E1 SxS card

[Tim Heath]

Purchased the PMW E1 several weeks ago. Wow just great. Only have the 8 gig card. It started out with about 23 minutes. Now it is down to 17 minutes. All the clips have been deleted. No mater what I do can't get over 17? What am I missing? Thanks Tim

[kubalsky]

Have you tried putting card back in camera and clicking "reformat media" - its somewhere in the camera menu. That should take out the trash. Just make sure you dont have anything you still want to keep on the card. It will wipe it all.

[Carl Marxx]

I think that the SxS card has a FAT or FAT32 format, it is was used by Windows 98. Generally this is limited to 9Min., but by using a trick of - and + by the digitizing the program, 17+ Min. would be max in an .avi Windows file. Are you using Adobie Premiere, by the way? They use this trick. The only way you can extend the file size is by formating to NTSF used by the newer Windows operating systems such as Windows XP and VISTA. I could be wrong, but since Sony can't format the memory chip for the NTSF, we may be stuck with 17Min. file size for editing. Note: I think I read in the manual somewhere, that the camera is designed to advance to the next file in sequence, so as, the viewer can not tell of any pause of hesitation in action; let me know if this is a problem with the MAC platform, since I am not experienced with a big Mac, other than the ones sold at Mc Donalds. Carl :thumbsup:

[Tim Heath]

Hi Kubalsky, Thanks a lot it has been driving me crazy. I will try that. Thanks again. Tim

[Tim Heath]

I think that the SxS card has a FAT32 format used by Windows 98. Generally this is limited to 9Min. but by using a trick of - and + by the digatizing program, 17+ Min. would be max in an avi Windows file. Are you using Adobie Premire, by the way? They use this trick. The only way you can extend the file size is by formating to NT?? used by the newer Windows operating systems such as Windows XP. I could be wrong, but since Sony can't format the memory chip for the NT?? (I can't remember the name,) we may be stuck with 17Min. files. :thumbsup:

Wow.... thank you for all your good thoughts. I have a MAC and using FCS.... I thank you again. This is such a great place and I love this camera.. Tim

[basspig]

An 8GB card records 27 minutes for me. The camera will split the files in 4GB chunks automatically.
If your record time is lower, it means that the card is either damaged, or the battery failed during write to the card, leaving lost clusters and breaking the FAT information. Reformat should restore the card to normal 27min capacity.

[Tim Heath]

You are right I did reformat and I now have 28 minutes. I guess I got the extra minute because of my good looks. Thank you all for your help, Tim