Why do modern camcorders not allow pause?

[MrJamesMorgan]

Why do modern camcorders not allow pause? I don't need 1000's of individual files - nor do I want to do post editing.

I'm recording my daughters volleyball match and would like to pause in between every play - so I don't have to record things like player swaps, chasing the ball down, referee disagreements, coaching challenges, etc, etc.  If I stop the video after every play I'd end up with thousands of files.  I could join those all together using some sort of video editing software, but that's not what I'm wanting to spend my time doing.  I just want to copy the one file (that I paused between plays) to my hard drive for filing and call it a day.  Plus I often get home and hook the camcorder directly up to the TV for us to watch.  I don't want to have it stop and have to hit play button after each play in the game - navigating the 1000's of different 20 second recordings.  

My Samsung S7 allows me to pause.  My expensive and dedicated camcorder doesn't.  Silly.  This scenerio for needing to pause can apply to any sporting event... or any event for that matter that has small downtown durations that you don't want to record.

Are there any camcorders that allow this feature?  

Thanks,
Jamie

[IamNic]

Hello @MrJamesMorgan,

while you feel that not being able to pause is an unneccessary nuisance, I may be able to convince you of the opposite by explaining you the reason why it is not possible:

Video files are recorded in certain formats (usually some type of MP4 container). These files need to be "closed off" in order to work. That means, the video recording device - in this case your camcorder - needs to write a certain "ending" into the binary code of the file so a video player is able to correctly identify it as a video file.

If a video file is not "closed off" it won't be recognized as a video file - even worse it won't be playable at all.

While there are ways to "close off" a file if it is corrupted, these repairs don't always work.

Since video files are considered a rather important type of files, the lack of a pause mode on camcorders protects you of losing a file. 

Imagine this:

You are recording your daughters volleyball-matches and you get pushed by another bystander - you accidentally drop the camcorder where you have recorded and paused and recorded and paused the video recording for the whole match, let's say for about an hour. At the moment the camcorder hits the ground, the battery gets disconnected. 

Since the file is has not been closed for the duration you are recording, it is now corrupted and you can't get it back, since any attempt on repairing was of no avail.

You now lost all the recordings of the whole day.

Now imagine what would happen in the same situation with your camcorder as of now:

The camcorder gets dropped and the battery gets disconnected - the current video file is corrupted, yet since you were only recording the current file for two minutes, all the other 58 minutes prior to the incident are still on the memory card. 

I hope this helps you to understand, why camcorders usually do not offer a "pause" feature.

While it is technically doable, I rather lose one short video clip than losing all video clips since I paused my recording instead of stopping it completly to "close off" the video files.

- Nic

[MrJamesMorgan]

Thank you for the reply Nic. So the alternate for me would be to record the entire game (just let it run on the sidelines) because I'm not about to use editing software to merge the files together (no extra time for that). So it sounds like the same thing can happen... lose all the footage if camera gets dropped scenario. 

[IamNic]

Hello @MrJamesMorgan,

yes, in your particular case that can happen.

If I were you, I wouldn't risk that and rather invest the time editing the individual files together.

Video editing is part of video shooting.

- Nic