PLEASE HELP! NEW Nokia Lumia 521 Video failure

[ms_andiloveall]

I just bought this thing and I'm so upset. For the first month or so it worked fine. All my pictures were excellent quality and the videos turned out great. I should point out that this is my first smart phone and I bought it for the purpose of photos and video.

In the past month, every time I film a video longer than 10-20 seconds (and sometimes even that short), it leaves me with a blank file that says 0:00:00. When I attempt to play it, I get an error message that says "Sorry, we can't play this video on your phone." If I attempt to upload the file, it also shows the 0:00:00, says it's an mp4 file and shows the megabytes but won't let me play it. I get a similar error message.

I've tried many things to fix it. I thought maybe I was running out of space, but I bought a huge memory card and assigned videos to be saved there and it still is happening. It's random, it seems. Yesterday I was able to film two 3min videos and they turned out fine. I tried to film a 10 minute video a few seconds later, and it failed. Because these are videos of performances I'm doing, I'm not able to check it to see if it's working mid-video. It's wasting a ton of time and frustrating me to the point of tears. At this point, I'm furious that I bought this phone. It's been a complete disappointment and I should have gone with a Droid.

Please, if anyone can tell me what's happening here, I'd really appreciate it. I haven't been able to find any answers online and the Nokia Lumia guides and support page are absolutely no help. Hell, their method for restarting the phone (they said to hold the power and the volume down key) didn't work! Nothing happens on mine when I try to do that!! I don't understand, is this thing defective or what? Someone PLEASE HELP!

 

[jms_209]

Have you turned it off and the back on normally?
Hold power down,then slide down to turn off.

Also have you updated the firmware?

 

[calfee20]

Dumb question. how much memory do you have left?

 

[ms_andiloveall]

Hi, thanks for the replies. I have about a gig of memory free and a HUGE memory card. But I can't figure out how to save apps and games to the memory card. They seem to just save to the phone no matter what I do. I set all my videos and photos to go to my memory card, so there should be plenty of memory for the videos to save.

Resetting fixes the problem for about a day. Then, as soon as I film a few videos, it starts doing it again. Nothing but a black screen after I go to look at the video I just filmed. A black screen and 0:00:00. I can't see the video at all. If I upload it to the computer, it says the file is corrupt or damaged.

Also. Does anyone know why all my videos turn out sideways once I upload them? It films wrong... If I hold the phone upright, the video turns out sideways, and then when I use an editor to flip it back upright, it ends up tiny and horrible quality.

I still have two payments to make on this phone and so many things have not worked right on it. It's a huge disappointment.

 

[Corepc]

But I can't figure out how to save apps and games to the memory card.

Also. Does anyone know why all my videos turn out sideways once I upload them? It films wrong... If I hold the phone upright, the video turns out sideways, and then when I use an editor to flip it back upright, it ends up tiny and horrible quality.

I still have two payments to make on this phone and so many things have not worked right on it. It's a huge disappointment.

Windows Phone does not allow saving of apps and games to sd cards at this time, you can only save photos, videos, music.

Has for the video problem - What video settings do you have it set at ? Do you have continious focus turned on, white balance settings, filming in 720p or vga ?

 

[ms_andiloveall]

It's ridiculous. There is only a few apps on my phone and the entire phone is filled. Why on Earth would they make this phone, provide a huge store with thousands of apps and then only allow you to save a few to the phone and not the memory card? It's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of. I blame myself. I clearly should have done a lot more research. I had read mostly positive reviews, I had no idea about things like this.

I've never messed with the video settings, so they are all on the standard settings.

White balance is on default. Continuous focus is on default. Quality is set on 720p. I already tried filming on a lower-quality setting and the exact same thing happened. Black screen, damaged file that won't do anything or play anywhere.

 

[owensdj]

If you're saving your videos to your SD card, the problem could be with the SD card itself. Try setting the phone to save everything to the built-in storage and remove the SD card. If the video problem goes away you know it's the SD card.