Canon Digital IXUS 300 upgrade modification

[Peter]

I bought a Canon IXUS 300 digital camera. I've become very attached to my little camera, though not the best, it's small size and ease of use along with the movie option has been my perfect travelling companion.

I was wondering if there is a possibility of making a modification to the camera to allow for longer movie clips. The movie mode has three options. LOW MEDIUM or HIGH resolution. Medium res offers about 12 seconds and high res offers 4 seconds of AVI movie. Buying a larger or faster Compactflash card doesn't help because, I suspect, the movie image is first written to a fast buffer (RAM). When the buffer is full the data is copied to the Compactflash. A larger buffer would allow for a longer high res movie to be stored. 4 seconds is useless. I've used the medium res quite a bit and with Roxio VideoWave I've spliced them together and made some memorable home videos.

Does someone know if this buffer is a separate chip and can be upgraded or is this built into the CPU?

I am capable of soldering miniature devices and I am aware of the risks of permanently ending the life of the camera.

Peter

 

[kinjalgp]

Buffer memory is separate in most cameras. It is possible to increase the memory if the CPU has enough address bus-width to support it. You can locate the memory chip and find if any pin-compatible higher capaacity memory IC is available.
I am just suggesting you this method. I can't gurantee you that it will work since the camera firmware may be written to address only the memory which it came with and inspite of putting large memory, it won't be able find it.

 

[pebe]

I bought a Canon IXUS 300 digital camera. I've become very attached to my little camera, though not the best, it's small size and ease of use along with the movie option has been my perfect travelling companion.

I was wondering if there is a possibility of making a modification to the camera to allow for longer movie clips. The movie mode has three options. LOW MEDIUM or HIGH resolution. Medium res offers about 12 seconds and high res offers 4 seconds of AVI movie. Buying a larger or faster Compactflash card doesn't help because, I suspect, the movie image is first written to a fast buffer (RAM). When the buffer is full the data is copied to the Compactflash. A larger buffer would allow for a longer high res movie to be stored. 4 seconds is useless. I've used the medium res quite a bit and with Roxio VideoWave I've spliced them together and made some memorable home videos.

Does someone know if this buffer is a separate chip and can be upgraded or is this built into the CPU?

I am capable of soldering miniature devices and I am aware of the risks of permanently ending the life of the camera.

Peter

Have you actually tried an add-on card? I ask because I have just bought a Konica 220K camera and a 64Mb SD card to go with it.

That will take film clips direct to the card and gives about 3 1/2 minutes of clips - continuous if required.