TECH

Android 11 beta raises the 4 GB video size limit

A few days ago, Google released the first public beta version of the Android 11 mobile operating system. Although it is still a trial version of the software platform, it brings many new features and improvements. One of these improvements was the abolition of the 4 GB limit on the size of recorded videos.
It is unlikely that some Android smartphone users would have imagined the possibility of recording videos larger than 4 GB on the device's camera for several years. However, since the advent of support for video recording in 4K and 8K formats, it only takes a few minutes to overcome that mark. Despite this, Android used the old restriction, which divided the video into parts if the volume exceeded 4 GB. Since 64-bit file systems can process files up to 16 TB in size, it is unclear why Android used the obsolete API, which was put into operation in the days of old versions of Android.
The developers started talking about the need to lift this restriction in 2015. However, the first mention of this possibility appeared only at the end of last year, when enthusiasts examined the code of the future Android 11 program. The source notes that, although the restriction on the size of recorded video files has been lifted, many applications do not yet support this feature. For example, Google Camera still splits the recording into files if its size exceeds 4 GB, but the widespread Open Camera application does not. Obviously, when the stable version of Android 11 is released, many applications will be able to record video without restrictions on the file size.

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