Comments on: how to prevent and fix loss of recording time on a flip ultra video camera

By: Danielle

Danielle — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 23:40:16 +0000

Thank you SO much! I am borrowing one of my teachers flip cams and it had 48 minutes when I got it. Then it had 48 because I didn’t delete them properly.

By: Jim

Jim — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 22:18:05 +0000

Worked on the first Generation Flip as well!! Thank you !!

By: Shantanu

Shantanu — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 00:11:55 +0000

I also have a Mac and dragged files to my trash, then disconnected the flip without emptying out the trash. I had 1hr and 20 min left on my 2hr flip. I reconnected to my Mac, emptied my trash can, and then disconnected the flip, and it had 2hr back on it

By: Kevin

Kevin — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 21:48:21 +0000

Problem solved,thanks a lot!

By: sumi Helal

sumi Helal — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 04:52:46 +0000

Bill Wolff’s fix is only working solution I could find. But informed by his fix, I decided to try a way to avoid having to use a PC for this job. It worked quite well. Here is what needs to be done.

1. Start a terminal on your mac
2. cd /Volumes You will see a volume named FLIPVIDEO
3. cd FLIPVIDEO
4. list all files including hidden files using the -a switch by issuing this command: ls -al
5. You will see a file named .Trash (you may also see a file named ._.Trash, but you should focus only on .Trash
6. cd .Trash
7. ls and you will see a directory (may be more than one). In my case I found a directory named numerically.
8. Whatever you find remove. This require the command rm -rf
9. Eject the FLIPDRIVE volume from any Finder window
10. Now you have your full hour (two hours in my case).

By: Cheryl

Cheryl — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 09:43:58 +0000

Works like a charm! Thank you!

By: Pete

Pete — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 20:15:43 +0000

Thanks Bill! A very helpful tutorial that should be highlighted on the Flip site.

By: Adi da Great

Adi da Great — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 14:35:06 +0000

You are awesome! I’ve only had 10 minutes recording time on my FLIPVID for over 6 months…YOU SAVED ME THE PURCHASE OF A NEW 1…Thx for the GREAT HEADS UP!!!!

By: Tamara

Tamara — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 00:43:38 +0000

Thanks for the advice! It worked beautifully! It took 10 seconds to fix! I was ready to go buy a new one! You saved me a great deal of money!!!!

By: Don

Don — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 22:53:55 +0000

On my Mac, I opened the flip disc on the desktop, deleted the DCIM folder. This will delete your videos, so save them first. Then I ejected the camera. When you record a video, it replaces the DCIM folder, and at least for me, it restored the full record time. Hope that helps.

By: Sarah

Sarah — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 17:22:32 +0000

Thank you so much for posting this! This problem has occurred with two of our project’s cameras. Your directions worked like a charm and I now have the full 60 minutes available.

By: Ginger

Ginger — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 17:15:42 +0000

Holy smokes, you made my day. Embarrassing videos from Thankgiving, here we come!!

By: Bee

Bee — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 00:33:44 +0000

Thanks soooooo much…This was just what the doctor ordered; simple and fast. Thanks again mt friend.

By: nancy in nyc

nancy in nyc — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 20:40:33 +0000

I really appreciate you taking the time to post this. I only have a Mac but as soon as I can I will fix it on a friend’s PC. Thank you.

By: DGC

DGC — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 23:41:44 +0000

Thanks a bunch for that. I had that Flip storage-loss problem for half a year now and your steps worked great. Much appreciated.

Submitted it to Stumble as well. Hope you don’t mind.

By: Lolly

Lolly — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 01:28:49 +0000

So happy! Worked on my Flip Mino, I was down to 24 minutes. I had looked at other answers but decided to try this first and it was so easy!

By: Bill

Bill — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 05:07:32 +0000

@Keith Thanks for sharing that. You know, I did the same on my wife’s PC when reformating would fix the Flip, but didn’t think about doing the same on the Mac. I’ll give it a try in the future.

@Giovanni, et al: Great! I’m glad it worked for you. It took a while to get this info from Flip and I didn’t want others to have to go through the same process for what is such an easy fix.

By: Giovanni

Giovanni — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 05:02:58 +0000

Sooo glad you took the time to post this. I have the filp HD 2 hours and it read 45min. Now, after your post it reads 2 hours again. THANKS so much.

By: Keith PW

Keith PW — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 18:27:52 +0000

I was actually able to do this today on my FLIP Ultra cameras using a Mac (Disc Utility).

I made a disc image of one of them to preserve the programs and installs on it. Then, formatted an Ultra as FAT-32. It wiped it and remounted it. Then, I did a restore to it using the disc image that I’d previously made. We’re running OS10.5, so it may be unique to the newer Disc Utility Program, but I was able to do it.

By: Dab

Dab — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 21:38:13 +0000

Thanks this worked like a charm on my flip HD Ultra.

By: Micha

Micha — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 19:05:02 +0000

Thanks so much.
Helped me as I panicked today, having deleted all videos but only having 40mins left out of my 2 hours!!!

By: Eric Zorn

Eric Zorn — Mon, 10 May 2010 05:05:46 +0000

Thanks. This is a really useful .. Way better than this:
http://www.myflip.co.uk/2010/05/08/flip-lost-its-record-time/

By: Hannah

Hannah — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 19:19:41 +0000

Incredibly helpful! Thanks very much.