Zoom Q8 help please

[Lizziefin]

I liked the idea of this camera for filming a band I follow. Gigs and rehearsals etc. However, I am finding 2 particularly odd results.
I filmed their gig last night, I split the recording into 4 separate recordings and there are four files showing on the card via the camera. But, when I take the SD Card out and put it in the computer, there are 8 separate MOV files? They split the 4 files in random places? What is happening and how do I fix it? I’m using a Mac Book Pro.

The other issue is the sound quality, if I playback through the camera using headphones it sound brilliant. When the videos are uploaded via the SD Card to Dropbox via Camera Uploads the sound is not very good, very tinny with little bass.

What am I doing wrong? I’m using SD cards from the approved list. I hope someone can help. I’m a total novice with this technology. Thanks in advance.

[Wulfraed]

I filmed their gig last night, I split the recording into 4 separate recordings and there are four files showing on the card via the camera. But, when I take the SD Card out and put it in the computer, there are 8 separate MOV files? They split the 4 files in random places? What is happening and how do I fix it? I’m using a Mac Book Pro.

Did you format the card using the Q8 before using it? And what size card is it? Also, having the exact directory listing could potentially help (no promises)... Presuming OS X followed UNIX-like command like utilities

ls -l

in the directory of the card should give that information, which could be cut&pasted into a post.

The other issue is the sound quality, if I playback through the camera using headphones it sound brilliant. When the videos are uploaded via the SD Card to Dropbox via Camera Uploads the sound is not very good, very tinny with little bass.

How are you viewing these? If you are playing from Dropbox as a streaming video, it is possible that there is some reencoding/recompression being applied to manage data bandwidth. The way to test this would be to redownload (not stream) the file and play it locally -- I would hope Dropbox doesn't modify files on pure up/download.

[Lizziefin]

Did you format the card using the Q8 before using it? And what size card is it? Also, having the exact directory listing could potentially help (no promises)... Presuming OS X followed UNIX-like command like utilities

I did use the Q8 before using. Its a 64GB SanDisk Extreme Pro.

The files on the card show as:

ZOOM0001.MOV Time 21:18
ZO010001.MOV Time 21:29
ZOOM0002.MOV Time 21:48
ZO010002.MOV Time 21:50
ZOOM0003.MOV Time 22:25
ZO010003.MOV Time 22:33
ZOOM0004.MOV Time 22:52
ZO010004.MOV Time 23.10
ZO020004.MOV Time 23.21

The camera shows these 4 files

ZOOM0001.MOV - 29:35 LENGTH
ZOOM0002.MOV - 20:42 LENGTH
ZOOM0003.MOV - 26:38 LENGTH
ZOOM0004.MOV - 48:23 LENGTH
It is so weird!

I am looking at them via Dropbox, but also straight from the card on the LapTop. The laptop shows the 9 files on the card? They also sound tinny on the Mac but really good full sound via headphones attached to the camera on playback.
I would appreciate any ideas and thank you so much for answering.I can't find a lot online about the finer points of the camera, i just see people demonstrating it and it looks and sounds awesome!

[Wulfraed]

Interesting...

Nothing in the manual even hints at a ZO## prefix on the file names.

Closest I've found is from a 1.5 years ago, on this forum... viewtopic.php?t=22828

64GB SD card should be formatted as exFAT; if it isn't, it may have a file size limit of around 2GB per file. Unfortunately, your listing is /not/ what I would consider a usable directory listing -- so I can't tell if there is some common factor. Granted, even if the card is exFAT, the Q8 may simplify its logic anyway by breaking files at some limit compatible with FAT as used on smaller cards (IE; something just below 2GB). I seem to recall that early SD card based video cameras were limited to around 18 minutes a clip (My video cameras are from the miniDV tape era, and 1 hour of video is equivalent to about 13GB of data).

[Eldon Benge]

I tried mine for the first time yesterday. There does seem to be file size limitation, but that isn’t going to affect the quality of your videos. iMovie joins the video segments seamlessly.

I have only used the Handyshare software to normalize the audio and trim the ends of the video files.

The separate wav files are a plus, IMHO.

Richard