One problem that can occasionally crop up with a Flip Camera is an unexplained loss of full record capacity. So you shoot on your Flip, delete all the videos but the display indicates your Flip still has space used up.

I’ve owned Flip Cameras for a year or so and haven’t experienced the problem myself. However I have seen a few queries about this issue. Here is a solution from the tecchy people at Flip.

“Connect your camcorder to your computer and open your DCIM/100VIDEO folder. This folder contains the videos from your Flip Video camcorder. When your videos are manually renamed within this folder, they are no longer recognized by the Flip Video program.

Please ensure that all videos in this folder are carrying their original name. For example, VID#####.AVI where ##### is any number between 00001 and 99998. Then, delete all videos you have previously saved from this folder. Your videos cannot be retrieved once they are deleted, so please make sure you have the videos you wish to keep saved into another folder before doing this.

Also make sure you have deleted any videos that reside outside of the DCIM/100VIDEO folder within your camcorder’s root directory.

After you have deleted all videos, disconnect your camcorder and check on your record time. If you have still not regained your full record time, please reconnect your camcorder and empty your “trash can”. Then, power your camcorder on and off 8 times. “

Please let me know if it works for you by adding a comment.

UPDATE ANOTHER SOLUTION HAS BEEN RECOMMENDED VIA WILLIAM WOLF.ORG:

“Here is how you restore full record time in a Flip Ultra video camera (note: this fix may be specific to my model camera–F260W):

  1. You will need a non-networked PC to fix the problem. The tech support woman and I tried several cameras several times on my Mac and each time the fix failed.
  2. Make sure that the video camera has no videos on it and/or that you have a copy of all videos that you want to save.
  3. Connect your camcorder to your PC.
  4. Close any window that pops up asking what you would like to do.
  5. Double click or open My Computer.
  6. Right click on the Flip Video icon.
  7. From the menu, select Format.
  8. Under File System, open the drop down list and choose FAT (this should be the default).
  9. Click Start and then click OK on the warning window.
  10. A bar will appear with the status of the formatting. Depending on the speed of your computer, the formatting process could take a few seconds to several minutes.
  11. When complete, properly eject the Flip from your computer.
  12. Turn it on. You should now have 60 minutes of record time.

I tried this with 3 cameras—the two with 20 minutes and the one with 4 minutes—and both were fully restored to 60 minutes. The process could have been simpler.”