Filmed using a VIO POV.1.5, more product information is available here.

The issue with the Invalid Clips have frustrated a few of our customers on more than one occasion. Some of the causes are accidental or random. The only two that can be completely preventable are invalid clips caused by bad SD cards and bad batteries. Honestly if you are willing to pay for the POV.1 please spend the extra $10 or $20 on a decent SD card. Is it really worth loosing one of your coolest rides ever? Post after the jump.

Powerloss

This includes loss of battery connection or from an unstable power connection. The
POV Power adapter can produce an invalid clip when it becomes dislodged from
the cigarette lighter receptacle. Power loss can be tricky, so I have included
more information below.

SD card failure

Lower end SD cards including Kingston, PNY, Patriot, have higher reported instances of failure and we have seen this with other SD cards in the same price range. Here is why: We think that these cards may not write data to memory at a consistent rate and speed.

Any SD card rated below “Class 4” can generate invalid clips

Here is the technical detail (but the lesson here is that price = quality and Class
4 SD cards are worth their price for the quality and reliability they provide).
Today, these brands are known to perform well with the POV.1 (Sandisk Extreme
III or IV and Lexar cards). Now the boring technical details: The SD Card Association mandated a new Class system for speed ratings. These classes represent the minimum speed the card can write to memory. A Class 4 card is guaranteed to write to memory at a rate of 4MB/s or higher. The POV.1 needs a transfer rate of 3.5MB/s and thus only Class 4 and above cards will write fast enough. One problem is that, some of the cheaper SD cards rated at Class 4 are not up to the specification.

Signal Loss

Cable becomes disconnected. If the Digital AV cable is disconnected while the user is recording video the clip/loop that was being recorded will become an invalid file.

In rare instances, Invalid Clip could stem from these issues:

Old firmware

Users should check to be sure they are using Firmware version 1.3 or above. Older versions may produce invalid clips because the POV.1 cannot read all formatted cards from a computer. To check if your firmware is updated, go to the Setting Menu and click to the left. If you need to upgrade your firmware, go to: www.vio-pov.com

Old/damaged batteries or low-end NiMH

We have a theory about different battery types and occurrences of Invalid Clip. Here it goes: NiMH rechargeable batteries will give of a consistent voltage until the batteries are just about out of power. With alkaline batteries the voltage will steadily decrease as the battery runs out of power. Since this steady decrease is constant and mostly universal, the POV.1 battery gauge will represent this voltage decrease. Since NiMH batteries have a steady voltage of 1.2v (this is also why NiMH appear to only be ¾ full) the unit will not know to save the video clip and shut down properly, resulting in an invalid clip). (WE HAVE NOT FULLY TESTED THIS!!!!)

Component Short

If a wire shorts in the image head, AV cable, or Recording Unit then the POV.1 will make an invalid clip.