Android 11: You Can Finally Record Videos more than 4 GB

Posted on

Android does not allow to record videos weighing more than 4 GB but this could change with Android 11. XDA Developers has just noticed changes in the code of the next version of Android which remove this limitation which was introduced in 2014.

Recording videos in 4K resolution at 30 fps is becoming more widespread. More and more smartphones now offer this feature and with the arrival of the SoC Snapdragon 865 in 2020 , recording at 8K will become a reality. Ditto for the Exynos 990 of the future Galaxy S11 . Limiting the weight of videos to 4 GB is clearly starting to become problematic. And that Google has understood. Today, 4K video at 30 fps reaches 4 GB in about 12 minutes. If you continue recording, you will find that your gallery contains several different files for the same video.

For example, a 75-minute recording will be split into 7 different files, without the user noticing a break at the time of capture. It is still possible to combine these files into a single video but for this it is necessary to use a third-party application.

Upcoming changes in Android 11

According to the description of a new commit in the Gerrit of Android Open Source Project (AOSP) spotted by the XDA Developers, Google is in the process of updating the multimedia classes of Android, going from a base of 32 -bit to 64-bit, which will allow the OS to  “compose / muxer files larger than 4 GB (2 ^ 32 bytes)” . Clearly, the manufacturers will record videos of more than 4 GB without dividing them into several separate files.

During tests, Google managed to compose a file of around 32 GB at first. In another test, the firm was even able to fill the entire storage capacity of a smartphone with a single video recording reports XDA Developers. In theory, the recordings could reach a size of 2 ^ 64 bytes , or more than 18 million terabytes, a threshold that the storage capacity of smartphones may never be able to reach. It is likely that Google still sets a reasonable limit for the weight of videos, providing sufficient margin for recordings of several hours at very high resolutions.