I have owned my Phantom 3 Advanced now for a couple days and I have flown over 15 times while recording with no problem. Of course now when it matters something went wrong. In the middle of flying and recording my controlled would say I lost signal but I would still control over drone, but then now video would start freezing up on the counter as well as my live feed would go out. I had over 7 minutes of video recored and when I plug SD card into computer the videos are only a couple seconds a piece. The memory card says that it has over 12GB on the card when the only things that are on the card is the videos that I just took and the firmware.

Please someone help figure out why this happen and how I can prevent from happening for future flights. Also if anyone knows how to recover the videos from the SD card as well that would be great.

you should remove the firmware from your SD card. Once it has updated the aircraft, there is no reason why it should still be on your card. I don't know how, but that could possibly interfere with the aircraft's operation.

venturedrone Posted at 2015-5-29 08:55
you should remove the firmware from your SD card. Once it has updated the aircraft, there is no reas ...

It's been advised that you keep the firmware on the card until all of your batteries have been placed in the Phantom and powered up. The firmware .bin file also contains the necessary battery firmware updates. You should delete the .txt results file though.

The space left on the card is the only priority you have to worry about. Whether it's a .bin file or another .mov it's just taking up space. First thing is to check your card and make sure it's writing speed can handle 60Mb/s. This is peak bit rate while shooing 4K with the Phantom 3. If you card can't handle this bit rate you'll get exactly what you've described.... 2 seconds of video. It's because the recording starts, takes a couple seconds for the card to max out and quit.

I recommend and use these cards...
SanDisk Extreme 64GB UHS-I/U3 Micro SDXC Memory Card Up To 60MB/s
http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Extreme-Adapter-SDSDQXN-064G-G46A-Version/dp/B00M55BS36/ref=pd_sim_421_7?ie=UTF8&refRID=0AZZEQ2CRJHW6NGECQX5
Hope this helps and good luck.

fhagan02@me.com Posted at 2015-5-29 09:12
It's been advised that you keep the firmware on the card until all of your batteries have been plac ...

I have just a card that is a sandisk 64gb class 10 that does up to 48/s but I only have the advanced model so I am not capable of 4k quality. The past videos/flights before I haven't had any problems and then the next flight after this occurrence I had no trouble either.

Maybe it was just a weird mix up, they are electronics and I understand stuff like that happens. Just happy I still had control and the ending wasn't a crash!  

seltzerzack Posted at 2015-5-29 21:22
I have just a card that is a sandisk 64gb class 10 that does up to 48/s but I only have the advanc ...

Yep thankfully you were able to control!

It's not uncommon for a card to work fine...and then not. The video records a Variable Bit Rate (VBR). So what that means is if you're recording a scene while not moving, hovering in place or moving slowly, the bit rate stays low (20-30Mb/s) as the details in the shot aren't rapidly "changing." When you start moving and flying through a lot moving detail (like trees, leaves, blades of grass etc.) the VBR ramps up (60Mb/s) to be able to capture all that "changing" detail. So in theroy the video you shot while the "card was working fine" could've just been low detail scenes so the card never had to ramp up to a higher bit rate. You just didn't know it. I've had sd cards work just fine and then, with no warning, give an error, become corrupt etc. Have you tried a different card? Process of elimination is where I'd start. (Obviously make sure all your firmware is up to date as DJI released 1.1.9 a couple days ago.)
Hope this helps and keep us posted.

fhagan02@me.com Posted at 2015-5-29 21:45
Yep thankfully you were able to control!

I've had sd cards work just fine and then, with no warni ...

I updated to the latest software, I honestly think it's just a little bug that randomly happened. I tried a new card and it worked perfectly, the new card didn't have the firmware or anything on it at all like my past card. I will try the card that messed up again today and see what happens. I was just trying to make sure I personally didn't do anything wrong to cause the occurrence. This is my first UAV that i've owned and I can already tell this will be one of many!

Can't wait for someone to develop some waypoint functions, this would be a deadly for aerial video with waypoints.   

seltzerzack Posted at 2015-5-29 21:58
I updated to the latest software, I honestly think it's just a little bug that randomly happened.  ...

Great.

My P3P was just delivered. Getting ready to update the firmware... fingers crossed.

Clear skies my friend.

venturedrone Posted at 2015-5-29 08:55
you should remove the firmware from your SD card. Once it has updated the aircraft, there is no reas ...

One exception.  Firmware needs to be on the SD card if you want to update firmware on extra batteries.

Otherwise remove the firmware from the SD card.