually bought it for shooting time lapse sequences.

Doesn't Oly's IBIS actually add to the heat generated in there? Might be another reason they don't really wanna push for longer limits... Possibly why the GX7 doesn't make it available for video too.