Video stops recording in the stock camera app (leading to missed baby moments 😢)

Tech Support
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I have an adorable baby, a shiny new tripod, and an iPhone 12 Pro Max. The perfect setup for catching cute moments so that we can share them with all the desperate locked-down family across the country. (Seriously, this baby hasn’t met anyone but her parents and healthcare providers! Weird world.)

Except… recording has been unreliable. The phone seems to quit recording after random durations.

So, I’ll have it all set up and be recording e.g., baby’s first taste of peanut butter and seeing her smile, only to later find that 1/3rd of the way through the video had stopped and the moment isn’t there.

Instead, when I return to the phone, I’ve encountered either the camera showing black (e.g., nothing in the “viewfinder”) or the camera app has been backgrounded.

“Frustrating” doesn’t quite describe it.

Has anyone else experienced this? Any guesses?

My assumption is user error—perhaps I’m inadvertently disabling it somehow. The tripod clamp comes down kinda close to the down-volume button, so maybe pressure causes that button to trigger. But the black screen and exited app symptoms don’t fit with this…

(It isn’t storage. 256gb phone, half-full.)

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I have found that the iPhone camera will launch when I don’t want it to and quit / exit too easily.

99% chance that you’re accidentally hitting a button (at least that’s what it always seems to be for me) and the screen is going off.

That being said, I have not tried recording for long durations with my iPhone, so I can’t say how it might act. Might be something to test: just set it somewhere you can see the screen and let it run for awhile pointed at the wall and see what happens.

I would recommend during on Do Not Disturb and Airplane Mode when recording, as those are grĂŤat ways to interrupt recordings!

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Good call. Will set up a “Babymode” shortcut for DND / airplane mode / anything else I can think of post-haste.

Then, some science experiments… I’ll test recording with/without tripod in various conditions.

Thanks!

4

Do you have backtap switched on? Is there a chance you’re accidentally invoking something?

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I do, but the phone is literally sitting still in the tripod a foot away. Maybe some kinda Shortcuts Automation is getting in the way, but there hasn’t been a correlation with any notifications of the sort.

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Airplane mode might be needed. I have had recording cut out when a phone call came in. I was recording worship for my church, actually the “close up” of my sermon, and I felt the call come through on my watch, but the phone was silenced, so I kept on going. Then I found that the recording had stopped when the call came through, so i had to re-record. That led to “Airplane Mode” being used for when I was recording worship! (Although I do allow phone calls to come through on DND.)

Hope this helps! And don’t worry, as awesome as recorded baby moments are, the “live in person” baby moments are even better!

-Eric

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A lot of SLR type cameras stop video recording at 29minutes 59 seconds, possibly because if they record longer they have to pay a higher import tariff on video cameras. I’m pretty sure that won’t be your problem on the iPhone

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