Canon 7D - increasing recording time?

O

Omar67

Active member
Greetings,

I am a HVX200 user and thinking about getting the Canon 7D for shooting feature films. I love my HVX200 and will continue to use it for freelance gigs (documentaries, corporates, shorts) but I am amazed by the look of these new Canon still cameras that shoot 1080/24Native.

The only drawback is that the flash cards can only record 12 minutes of HD 1080 footage. Is there a comparable recording device (like the Firestore used on HVX200s) that can record greater than 12 minutes that somehow connects to the camera via a USB or Firewire etc. I like doing alot of improvisational dialogue in my films, and it would be nice to be able to record at least 40 minutes or more, before loading up another clip, hard drive etc.

anyone have suggestions?
Omar
 
I believe you are confusing maximum clip time with maximum storage on the card.

The 7d can record up to 12 minutes in one clip, what determines how many minutes total you can have on the card, is the size of the card.

I am not too sure how many gb = 1 minute, but I am certainly positive that a 16gb card holds more than 12 minutes.
 
This has been beaten to death on this board. For wedding or any longer ceremony that has a long speech or soemthing then yeah... you'd need a longer recording capability... but for feature film or narrative films of any kind, improv or not, 12 minutes should be plenty... unless there is a more than 12 min take... which is extremely rare, and you shouldn't plan for that if you plan to use 7D :-)
 
The 7D uses about 50mb/sec, so about 2 minutes per gig. You should get a half hour (or more) on a 16GB card.

The limitation is that it can only run 12 minutes on any one take. If you stop recording and start up again, you can record for another 12 minutes, etc.
 
I was wondering if the sound is turned off does it go for longer? The theory being that a lower data rate won't get to the 4 gig file size as quickly. Or shooting in monochrome, which seems to run at a lower rate too?
 
Ahhh so it is 12 minutes per clip. Okay cool has anyone used a 16 GB card for this camera? Does this camera have any artifact problems that anyone know of? It all sounds pretty good so far. Still concerned about the running time, but if anyone on this site has used a 16 GB card and it actually works on this camera - let me know.
 
16 GB cards commonly used with the 7D. I use the Sandisk Extreme IV UDMA model, and they work great. Records about 40+ minutes of 1080 24p video on each card. You could also use 32GB cards, but personally I'd hate to have that much data on one card. I feel much better when I'm backing up regularly. But that's probably just paranoia--the cards have been 100% solid for me.

As far as artifacts, you'll want to do some searching--this site is full of information on this topic.
 
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