Ok, Thanks for the start of diagnosing what i can do with this camera.
At first this was several years ago now we flew this camera on one of our High Altitude balloons. With a 16 gig card and it taking a picture every, 15 seconds. a slide show i made into a video and is posted on you tube, you can watch it there.
NSS-48-SlideShow.aviOk now onto video mode
Now this camera has a capability that i have not found any other camera can do. and that is even while it is recording. the out put composite video is live! AWESOME! It is sending out composite video while it is recording!
A 16 gig card it says can store a little over 2 hours of video. but i was not sure of what happens when the card gets full. or the batteries run out. so I ran this test.
I tested the camera many ways before flight.
Like this was with a 2 GIG card. Diddn't want to wait for over 2 hours to see what happens when the memory card gets full. But with a 2 gig card this only takes 17 minutes.
OK,
Test #1- What happens when card gets full while recording?
Nothing, it gets to the end, a message appears, and says memory card is full. And stops recording, but the composite output keeps outputting. And the video is fine and saved on the SD Card.
Very Good.
Test #2- What happens if the batteries die while recording?
Same thing. it gets to the point where the battery low indicator has been flashing for a long time. and then stops recording. And the camera shuts down. But the video file is fine and saved ok. But the camera does shut down. so the composite video stops.
So this looks great for our flight.
But this is what happened during the flight..
You can see liftoff from the payload here,
NSS-50Launch.wmvand a nice news item from a local TV station,
http://video.nbc15.com/global/video/flash/popupplayer.asp?ClipID1=4808737&h1=VIDEO%3A+Balloon+Captures+Images+from+Space+6pm+news+5%2F22%2F2010&vt1=v&at1=News&d1=40656&LaunchPageAdTag=News&fvCatNo&backgroundImageURL&activePane=info&rnd=79808412Launch happened and everything is fine. 40 minutes into the flight. I see the message (busy) this it does when it's saving the last of a file and closing it. And after the busy went away, it stopped recording but was still acting as a camera for the ATV transmitter. so Ok, Not great but still good images from the ATV tranny.
Then about two minutes later the signal go to black. Transmitter is still transmitting.. but it's transmitting a solid perfect black picture. not one sparkie or nothing! GRRRR! This would be some awesome clear video. oh well.
Flight finishes and payload is recovered, and upon opening it is noticed that the camera is still runing. hmmmm? it has not shut down.
It was a 16 gig card and it only has used 4 gigs of it.
sooo anyone have any idea as to what happened? anyone willing to take a guess?
Is the above mentioned 2 Gig a size limiting factor? but actually was 4 Gig?
And if this is indeed the case. could a script be made that tells it to shoot say 30 minutes of video, save it,, shoot 30 more, save it, shoot 30 more, and do so till memory is all used up? a possibility to fix this problem?
Thanks
Joe
Joe WB9SBD
