thanks Les, I will certainly look into the GH2 and sonys.

At present the full frame element does interest me so does anyone know if there is/will be a magic lantern hack for the 5d that will allow it to do everything you can currently do with the hacked 7d?

@David Payne - I think maybe you mis-typed. Currently Magic Lantern is only available for the 5D (with the 550D / T2i in progress.) ML development for the 7D seems to be on permanent hold. As it stands, the Canon firmware update for the 5D enables just about all of the features that ML originally made available - minus the histogram.

thanks Jeremy that clears it up.

The reason for the confusion was that I was talking about getting a 7D and someone recommended a 550d because of the magic lantern in development (I got confused and thought he's recommended a 7d over a 550d but obviously not)

Thanks again

FAT file systems support 4GB files
 

The limit is because the FAT file system on the memory cards support files up to 4GB. And 12 minutes of HD video makes about this 4GB ... thats why.

the FAT file system is at best coloration & not causation.

if FAT file size was really the limitation to the record time then P2, SxS, AVCHD, & the MRC-1 would all have record limits. yet all of these can record until you run out of media because as soon as the file gets too big it just starts a new file seamlessly w/o missing a single frame.