Bizarre. I just recorded three clips of 29.59 duration on my 7D.

I have used it for five live events in the past year and always stopped and restarted before the 12.59 is up like in the 5D.

I have a new Transcend card which I needed in a hurry so set the camera going on the table to get some test footage. Walked away and came back to the shock of it still going at 17.20.

Repeated it twice more in disbelief. 3 clips of 30 mins.

It's an Aussie one my Father sent me. Maybe no limit on non EU ones?

Ps: It is set to 1920 x 1080 24fps, not SD 640 x 480 which I know can be recorded past the 12 mins. The files are 3.98 gb in size. They look ok on the editor too, ie: bit rate quality next to the 5D files.

Is this normal, did I miss something? Everything on google says 12 min limit.

Ok so, I just formatted the card in the camera and it stops now at 12.59. I was intrigued when I put the card in today it didn't need to be formatted. Oh well interesting stuff as far as I can tell HD @ 30 mins should be a much larger file.

I received another card today and re did the same test, this time I filmed it and also kept the file.

It did stop at 14.05 for some reason. However recorded past 12.59. The captured file is 38926kbps 1920 x 1080 @ 23 (24) fps as you can see on the back of the camera.

The first clip here is the 7D recording as filmed from the 5D, the second is the clip 7D recorded. So you can see the quality is the same.

The clip today 14.10 long is also 3.98GB size and the ones I saw on the card in the weekend (30 mins) were as well.

I plan to not format this card and see how long it records over the 12 minute limit.

7D recording past 12.59 on Vimeo

The limit is not time but the 4GB file size which approximates to 12 minutes of 1920x1080 video. As the video is variable bit rate it is possible that the 4GB file will have more than 12 minutes depending on the subject matter. If you were to record with the lens cap on so that the image doesn't vary then you could record for far longer than 12 minutes.

Ok got it as I also tried this on the 5D and it went for over 15 minutes as well. I guess that it did this as the camera was still and pointed at the wall and therefore not data in the video stream.