Comments on: Flip Mino HD. Empty. Time Left: 3:33. What?

By: Alex

Alex — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 03:15:05 +0000

@bn: I’ve read about others doing that; glad it worked for you. I’ve seen postings around online from others who tried the same thing and weren’t successful for whatever reason. Thanks for commenting and sharing your solution.

By: bn

bn — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 02:27:38 +0000

on a mac, i solved this problem by pulling all the files from the flip drive to my hard drive, and then i opened disk utility and formatted it. then i copied the files back in, and the camera works now.

By: Alex

Alex — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 03:22:50 +0000

Sylvia: Thanks for finding us, and glad you’re up and running. Also a big thanks for the iSquint pointer. I don’t use my Mino on a Mac at all, so I’m not really in a great position to offer much workflow or troubleshooting advice. iSquint does look to be free, and digging around, I see that it’s used pretty successfully for just the kind of thing you’re doing with it. I’d say you got some good advice from the Apple Genius.

The only other thing I have to wonder about is whether all or part of that process could be scripted/automated. Maybe another question to pose to a Genius next time you’re in a store?

Unless the disk in the Mino is damaged in some way, you really should be able to get all of the space back. Maybe there are other files still hanging out there somewhere. Make sure you’re also finding any loose invisible “dot files” (they start with a period) that may be hanging out. See the previous comment left for Winston and michael on showing those hidden files. The MacWorld article linked therein is a great resource for more info, too. Good luck (and feel free to write again if you need more assistance)!

By: Sylvia

Sylvia — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 02:33:28 +0000

Alex, one other thing. I had the darned-nest time trying to figure out how to import the .avi Flip Mino files into iMovie. Met with a “Genius” at Apple today and even he had a hard time figuring it out. This is what we came up with (do you have an easier solution?):

- Download iSquint:
- http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/19769/isquint
- Find it in Applications and launch it. A rectangle window should appear
- Check off “Optimize for TV”
- Insert your FlipMino camera by its USB port
- If the iPhoto window pops up, just close it
- Open your Flip video application
- Find your video (in DCIM folder, then 100VIDEO folder)
- Drag the video into the iSquint window
- Click “Start”
- When you hear the bell and a window pops up that says “Conversion complete”, click “Okay”. The .mp4 file will show up in the same 100VIDEO folder you found the original .avi file in. Drag the .mp4 file onto your desktop.
- Now open up iMovie.
- Go to File, Import, Movies, Desktop, click on your .mp4 file and then “Import”.
- VOILA! Your .mp4 should be in your iMovie project!

By: Sylvia

Sylvia — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 01:29:31 +0000

Hey Alex,

I also want to send my thanks. Couldn’t for the life of me figure out why I only had 31 minutes left on my Flip mino when I had deleted all the videos on it. Interestingly enough, I am a new Mac user and this never happened to my Flip mino when I was on a PC.

Some more words of advice: I tried everything you suggested and the time still didn’t go back to 60 minutes. So then I realized that I had to actually EMPTY THE TRASH on my Mac…. go figure!!!! Then my time went back up to 56 minutes. Still not 60 minutes. Looking again at the folders on my mino, I saw this MUSIC folder….. WHAT???? I opened it up and found a bunch of songs…. where the heck did these come from???? I recognized them as my music, but still…. how did they get on my Flip Mino? I deleted them and then found another folder on the Flip Mino called “FOUND.100″. I deleted these files (which end in .chk) and now I’m up to 58 minutes. There are probably more things hiding in the Flip Mino somewhere but I’m pretty happy with 58 minutes of recording time. Thank you so much!!!

By: Alex

Alex — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 18:00:40 +0000

@Elle: Glad you found us and that we could help you.

By: Elle

Elle — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 22:49:25 +0000

I, along with everyone else, had the same problem, and am grateful to have found you through Google. You saved me a lot of headache!

By: Alex

Alex — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 15:31:31 +0000

@Winston, @michael: There are special utilities, but I don’t think they do anything more than typing this into a Terminal window and pressing Enter:

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES

To undo this change and re-hide your dot files (eg .Trashes) and other system folders, re-enter this command changing the YES to NO. After each time, you’ll need to restart the Finder so the change takes effect. One way: hold down the Option key, then click and hold on the Finder icon in the Dock. When the contextual menu appears, select Relaunch and the Finder will restart.

