Video only recording sound, black picture

[Thumper427]

Hoping someone can help me here. My M4 is only a month old and today while recording 4 videos they have all come out as a black screen with only the sound recorded, no picture at all. Absolutely fuming as it was a really important moment I was capturing and this £300 piece of junk has ruined that!

I reset the phone, took the sim card out, did a factory reset and it still doesnt record any visual, just sound with a black screen.

A 26 second video is showing as 1.26MB's. When uploaded to the PC it's still a black 'video' with just the sound.

This is not the first Sony I have had problems with, I gave them a second chance and now I feel that was a complete and utter waste of time. Any ideas?

[Uliwooly]

@Enzyle

You are probably saving the videos on the SD card and its corrupted, if that's so, that's not a Sony issue but your SD card, to test it, transfer the video to a computer and test it, if it doesn't work then you know the reason.

[Enzyle]

Remind me why i am saving them on the SD Card??? Oh yeah.. Because i barely have 400 mb available memory after i transfered everything that  i can to the sd card...Also  a video of 5 minutes that is barely 6 mb.... has nothing but audio.. even if i  play it on a NASA computer they wont be able to play the Video stream ,because The camera app RECORDED only the audio .. Do not me with SD card problem.. 
P.S : Restart of the phone fixed the problem temporarily. Oh yeah and i tried repairing .. again just tempfix.

[Uliwooly]

@Enzyle

test a new SD card, also if it works for few days or hours and then stop then its a third party app causing this.

[WinstonL]

Thanks @uliwooly for the prompt replies

Just googled the problem by chance; and turn out that it was NOT only my problem, but also from many users' feeedback, along page 1 to here .

To carify

- my m4 aqua phone was bought from a local retail store in Hong Kong (Asia) within the approved list of Sony's retailers

- the problem happens randomly and may temporarily be solved by restarting the phone; however this is still devastating coz u don't know when it's going to happen
- changing SD card didn't solve this issue

- closing all apps and then run the Video App more or less gives the same problemtic result

- restoring the phone to initial setting doesn't help either, it happens again afterwards

- happened both before and after taking to Sony center for other repairs, which involved earasing all memory and storage stuff

- playing the clip anywhere (mobile-movie creator auto rendered clips, mobile-album app, PC-media player[s]) yields same black footages

- IMO, z3 didn't have this issue at all (however mine z3 was RIP already)

Appreciated if the officials release a patch to tackle this particular bug for this model (M4 aqua) for the Video App...honestly I was very upset whenever I have something important to record but turn out failed, hope the issues could be solved shortly by some OTA updates.

Many thanks.

[MSivewright88]

Does the Pc fix solve the problem permanently? Does it restore the visual aspect of those videos? Quite disappointed by this, I have been so impressed with my Sony products up until now...

[zyxxyz]

Other phones have problems also. New technology has its problems, always.

So it can happen again. When it happens too often, warranty.

[brenjeric]

Im experiencing the same thing now. Im recording my boss' birthday celebration this afternoon and after that i found out that all the videos were in full black image. Very disappointing...

[bsc]

Seems to be a common issue.

My M4 Aqua didn't have the problem yet (but has others like rebooting itself, see other thread), but my girlfriends M4Aqua also sometimes does only record sound with no picture. We haven't yet figured out what it is, but rebooting the phone sometimes helps.

[mb011]

had the same problem today. luckily i rarely shoot videos so not a big issue, but will have to be careful when i do... hope sony fixes this.

[maxfelipe]

I thought this forum was somehow monitored by Sony. I bought two M4 devices, and one of them is exhibiting the faulty behavior. Is there a definitive solution, other than restarting the phone everytime I want to shoot a video?