BlackBerry® Storm™

[VeryBerry]

I would love to take credit for this discovery but the one who figured it out was a client of mine. When I saw that he had a Storm I tested his phone to prove that it locks up during video recording. So I went into the camera app and selected Video Camera from the menu key. Sure enogh, 26 sec. into recording the image froze and the red light continued blinking as we all have come to expect. Then, when you press the pause button in this situation the phone completely locks up requiring a soft reset(battery pull).

Fast forward to today... my client calls the office and says he found a way to video record without it locking up!

Instead of going at it from the camera application, make sure that no other processes are running (to have max. resources available). Press the menu key and select the Applications button. Then select Video Camera and record from there. I recorded a 3 min. video with no issues using this method. Apparently going at it from the camera application hangs up the phone cause maybe the camera app is still running in memory in the background? So go ahead and give this "fix" a thorough test and let's see if we found the solution to this nagging problem.

[ProcrustesX]

Thanks.

Could you also post your fix here:

http://supportforums.blackberry.com/rim/board/message?board.id=9500&thread.id=1769

[ProcrustesX]

Nevermind linking. I just did that, and gave you kudos.

11 minute video, with your fix, and counting

Edit:  Bad news:  I was recording for 20:55 minutes, and stopped recording.  Everything looked fine, and then I hit "play" and I got an unexpected error, unable to save video.

Message Edited by ProcrustesX on 12-17-2008 04:13 PM

[VeryBerry]

Nevertheles, a 20+ minute video is a huge improvement over a frozen phone after 20 sec. of use. At least this new evidence sorta reassures me that this is looking more like a software bug than a hardware defect.

[ProcrustesX]

Well, so far, I have working videos up to 10 minutes. I'm doing another 20 minute test right now.

It is an improvement, as you say, and a good sign, but it's unfortunate that I cannot use the video recorder with any reliability until (if) an update actually fixes it.

I'll keep this thread updated with my tests.

One thing to note.When you're done taking a video, and it reverts to the video screen to let you keep going, close out of that screen, and I think the video will be preserved. One issue I had was that I had tried to "play" the video while still in the video recorder screen (which is an option), and that's when I got the error. So, don't try to play a video in the video player application. Close that app if you want to review a video. More updates to follow if I discover more.

UPDATE:  I just got a slightly over 20 minute video to work just fine.

Message Edited by ProcrustesX on 12-17-2008 06:32 PM

[VeryBerry]

Unfortunately I tried it again and only got just over a minute and a half before the video froze. I was able to keep the phone from freezing by pressing the back button but I got an unreckognized file error. I was recording in a very dimly lit room so maybe that had something to do with it by pushing the processor as the lens struggles to keep focus and white balance settings in tune?

[rovermon]

I had the same problem with my Storm. The problem is with Your phones application's permissions. Go to your phone's settings, then advanced options, Applications, then highlight BlackBery Core applications and hit Ur menu options key And select the "edit permissions" option. Under Ur permissions option For "interactions" make sure the setting for "record" is set to "Allow" If it reads "Deny" then your phone will freeze when using your video camera. I hope this helps.

[jnettik]

well as far as the permissons fix i've had no luck with that. it still froze after a couple seconds. i did have a little luck with turning off all the connections and then trying to record. it recorded more regularly but still froze every so often. though instead of hitting pause on a freeze when i hit the back button it saved the file and it was still able to play what i had already recorded.

[lrsachs]

Ditto here on the freezing and the permissions fix not working.  Despite the upbeat tone of this post, it's disappointing that video is not working consistently.  Even these workarounds, turning off all other applications, connections etc., are basically kludgy and not really making it work the way it should.  Changing permissions did enable it to record without freezing, but then I got an error when trying to save it..."Unexpected erro. The video cannot be saved."  not happy. 

[Samsho5]

I was starting to have better success when I started to save drectly to the phone, then it really got buggy with the screen flickering with almost a splitscreen and would show the time on the right side(normal) to the left side. anything from the devs on this yet?...err is there a dev blog somewhere?

...wow, even my homescreen is split now ( ...reboot again.

Message Edited by Samsho5 on 04-17-2009 10:56 AM