You can find the full details on how to do this (including warnings on why you don’t want to leave it set to YES), at

http://www.macworld.com/article/51830/2006/07/showallfinder.html

Hope this helps everyone using OSX, and my apologies for not providing such info sooner; we use OSX here, but not with the Flip camera, so we never thought to include it.

By: michael

michael — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 09:06:57 +0000

I have a Mac, and don’t understand how to do the fix. The fix of “emptying the trash” does not work for me. I cannot find the trashes directory, nor can I find anything in the DCIM directory to delete. Suggestions?

By: Winston

Winston — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 04:17:58 +0000

I just wanted to thank you for the assistance. I had this issue because I manually deleted video files from my macbook. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how the the camera’s memory could be deteriorating so quickly, but you solved it. (I ultimately had to download a special file explorer so that I could see the .Trashes directory.) Thanks again!!

By: Alex

Alex — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 20:17:27 +0000

@wringz: I just stumbled across that video recently myself. As alluded to in my reply to papavert, I’d be careful recommending that solution to everyone, but since the folks at Flip are only confident enough to provide a 90-day warranty on their hardware, sometimes you have to just go for it. You’re certainly welcome for whatever help we were able to provide.

By: wringz

wringz — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 13:55:24 +0000

Just closed my trouble ticket to flip with a link to your page and this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYc8N3dmxhU

(I didn’t even watch the video, just the info)

God bless the internet! Thanks for the help!

By: Alex

Alex — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 15:13:21 +0000

@papavert: Glad you got it working again. As for straight formatting the unit, when I was researching this I found people had issues after doing a format as you describe, even rendering the device (temporarily?) useless in some cases.. It was never clear to me which units could or could not be safely formatted, so I opted not to try or recommend it. I’m happy to hear it worked out for you, though.

By: papavert

papavert — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 16:24:29 +0000

Hi Alex et al,
After toiling for 5 days, mailing them to no avail,
I formated the Mino, and it miraculously recovered its lost memory with no problem.
why hasn’t anyone thought of that, when one lacks the other alternatives?
Why have they not fixed that stupid problem for a supposedly easy camera to use?
thank you anyway to all as you were informative.
my decision is not to buy or recommend the Mino to anyone, until I receive a free new model!

By: papavert

papavert — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 11:32:24 +0000

Exactly the same problem with my Mino hd.
I had lent it to my daughter who is 2300 miles away, and
1- I do not have access to the file they mention before three months
and 2- she has deleted the files not knowing the Flip’s tricky system.
Flip should have easier solution to an obviously common problem.
I think this is a bug where they toiled to try to fix it
anybody with a solution to my woes?

By: Alex

Alex — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 10:07:35 +0000

@Eric: Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s a sure-fire procedure that covers “not making this problem happen again.” Deleting items via the camera’s own interface or via the FlipShare software should, in theory, be error-proof. Quite a lot of evidence out there that it’s not, however.

I’ve not yet given any 2nd-gen Minos/Ultras/etc a shot yet, but I’m guessing there hasn’t been much in the way of improvements as far as the issues you describe are concerned. My impression is that PureDigital is quite satisfied if the unit lasts the duration of the (frankly pathetic, non-confidence-inspiring) 90-day warranty they provide.

Thanks for your comment.

By: Eric

Eric — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:14:51 +0000

For the sake of clarity, what is the exact correct procedure to remove videos from the camera? Specifically related to not making this problem happen again? I have to agree that it’s pretty ridiculous for me to be in the mac os x terminal so I can use a cheapo consumer camera marketed on the idea that it’s easy to use. Does this mean I have to use their own flipshare software anytime I want to download videos? I vaguely remembering dropping these into iphoto or something at the time, thinking, “well this flip software is horrible and clunky!”

By: Alex

Alex — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 06:10:51 +0000

@edward: I’m not 100% on this, but I want to say I’ve read the reset hole was a later feature not present in 1st-gen units.

The earlier comment I left for David above (direct link here) regarding using CHKDSK might still help you purge corrupted data and recover your recording time.

Good luck, and thanks for stopping by/commenting.

By: edward clay

edward clay — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 13:49:02 +0000

thanks for the info, but it did not work for me. i have a 1st gen flip with 60 min hard drive, running xp, and i emptied the trash, but it did not work. also could not find the reset button in the tripod mount. is this only on the HD model?

By: Alex

Alex — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:43:45 +0000

@Martin: You’re quite welcome.

@Skemps: Hope you got it worked out.