SDXC Card with Canon t2i

[Chris Hurd]

Originally Posted by John Wiley

the camera needs to empty the buffer

Flush the buffer. That's the geek-chic term these days. The camera needs to flush the buffer.

Originally Posted by John Wiley

Properly implemented continuous recording is more like that sexy barmaid who manages to leave the beer tap constantly running while filling multiple consecutive glasses, all without spilling a drop.

I knew that girl when I was in college. I tried to date her, but she never had the time.

[Dave Haynie]

Originally Posted by John Wiley

Magic Lantern's restart function is nothing at all like proper continuous recording. Magic Lantern is the electronic equivelant of hitting the record button as soon as you see the first clip stop recording.

As I said, it's not gapless. It is, in fact, exactly the kind of solution to the 4GB problem that Sanyo put into their Xacti line of consumer camcorders. Pro-oriented camcorder companies understand the need for gapless recording, but not all video companies do.

And as well, given how Panasonic solves this, many users are going to screw it up anyway. Panasonic's cameras stop at exactly 4GB. close one file, open the next. It works great. Sanyo is actually stopping at a GOP boundry, far as I can tell. So sure, I import my videos from my Panasonics by opening a shell and doing a plain old catenate of all sequential video files to a single file on my HDD. Maybe Panasonic's included software does this for you... I haven't bothered. But most users aren't going to know this is necessary.. and it's not exactly called out in bold type in the manuals, either. Sure, a broken GOP is only about 0.250-0.625 sec, depending on fps. but this does get ignored anyway.

So... if you have this reliably automated and use multiple cameras, this is much closer in practice to gapless transition than "go press the record button again". In fact, it's day and night... also the reason I donated to the MagicLantern for 60D project. I would LOVE to see Canon fix this. And maybe they will, if (as I suspect) there's actually no good reason for it. Most other HDSLRs do not have this issue.. but usually some other issue. In my case, that's "they're not Canons"... I'm far too invested in the system to change. Canons can't function as "A" cameras for event work, but my 60D makes a fine "B" camera. And as for stills, I have not a single complaint... it's like shooting everything with Kodachrome 25, only sharper.