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My Panasonic HC-V500 camcorder is great, except when I need to copy videos and delete them. If I put the SD card in the computer and delete video files, the camcorder shows a question mark for the missing files. It even does that when I remove the thumbnail files as well.

I know there is some file that maintains an index or playlist, because if I delete the whole folder structure, the files no longer appear on the camcorder as missing.

However, if I delete everything, then the file name counter is reset. Each video is named 00000.mts, then counts up for each new video. If I delete the folder structure, all the names reset and start over at 00000 (unlike my camera, which keeps a count internally that persists over different cards, so there is never any overlap).

If I tell the camcorder itself to delete specific files, it doesn't reuse those numbers. And if I manually delete all but the latest, it still continues to count from the last number. However, if I delete the last file, it will reset the counter.

How can I keep the number from the last video so that I don't have to worry about duplicate file names? You can't protect videos from the delete all function (no such function on the camcorder, and marking as read-only on the computer doesn't work), and deleting one by one in order to keep the last video is way too time consuming.

Hennes
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Stephen S
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1 Answers1

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Solution

There actually is a "Protect" function on the camcorder. It is hidden in the Video Setup screen. Simply protect the newest/last video, then use the camcorder's built-in delete-all function to delete the other videos. With your last video protected from the delete, the camcorder will continue the filename counter as desired for new videos.

Original Answer

There is a convoluted solution that will keep the video counter.

First, copy all the video files from 'private/avchd/bdmv/stream'. Do not delete them via the computer.

Next, put the card back into the camcorder. Use the Delete All function to delete the videos. This is necessary to prevent the camcorder from showing lots of question marks and saying there are missing videos (as it would have done if you had merely deleted be video files from the SD card).

Now all the videos are deleted, and the counter is reset. Put the card back into the computer. Copy over the highest numbered (ie most recent) video to the 'private/avchd/bdmv/stream' folder.

Put the card back into the camcorder. The copied video will not show up in the playback screen (the camcorder doesn't know about it). But the camcorder will not overwrite it when you record a new video, and in fact it will scan the folder, find the highest numbered video, and increment by one for its 'first' video. When you put the card back into the computer, you will see that it continued from the previous video number sequence.

The camcorder apparently looks in that folder even when it doesn't know of any videos in its index. When it sees a file, it just takes that number and increments it.

It's convoluted, but it works. Now you won't have to worry about duplicate videos, and you won't have pages of missing videos in the camcorder playback screen.

Stephen S
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