Why will digital cameras only shoot short video clips?

[Hodders]

I need to film my son's school play. The school sell DVDs and raises money.

I have access to a couple of Canon 5d Mk3s which will provide amazing video quality, BUT they will only film for a maximum of 30 minutes. I can't stop and start it as I will miss a section of the play.

I want to have one camera set up to film the whole stage and then another that I can use for close ups.

But the 30 minute limitation makes this a pain - not to mention the ideal of having one continuous audio track as a reference for syncing the editing.

Are there any still cameras that will film until they run out of memory (like a go-pro for example)?

Or is there a way of removing the limitation from the 5d3 ?

 

[Hodders]

If you've got a couple of cameras, record from two different angles, and start / restart at different intervals for both of them.

Stitch the footage together between the two cameras later.

Could do, but it's a nice idea to have a continuous audio track as you can then very easily sync video clips to the common audio. Having to stitch together audio is a pain when different cameras will have recorded different levels etc.

If it is a tax/import thing then that SUCKS. I HATE software disabled features.

But it seems like that is the reason - a £3000 digital SLR can't record 30m01s of video, yet a cheap Chinese go-pro knockoff can.