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  • BMCC FILE Size Limitations

    Posted by Richard Martz on January 22, 2014 at 7:01 pm

    I wanted to pose a question and open a discussion. I am a fairly new owner of a BMCC and I’m learning a lot about the camera. One thing I found interesting this week involved the maximum file length that I’m getting on the BMCC. I found myself recording some lengthy interviews and I was wondering if I should be “double punching” the record button periodically as you would with a DSLR when recording a lengthy event. That practice has been my “work around” for the limited file length present in most DSLR systems. I was pleasantly surprised that even though I did not double punch I had no trouble with recording longer length files.

    I knew the BMCC file had no “practical limitations” but was wondering if there were FINITE limitations. And it turns out that there ARE finite file size limitations. And yes…I know you are always limited by the size of your SSD.

    So when I returned to the studio I quickly constructed a test to see how long I could record without the BMCC creating a new file. I also wanted to know if those file length limitations were different for different frame rates. Here is what I have determined so far:

    1920 x 1080 / 29.97 will record for about 128 minutes before creating a gapless new file. 230,169 Frames

    1920 x 1080 / 23.976 will record for 158 minutes before creating a gapless new file. approximately 228,385 Frames

    These are the only frame rates I’m working with. I’m curious if anyone else has any knowledge and what this largely useless information means to anyone.

    Sincerely,
    Richard Martz

    MagicMartz Media
    Atlanta, GA

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    Richard Martz replied 12 years, 3 months ago 1 Member · 0 Replies
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