Format Card In Camera & Eliminate 4GB File Limit?

R

Red Jacket Mike

Member
I've asked about this elsewhere, but have gotten no responses yet; if I format my SDHC card in the 150, am I eliminating the 4GB limit with multiple clips being created?

I haven't seen multiple clips yet, and I also haven't seen any frames dropped or any audio glitches in and around the 4GB limit (anywhere from 20-30 minutes into the clip).

Or, is this because I am using the latest FCP (6.0.5) and my 150 has the latest firmware (1.19)?

Whatever the reason, I'm happy about it, considering what I've read to the contrary.
 
the camera works in FAT32, so always format the card as fat32 with your computer, the camera will automatically do fat32. but the camera will create 4gb (or smaller) clips (depending on record time and mbs settings). but when final cut reads the files there are flags in the files to tell it to stitch them together to make into one continuos clip. so when you hear the ol "4gb file limit" do not be alarmed.

the only thing you'd have to deal with that is if you were shooting with a firestore unit(which doesn't work with the hmc150). and then the actual files are broken apart but when placed together are seamless.
 
Even formatting in camera uses FAT32, and this is because it's the most widely-used standard that still works in Macs and PCs. I don't think it's really anything to be alarmed about.
 
In order to avoid issues, take Zazacast's advice and just format with the camera. FAT32 is easy to work with because it does not have an file-system permissions (like NTFS, for example) and for this reason it is compatible with all operating systems. It's the same file system that's used for USB thumb drives and most (but not all) pre-packaged USB hard drives.

Also, if you are using Premiere Pro, use the media browser to import the footage instead of just dragging the .MTS files over...it will actually "merge" any long clips together in the timeline (this goes for P2 as well).

FAT32 is basically the only readily-available file system that's readable and writable by windows, mac, and linux without any issues.
 
Phil1076 said:
FAT32 is basically the only readily-available file system that's readable and writable by windows, mac, and linux without any issues.
Click to expand...

And THAT is why Mac users are a genuine problem for this industry. Without their need for FAT32, we'd all be using the far superior NTFS file system in our solid state cameras and not even have to think about clip splitting.

Panny could at least offer the option for PC editors to use NTFS on their cards. Why hobble us because someone else chose a platform that doesn't play nice with the most widely used file system on the planet?
 
Jim Simon said:
And THAT is why Mac users are a genuine problem for this industry. Without their need for FAT32, we'd all be using the far superior NTFS file system in our solid state cameras and not even have to think about clip splitting.

Panny could at least offer the option for PC editors to use NTFS on their cards. Why hobble us because someone else chose a platform that doesn't play nice with the most widely used file system on the planet?
Click to expand...

And THAT is why Microsoft have been such a problem to the industry for so long. :D Mac users don't need FAT32 any more than Microsoft users do.

Microsoft created FAT 32 with the usual short sighted "no one will ever need more than 640K of ram" attitude it started out with. Coming from FAT 12 on floppies, moving to FAT 16 and finally to FAT 32, it even botched the implementation of FAT 32 by taking what should have been able to address 2TB and limited it to 124GB total space! (no one will ever need HDDs bigger than that right?) What are we going to do when compact flash and SD cards go to higher capacities than FAT32 will natively support?

It then chose to use a more complicated NTFS file system using B-Trees to fix the permissions and size issue, using meta data to describe the files. In usual Microsoft fashion it's tried to keep it closed and proprietary for way too long. Don't blame Mac users or even Panasonic for not supporting NTFS, blame Microsoft.

Mac, BSD, Linux and Unix all use files systems that allow huge files too (bigger than NTFS). These files systems are open source and available for everyone to use free of charge. Since so many embedded systems use Linux in some form or other nowadays, these could have been incorporated relatively easily (subject to available ram etc) and for free. Where systems are not using embedded Linux the source code for the file system is freely available so could be adapted. The problem here is that Microsoft won't embrace these file systems, maybe because they can't protect them as Microsoft property? What do Microsoft offer to the embedded community? Law suits!

Of course I'm glad in a way that Microsoft don't use these 'standard' file systems because they'd only want to mess with it. Let's remember what they do with other 'standards'. Internet Explorer is/was one of the least standards compliant browsers available and web designers have had to work around these issues for years. The Microsoft JVM wasn't standard either.

Perhaps Panasonic should allow the rest of the world to use open file systems instead of proprietary ones and thereby allow us ALL to read larger files, but let's face it, it's not going to happen this year :)

NTFS may be the most widely used file system on 'Windows' computers, but there are a lot more computing devices out there than just Windows computers and Microsoft themselves are not keen on other people being able to use it at all. BTW - the largest file size you can put on NTFS is 16TB. This may seem huge today (in true Microsoft fashion!), but when we are recording uncompressed 16K footage in a few years time, what then? Mac on the other hand can handle files up to 9 exabytes NOW. ;)

In the end we're all stuck with Microsoft's FAT32 and none of us like it. But let's not blame the Mac community for it, it's really not their fault that Microsoft screw up so badly so often.
 
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