Panasonic Lumix - Problems With Movie Files

I've recently bought a Panasonic Lumix TZ3, the one with a wideangle to telephoto lens (10x zoom from 28mm to 280mm equivalent) and I am very satisfied with the overall performance.

Obviously I didn't buy the camera because of the movie features but occasionally I do take some short clip or use the "picture with audio" to comment on a photo, these functions are pretty easy to use and the quality of the video is reasonable.

The movie files (or the audio attached to a picture) get saved in Jpeg Motion Picture format, generating a .MOV file which appears on the memory card next to a snapshot of the video itself in low-resolution Jpeg format, for example for a videoclip we would have something like this:

- P1234567.MOV ---> audio/video file (I play it with real player)
- P1234567.JPG ---> snapshot of the first frame (small size ~60-80kB) or actual picture in full resolution if using "picture with audio"

no problem with JPG files, the MOV files instead show an unpredictable behaviour when trying to rename or delete them, in some cases the "impossible to rename/delete, the file is in use by another process" shows up (windows XP SP2) and the file can't be touched anymore, as if protected! moreover it's usually just ONE file in the whole folder that is not movable/renamable as if it had to hold some kind of mystic content... I thought there might be a link between the JPG and MOV files relating to the same picture but this doesn't seem to be the case or the source of problems since the JPG files can be handled fine...

I occasionally experienced this kind of problems with other cameras when renaming files (I have my own naming convention I stick to) but usually the problem was solved by restarting windows, so I've always blamed this on windows probably that's still the case here, windows having troubles with MOV files or something like that...

anyone has (had) the same problem and can help with that? sorry if the description is at times a bit messy

thanks!

Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3 video problem
Panasonic Lumix - Problems With Movie Files

Brand new camera and the movie files do not appear on the memory card. They can be viewed from the camera but they are not available to be copied over to the PC...Either via USB cable or direct from memory card slot on PC. It's like they're hidden. Is the new video format incompatible with Windows XP? Panasonic has not answered my request for help. -reply by Lori