Breaking the 25min limit (OUTDATED!) HOWTO
Ok, I guess this deserves it's own topic. I discovered how to record about 50 minutes on the camcorder instead of only 25. Here are step by step instructions. I like to start by writing the word "empty" on a paper and recording the shor-*test*-('") possible clip of it (one or two seconds). Next using OPS v0.4, downoad the "empty" clip using the Download Last Movie button, saving it with the name PICT9999.avi Format the camcorder or delete all the movies from it. Power camcorder off and back on. Now upload the PICT9999.avi movie using OPS v0.4 Click the Update Directory Listing button. Push the playback button on the camcorder. The video doesn't play the first time you push playback, but the camcorder should now show that it has 1 Videos saved. You can hit the playback button again if you like, but it is not necessary. Now you should be able to record about 40 to 50 minutes of video up to the limit of memory. I don't think you can do this in one clip, or at least I have not yet tried. In any case, after the second clip you record, the camcorder will claim to be full. Simply power off and back on and record your next clip. If you wish to preview your clip, do not power off, but hit playback. Once you power off and back on, hitting playback will show the "Empty" PICT9999.avi. If you want to view your last recorded video, you can either do an Update Directory Listing and then hit playback, or if you are away from the computer, simply record and delete a clip and then hit playback. Each time you turn on the camcorder, the camcorder will indicate only one video saved and a time remaining of 19:58min or so depending on the size of your PICT9999.avi. Another quirk of this hack is that the clips will show the incorrect length on the counter when you play them back. Mine show to be 4:17. Let me know what yours are. You will know your camcorder is full when you get the Camcorder Full message on powerup and in the middle of recording your final video. Of course you will not know it is your final video until you see the Camcorder Full message. I was able to record 43:34 minutes one time and 50:33 minutes another time using this method. Each time the total video size was 121megs. To download the videos, open and unlock the camera OPS v0.4 and click Update Directory Listing. This will ensure that the last video is correctly being pointed to so when you download you get ALL the videos. Now click Download All Movies and select the folder to put them in. It will take a few minutes so you may want to go catch up on the la-*test*-('") posts on this forum. The progress bar updates in increments of an entire file, so don't go worrying that something is wrong because it seems to be stuck for a while. Now that you have all your videos, you can go ahead and format if you like. Enjoy the extra recording time :)

Well done zapped! The fact that there's so much extra room in average recording situations is a good sign for those of us who want to upgrade the resolution and scale back on the compression.

Of course, this is just a temporary hack until we get our hands on the firmware over USB and can modify it. Selectable quality will be awesome when we get there. I suppose someone could modify this hack slightly to record longer audio clips...just put electrical tape over the lens and you should get a little more space. Of course ultimately hacking the firmware will give us lots more options.

It works. I was able to record 2 clips 24 minutes each (I might have been able to go a bit more on the second clip). thanks guys your are amazing

Do you lose anything in the process? Frame rate? resolution?

Nothing lost, unless you count the correct counter display :wink:

I'm assuming you can "undo" the hack if the camcorder starts acting all...funky?

Sure, just hit the "Format Storage" button in Ops. That will completely reset the media partition in the camcorder.

I wasnt able to get ops 0.4 to upload the empty clip to the camcorder. " succeeded in unlocking camcorder failed to bulk read video count try unplugging camcorder and starting over Couldn't increment the picture count Succes sending file Upload success Camcorder USB device closed. " It says success but when i press playback it says camcorder empty even after hitting it a few times. I've tried this about 5 times now and keep getting the same results but have not had a problem downloading clips

I've been playing with xvid and mencoder lately and have re-encoded a full episode of Penn and Tellers Bullshit (War on Drugs) to 320x240, 30 fps, 300 bitrate. The resulting file is about 74Megs @ 30minutes long. Using ops.4, I can upload it to the CVS as PICT0001.avi. When successful, I close the connection then unplug the usb cable, plug the cable back in and viola 1 video present. The camera tells me it is full but plays back ok. Timer starts at 30:00 and countsdown as it should. I've been toying with different bitrates and sizes (as long as the 4:3 ratio is maintained, it doesn't seem to matter to the player what the size is, though 640x480 plays back clearer than 320x240). I've yet to find that 'sweetspot' that yields a clear picture with no blocking. 640x480 with a bitrate around 700 have yielded good results but a large file.... I started with a mencoder script that I found in another thread on video uploads. This may need to be in that thread but my main point started out being about the playback timer seems to be accurate even on videos more than 20 minutes long.

Refresh directory and hitting playback is simply a shortcut to get the camcorder to update it's count of videos displayed You could reboot camera (even without refresh directory or hitting playback) and should see 1 video

Nicklnitro, also note that movie upload only works for videos that are in a certain resolution. (like the kind that the cam produces) Wrongly sized movies get purged from the camera when you power cycle it.