Android 11 removes the archaic 4GB cap on video recordings

[Karlston]

Android 11 removes the archaic 4GB cap on video recordings

 

If you've got an Android phone and you do a lot of video recording, you've probably noticed that there's a file size limit on how much video you can record. But as spotted by Android Police, that's going away in Android 11.

 

The limitation is leftover from the days of 32-bit devices, which couldn't handle numbers larger than 4,294,967,295. That meant that things like more than 4GB of RAM were out of the question, and of course, any files larger than 4GB. Videos that took up more than that would be split into different files.

 

This wasn't so much of an issue a decade ago, when 32-bit devices were common and HD video recording was just becoming a thing. But as the report notes, just 15 minutes of 4K 30fps video recording will take up that much space. Moreover, 4K 30fps is what we had five years ago. Since then, we've gotten 4K 60fps and 8K 30fps video capture on Android smartphones.

 

The commit to the Android Open Source Project to fix the issue was made back in December. And of course, now would be the time that it starts to make its way into an actual shipping version of Android, since Google ships once a year now.

 

 

Android 11 removes the archaic 4GB cap on video recordings

 

[zanderthunder]

This will be a good news for those who owned flagship phones. And possibly paving the way to better Android-powered OS for cameras or even camcorders, since there are few cameras powered by the same OS but with the limitations.