Long video issue

Former Member over 11 years ago

First post, search bar kept saying to be more specific so sorry if this has been covered..

I recorded around 3.5hours of constant footage on a virb elite, on a kayaking trip this weekend, i checked the dashboard on a few occasions throughout the trip and every time it was on and seemingly functioning fine. Towards the end of the trip it said battery low and then when i got off the river it had died.
I got home and recharged to try and watch the footage, what i found was one 25 minute video and 4 or 5 more videos which were 0:00 long and just black. Upon inspection on my pc it showed all the videos including the one which worked were the same file size and they all had an adjoining .gpx file.

Can anyone shed light onto why this happened and maybe help me recover the footage?

Thanks
Ben

0 Former Member over 11 years ago

I don't have a VIRB yet, but I've heard others about it.
It seems the VIRB saves the video as one file at the end of the recording.
When the battery fails, the last video can't be saved.
I can't check this but others probably will inform you (and me).

0 Former Member over 11 years ago

When battery goes low, the virb will power itself off in a controlled manner, meaning all video and sensor data is saved properly before turned off. So I don't think that is the issue here.

However, there has been reported that now and then the virb has been failing when creating a new videofile (4GB limit, when passing that a new file is created) resulting in 0 byte files. I have also had issues with the virb hanging now and then, forcing me to reboot it with a long press on the power button. When doing that, the last video recorded is lost and seen as a 0 byte file. I have not been able to find any "lost" data on the SD card when trying a rescue after that has happened.

Having said that, I have so far only seen this happening with firmware 2.80 and 3.00. A week ago I updated to 3.10 and so far it feels much more stable. Haven't had any issue with hanging or 0 byte files since then. Not that I have used it a lot in the past week, but at least a couple of hours recording.

/Thomas

0 Former Member over 11 years ago

I've done at least 3 35-minute recordings in 720p 60fps this week, each resulting in two video/GPX files due to the 4GB limit. It's not as long recordings as you did, but at least the first "cutover" in each have worked without any issues so far. I'll see if I can let it drain the battery recording and see how it behaves.

I've seen Virb Edit developers here. If they pass on firmware issues reported here to the right people I don't know. As this is the place where most aspects of the Virb seem to be discussed, one could hope that Garmin folks at least monitor what is being said.

/Thomas

0 Former Member over 11 years ago

I had the same problem a couple of times after upgrading (2.8 & 3.1). Both times I managed to fix the problem by manually deleting video & ride data i.e. everything in:
/DCIM/100_VIRB (mp4s)
/Garmin/Activity (fit files)
/Garmin/GPX (gpx files)
Reformatting your card should work too.
Hope that helps..