Diagnosis of S2iS symptoms

[koppelman]

Hello,
I have tried to record a movie for the first time using my S2iS. I do not believe I succeeded. This is a list of symptoms....

1. Although prior to shooting in movie mode, the LCD did not display the maximum recording time available, during shooting, a display of transpired time was apparent. The tally lamp stopped flashing at 8 minutes 30 seconds.

2. When camera is placed in playback mode, the LCD displays the first frame of the movie for approximately 1 second and then the display goes blank. Attempts to place the mode lever again into playback position do not ressurect the image. Turning the camera off and then back on, results in a display of the first frame of the movie for an additional one second. Then the image goes blank. Attempts to place the mode lever in shoot position no longer results in the extension of the lens. Pushing the menu button nor the function button leads to a response.

3. Attaching a USB cable from the camera to my Mac and attempting to download into iPhoto are unsuccessful. The iPhoto software recognizes a 974 MB file from the S2iS. I am prompted to import, yet the progress bar does not advance when I click "import". After one minute the computer monitor displays the message, "finishing import". No movie file is placed in the iPhoto library and a search of my hard drive does not locate the movie file.

Does this description help anyone determine what might have gone wrong?

Many thanks in advance
koppelman

[Sungrazer]

Don't know. Perhaps you should've stopped just short of the maximum recording time / file size. Although that doesn't explain why you weren't given the information about how much time you had remaining.

I just have one suggestion for you in terms of importing. I'm running Windows, so it may be different for you. In Windows, the program Windows Explorer lists the directory contents of the PC. When the camera is connected to your PC, the camera shows up as essentially another drive. If you have something similar, try browsing to it and copying your movie to your local drive manually, rather than using software to import it. May not work, but that's all I'd know to do. I actually do this with all my photos. Why? I don't like a capitalized ".JPG" extension, which is what you get with the software. If you copy them manually, they come through as ".jpg".

[Chem]

Sounds like a memory card problem to me. Looks like the camera is unable to read the memory card properly since it doesn't show how much recording time is left and the video won't play. Try doing a low level format in the camera if you haven't done that already. Also try recording at lower quality settings, because this doesn't demand such high performance from your memory card.
The 8:30 recording time is normal, because that's all the S2 can record with the best quality settings, it gives you a 1GB file (for memory cards 974MB is 1GB) and the S2 has a 1GB limit for recording movies.

[Jack]

Any chance the battery is low?

That would display the symptoms you report.

Try installing a fresh set of recharged batteries.

Jack