i was shooting a party last night and while i was recording, it kept stopping and going into standby, realized it was the battery and changed with new one, but kept doing it and the film strip would come on screen and blink on part of it like a battery being low. i know i had plenty of space left.
also,
im assuming i can turn off face recognition, it got annoying after a while

Battery shouldn't give you a problem, as long as it's a genuine Sony - they run until the lo bat indicator starts to flash, and eventually will just turn off entirely.

Any possibility there was someone else with a IR remote in the area? I've had cameras shut off sometimes for no apparent reason, and suspect that it may be a stray IR remote signal, so I will sometimes turn off the remote function if I think there's going to be too much stray "noise".

Yes, you can turn off tace recognition.

dave where would that ir remote have come from?
it happened after i put anew battery on. sony brand, but the little filmstrip showed and was blinking in one part of it as if there wasnt space left, but i think i had enough. any disadvantage to turning off ir remote?
also, when i go to the face recognition icon on menu and clik on it, it says unavailable

Face detection only works in full auto mode. If your camera is in for instance, manual white balance or one of the preset white balance modes or manual exposure mode, the face detection menu will grey out.
Also I'm a bit confused by you saying about not having enough or not enough space. It sounds more like you may be having a problem with your card and not the battery. Have you tried switching to another card or using the internal memory? If it's about the battery, try plugging in via the AC adapter. If the problem goes away when using the adapter then try switching the batteries.