A 70: Recording 640x480 clips & CF Cards

[shelique]

Hi,
I want to buy an a70. and i read this in the faq page of the a 70 in canon faq site.

"
Maximum Recording Time when Shooting Movies with the 640 x 480 Pixels Setting


The maximum recording time per clip (approx. 15 frames/sec.) when shooting with the 640 x 480 pixels setting is approx. 30 sec. based on Canon's standard testing method. Listed below are precautions for using this setting.
* The recording time (30 sec.) is subject to when shooting with the optional Canon FC-256MH CF card.
If you are using the CF card supplied with the PowerShot S230, Digital IXUS V3 or IXY Digital 320, the maximum recording time is approx. 14 sec.

Recording time for the movie clip varies depending on the subject or environment. The camera will stop shooting automatically when the recording time exceeds this limit or the CF card becomes full.
Shooting may also end in the following cases.
1) The CF card writing speed is slow.
2) Your CF card was initialized on another camera or a computer.
3) You have recorded and deleted the data on the CF card repeatedly, etc.

"

i was looking forward to make 4-5 min. long movie clips, but now im not sure if i can. because it doesnt say here that i can make that long movies even with "fast CF CARDS", by the way does anyone know, which CF Cards are fast or how can i know that a card is fast. or a www which compares them, or a guide

Thanks a lot


Thankss

[laguna]

It won't record more than 30 secs in the highest res, I think the buffer will be full anyway, so my guessis that even the fastest CF cards will only shorten the gap between two recordings (on my 128 CF card and A70 this gap is approx 9 seconds) In lower res AVi it will fill up the CF card to the brim........
on www.imaging-resource.com you'll find an article on CF card speeds.
I suspect that a high speed CF card is a good investment for a photographer working in RAW mode, and for the rabid enthousiast.
If you are considering the camera choice based on the movie quality I would suggest you consider a digital video cam , and take the lower res stills for granted ?

[shelique]

thanks for ur answer,

are u absolutely sure that it wont record longer, or do u think that it wouldnt?

[laguna]

I am very sure, because it stopped after 30 secs in 640 mode, I am not sure that a quick CF could not squeeze a few more secs in .
But ask Canon whether this is true ....

Great camera for Photography though !

[khs8]

Shelique:
You can take 30 second video clips in succession until the cf card is full. Then download into computer. Use virtualdub to join them together to make a long movie. I have done that with my s230 (in VGA mode), and I love the quality. I use LEXOR 256 12X cf card. Here is the web site for dl virtualdub:

http://www.virtualdub.org/index

[PeterS45]

The 'problem' is not in the card but in the camera's internal memory. After shooting the movie it stops and then writes it to the card, just as it does with jpegs.

[shelique]

thank you very much for your answers, i also got the answer to my question from the cannon technical support (after a veryyyy long time) and yes its just limited with the internal memor of the camera, but this is just sad. i mean the cf card is fast enough to write 2.4 MB/s data why cant the camera just save it directly to the cf card instead writing to the buffer it would have been so cool, i really was looking forward to make 20-30 min of movies besides making photos :) but i guess u can write with 320 x 240 without having to stop?

[PeterS45]

In my camera (Powershot S45) the recording time is multiplied by 3 when I use half the resolution, so that can be a part of your solution also.