The Sony a6000 is one of the most popular mirrorless camera bodies of all time and it has an absolutely huge core customer base of users who use it as their go to camera body of choice. Although the a6000 is an excellent camera that offers outstanding image quality, it does have one flaw for anyone one wanting to use it for videography or vlogging, its video recording limit.
Every month we see people reaching out and asking for a way to unlock the Sony a6000 recording limit to allow them to record videos longer than 30 minutes. Rather than just repeting ourselves each and every time, we have decided to just type up this article in an attempt to help as many of our readers as possible who use the a6000 for capturing video footage and want to record longer videos with it.
Thankfully, there are a few ways that you are able to unlock the 30 minute video restriction on your a6000 but before we get into our preferred method, we just want to quickly point out a few things. The Sony a6000 is a camera that has been primarily designed for stills rather than video, due to this, it does not necessarily have the overheating protection of a camera body designed primarily for videography or vlogging work.
You Need To Prevent Overheating
As you can probably guess, if you are going to remove the Sony a6000 30 minute limit for video recording, you will also have to take steps to prevent overheating in your camera too, especially if you are recording in higher resolutions with higher frames per second rates. Although there are a few different methods that you can use, there are two that tend to be the most popular.
The first is to essentially make your own cooling rig for your Sony a6000 out of cheap Raspberry Pi fans. Although this does take a little work to get everything working, in our opinion, it is by far the best method for keeping your a6000 cool and preventing it from overheating when capturing video for longer periods of time.
The second is to apply a decent thermal paste to the areas of your camera that commonly get hot and although this can be easier than making your own cooling setup with fans, it can be hit and miss. Some people report that thermal paste does help keep their a6000 cool where as others report that it did little to nothing. Additionally, applying the thermal paste to the right place on the camera can be a pain as well as potentially void your warranty.
Getting Around The Sony A6000 30 Minute Limit
Although there are a few different ways that you are able to remove the Sony a6000 30 minute limit for video recording, some of them can void your warranty. Due to this, our recommendation is to use the Open Memories app for the Sony Alpha range that amongst other things, allows you to disable the video recording limit.
Although some people don’t like the idea of adding third-party apps to their camera, the Open Memories app has a great reputation amongst the Sony Alpha using community and in our opinion, it is the best solution for extending your video record time. Additionally, the app is regularly updated by its development team and it is totally free to use.
That said though, it can be a little daunting for some photographers or videographers to install a third-party app on their camera if they have not gone through the process before. Thankfully though, it is quick and easy to do so we have laid out the full process below and it should let you unlock your video recording limit on your Sony a6000 within about ten minutes and thats including the reading time to follow along.
How To Install Open Memories On Your Sony A6000 To Remove The Recording Limit
As you can probably guess, step one for removing your Sony a6000 recording limit is to actually download the Open Memories software to your computer. It is available for both PC and Mac so be sure to download the correct version for your computers operating system and then follow the instructions to install it.
Next up, we would recommend that you remove the memory card from your Sony a6000. Although this is not an essential step, there did used to be a bug with the firmware on the a6000 that could cause it to wipe your memory card when installing an app. Although this bug has since been fixed, we do usually recommend people remove their memory card as so many people fail to keep their cameras firmware up to date.
Next up you are going to want to turn your a6000 on, open your camera settings, and navigate to the USB connection option in the far right tab. The majority of people will have the default “auto” setting selected but change it to MTP and click save. Once done, you will want to turn your a6000 off and then plug in your USB cable connecting your computer to your Sony a6000 then turn your camera back on.
Open the Open Memories software on your computer and click on the “Get Camera Info” button. The tool will run its own diagnostic and then confirm that everything is plugged in and ready to go. You can then press the “Install Open Memories Tweak” button to install the app on your Sony a6000 and it should take around a minute to install.
Once the app is installed, remove the USB cable from your camera and reopen your camera settings. Navigate to the USB tab on the right hand side of the your camera settings and then switch the setting back to auto from MTP. Then navigate to the app tab, the fourth tab from the left in your a6000 settings and you should see the Open Memories Tweak application installed.
Open the application and then scroll to the video tab, the second tab in from the left and the top option should be the “Disable Video Recording Limit” option. Select it to remove the 30 minute video recording limit on your Sony a6000 and the process is complete and you can now record much longer videos.
Common Problems
Although the process is now done, there are two common problems that we often see reported from people who are trying to remove the Sony A6000 recording limit. The first is that their a6000 will simply get to the 30 minute of video mark and overheat then turn off anyway. As we covered earlier in the article, this is why you have to take steps to deal with overheating and making your own fan rig with cheap Raspberry Pi fans is usually the best option.
The second most common problem is that you will go through the process above, check the apps tab on your Sony a6000 and the Open Minds app is not installed. With the Sony a6000, this is almost always due to a firmware version below the 3.2.1 firmware release being used. Simply update the firmware on your camera from the official Sony website to the latest version and then go through the process again and it should work.
