Railfan Technology > 32gb video length.

I just got a new camcorder with 32gb memory card.how long does a 32gb card video record.should I get a 64gb to do train videos.thanx in advance.

Posted from Android

Although I don't do videos, I strongly suspect that there's a list of memory card sizes with recording times listed somewhere in the instruction manual that came with your camera.  That would resolve all variations as one camera may not use as many megabytes per minute than another, and so on.

It depends upon the level of video compression you are willing to tolerate.  The trade off is image quality versus file size.  A factor in that decision is the speed and type of movement or change in the video.  Some of the compression types look great a low bit-rates until there is much movement, and then they reveal all sorts of artifacts, such as blurriness.

I'm told that 'frames/second' and 'write speed' also matter greatly.  Resolution matters a LOT.  "4K" video is twice as wide and twice as high (in pixels) as "HD" video.  
I'm currently experiencing missing or skipping frames on my videos.  My current 64gb card is a slow "U1" type, so I'm upgrading to a 128gb  "U3" card. 
My mobile device is also too full of flight records, so I'm purging those to give the CPU some more bandwidth.  We'll see what happens this weekend.

HH

Is it class 10 card if you film at 1080p you should get about 3 to 4 hours I think before it fills up

Posted from Android

HH Wrote:
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<SNIP>

> My mobile device is also too full of flight
> records, so I'm purging those to give the CPU some
> more bandwidth.  We'll see what happens this
> weekend.
>
> HH

Deleting files will not do anything to give your CPU
more bandwidth. It will, however, give you more space
on the card to take cool video or still shots :-)

John.

Wp3503 Wrote:
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> I just got a new camcorder with 32gb memory
> card.how long does a 32gb card video record.should
> I get a 64gb to do train videos.thanx in advance.
>
> Posted from Android

The camcorder instructions will give you an indication somewhere, depending on the quality of video you record. Is it 4k or HD? My HD camcorder at its highest quality video setting will be able to get 2-3 hours on a 32Gb card. 

Wp3503 Wrote:
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> I just got a new camcorder with 32gb memory
> card.how long does a 32gb card video record.should
> I get a 64gb to do train videos.thanx in advance.

I've tried several camcorder models throughout the years, all consumer level stuff.

Good answers above, but usually in the Appendix or the technical specs section of the manual, there should be explanations on video bitrate (bandwidth) for each video quality setting available for your camcorder. If the manual is well written, the approximate hours recordable for a given memory card (32 GB, 64 GB, whatever) is mentioned. The 2-3 hours rating for H.264 (MP4) compressed videos with 32 GB card sounds about right, but even with a given video resolution (1080p), there may be multiple settings for bitrates which will result in different recording times.

While memory card compatibility issues are things of the past, some camcorders (first generation 1080p) couldn't handle 64 GB, but the real issue was the device's support of SDHC vs. SDXC. People who use older PCs for video editing might run into this issue, where SDXC card might not be supported. Anyway, I'm throwing these jargons in this post in case you run into problems, so you can Google them and find out more. I'm confident this won't be the issue, at least on the camcorder side.

If compatibility isn't the issue, try using bigger sizes like 64 GB or 128 GB. 

I shoot 1080p at MXP ("best" quality). A 64GB card is 354 minutes (nearly 6 hours). A 32GB card would be half of that (nearly 3 hours). A 2-pack of 64GB cards cost me $30 at Costco last week.