• DSLR Video

  SD Cards – how much do they really hold?

  Posted by David Rehm on July 24, 2012 at 6:05 pm

  hello, I have a Nikon D7000. I purchased two 16GB cards (because the D7000 has dual memory card slots). I’m not super familiar with DSLR/sd cards technology – I hung onto tape format for as long as I could.

  Since getting the camera/cards I have just been storing up everything on the 2 cards that I have. I decided today to wipe the cards clean. I chose the Format Memory Card option within the menu and everything went fine.

  Here’s my question/concern – how much do these cards really hold? The actual 16GB card says on it “4 hours of HD video”. But when I go to the Movies Settings / Destination menu it tells me I have the following time lengths for each movie quality:

  1080p High Quality 24fps = 1h 30m 32s (for each card)
  1080p Normal 24fps = 2h 37m 29s (for each card)

  720p High Quality 30fps = 2h 37m 29s (for each card)
  720p Normal 30fps = 3h 43m 30s (for each card)

  720p High Quality 24fps = 3h 04m 45s (for each card)
  720p Normal 24fps = 4h 42m 49s (for each card)

  Then the standard quality settings will give 5.5 hours.

  My question is – As you see above ONLY the 720p Normal quality gives the 4 hours plus. Should I get 4 hours of 1080p video on a 16GB card? The web info I read says “yes”. Or are the card manufacturers having a play on terms and leading you to believe they are talking about true HD?

  The websites I’ve checked seem to all say you should get about 15m of time per 1GB – for HD video (1080p). But that doesn’t add up to what my camera is telling me.

  Am I not understanding something here? Any info to explain this would be very appreciated.

  ALSO – Why is there a High Quality and a Normal quality when it comes to each setting? Shouldn’t 1080p be 1080p?

  Thanks,
  David

  David Rehm replied 13 years, 9 months ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Steve Crow

  July 24, 2012 at 8:35 pm

  I suspect the difference between HQ and SQ has to do with the data rate and maybe also the audio data rate too

  Steve Crow
  Crow Digital Media
  http://www.CrowDigitalMedia.com
• 

  David Rehm

  July 24, 2012 at 11:20 pm

  Hi, Thanks for your reply but I’m wondering about the times my camera is listing for my sd cards and should there be 4 hours of HD video fitting on my cards?

  Thanks, David

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