Introduction

I am using a Flip Camcorder…

Figure 1: The Flip

… to make funny videos like this one:

Recently I ran into a problem where I deleted all files in the Flip, and instead of getting the expected 30 minutes time left I only had about 3 minutes left to record. I found a bunch of strange advise on the internet and decided to share the trick that did it for me. It is actually really simple.

Note: I am using Windows 7 as my operating system. If you use a different OS try to transfer the steps to your environment. The key information is to delete some hidden folder and files. The Flip is also used by my wife, who is using a Apple iMac with Snow Leopard.

Figure 2: Only 3:48 minutes left, but I deleted all the files in the DCIM folder using the Explorer :-(

To get you out of your misery plug in the Flip camcorder into a USB port and open the Windows Explorer again. Click on the FLIPVIDEO drive which has on my computer the drive letter E:. This will list the “visible” content of the drive.

Figure 3: The visible content of the FLIPVIDEO drive

To make the invisible content visible go the the Organize button that is located on the blue ribbon all the way to the left. Click on it and select the Folders and search options menu item.

Figure 4: Go to Organize and Folder and search options

In the Folder Options dialog click on the View tap. On an new system it should look like this.

Figure 5: Default folder settings

Now click on the “Show hidden files, folders and drives” radio button. And also un-check the “Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)” check box.

Figure 6. Make hidden files visible

After this change we should see files and folder that we haven’t noticed before. Here in my case it is the .Trashes folder and the ._.Trashes file.

Figure 7: Files and folders that start with dots are now visible

For example the .Trashes folder is in my case about 800 mega bytes big.

Figure 8: My .Trashes folder is about 800 MB in size

Next delete the files and folders that start with a dot. Here in my case I deleted .Trashes or ._.Trashes.

Figure 9: Deleting the hidden files.

Unplug your Flip and turn it on. It should now show the full Time left. In my case it is 30:00 minutes.

Figure 10: All the Time is left on my Flip now

Ausblick

As a good practice I recommend to revert the settings in the Folder and File options that made the hidden files visible.