Not trying to be argumentative, but I don't think this issue is resolved and I'd love for Canon to address it. Note that I've made time lapse movies with long exposures and created video files from them manually, so I'm not a novice. I do understand about video frame rates. I understand that if I were making a video at normal speed, my exposure could never be longer than my frame rate - having a limit of 1/30 would make perfect sense for a normal speed video. But time-lapse is different.
In principle, a video frame is a photo - think of a stop action animation. I could make a normal speed video by taking a series of photos 30 times a second (with an exposure less than 1/30) and then stitching them together in a computer. It would be the same as if I had let the camera stitch them together itself in movie mode. So I don't think the photos/video frames distinction is useful in principle.
It is an undeniable fact that I (and thousands of other people) have made time-lapse movies with standard video frame rates (e.g. 30fps) with long exposures (e.g. 1 second). We did this by taking a series of photos in the camera, exporting them to a computer, and stitching them together using third-party software. In principle, the camera's software could do the work of the third-party software to render a 30fps time-lapse movie with 1 second exposures internally.
So in principle it can be done (I feel this point is beyond dispute), but maybe there is a practical reason why the camera's software isn't up to the job? Maybe that's what you mean?
