EOS 5D Mark IV "Video recording has stopped automatically"

[TheTaylorCherie]

I have been shooting 4K 29.97fps with my Canon 5D Mark IV for over a year now without any problems. I use a SanDisk 1TB Extreme PRO SDXC UHS-I Memory Card and typically film for quite awhile (probably about 30 minutes) before having to restart.

Just this week I have started getting the “video recording has been stopped automatically”message. This happens very sporadically, sometimes 10 seconds, 3 minutes, 6 minutes, etc.

I have tried several “fixes,” to no avail:
Testing other SD cards (same issue occurs)
Switching to 4K 23.98fps (same issue occurs)
Switching to FHD (works normally)
Updating firmware
Cleaning SD card slot

Why is my camera suddenly not able to shoot 4K?

[TheTaylorCherie]

I think it is overheating. I noticed the flashing bars. I shoot in a studio environment using live view with EOS Utility 3. I heard live view can cause overheating. The temperature is always about 68 degrees though. I’ve never had issues before. Any ideas?

[stevet1]

TheTaylorCherie,

I think all video is in Live View isn't it? I mean, you can't shoot video through your viewfinder, can you?

I couple of suggestions I ran across were to pull your LCD screen out away from the body of the camera. The screen itself generates a lot of heat, and it just feeds that heat back into the camera.

Another suggestion was to open as many doors on the camera as you can, like the card door to let the heat out.

Several people said that the hottest part of the whole operation is the battery. Some suggested getting a battery grip so that you put some space between the battery and the camera. They also suggested that you take the battery out between shooting sessions, to allow it and the camera to cool down quicker.

Also, turn your camera off between shooting sessions

I don't know why 4K is different, unless it has to do with the larger file sizes, and a slow write speed of your card.

Steve Thomas

[TheTaylorCherie]

Hi,

Yes, video shooting is all Live View. Unfortunately, I don’t have a detachable LCD screen. My camera also automatically turns off when the SD card or battery door is opened. I ordered a dummy battery to test the overheating theory. 

I was looking through the manual and noticed that the flashing bars are actually the writing indicator. These flash very quickly, then the camera stops shooting and the message appears. But both of my SD cards are 200 mb/s, only about a year old, and never did this before. 

[p4pictures]

Have you formatted the cards in the camera with low level format selected? It could be that over time the card becomes fragmented a format should resolve that.

I'm not sure what is the maximum capacity card for the EOS 5D Mark IV is, so I would try a smaller card - say 128GB and see if that solves the issue too.

Lastly the amount of compression for a video and hence what has to be written does get impacted by noise and higher ISO. Shooting at higher ISO makes the frames harder to compress and results in larger files written to the card. 

[stevet1]

TheTaylorCherie,
There was also the business about shooting in 8-bit rather than 10-bit, but that stuff is kind of out of my league.
Brian alluded to it when he was talking about compression techniques.
Steve Thomas