Comment by jfindley
2 years ago
Not really. The 30 minute limitation applies on even very high end DSLRs, but in practice this doesn't matter, because this isn't quite how DSLRs are used for video work.
In practice, video is done by using the HDMI output of the camera which will spit out continous 4k output without the 30 min limit, and without all the issues of needing to flush this to CFe/SD/XQD cards. You then caputre it on either a laptop or stand alone video capture device which will have functionally limitless storage. The sensor and processing engine is still running the whole time though, which means the camera needs to be specced to handle this (and they are). The only limitation is that you can't record to the internal storage, and as explained that doesn't matter.
A number of high end (still-centric) cameras are known for overheating problems during recording, even before the 30 minute mark is reached.
Using HDMI output and avoiding the compression and storage codecs probably helps with heat.
No doubt, but it remains that if there was a suitable market for the same camera + no record limit, even if at a premium to compensate for taxes + extra work, vendors would take notice and put in the necessary effort to engineer their devices to compensate for the heat. Without a suitable market, though, why bother? Design them only to the point that they can record for ~30 minutes and the market says that's good enough.