I would even speculate that many of the amateurs in a position to record the aftermath of the first impact probably only recorded for a few minutes. If they were some distance away, there wouldn't be much going on with the tower itself to justify recording for 17+ minutes straight. At that point it was still just a terrible accident to almost everyone looking at the tower.
Yes, there is that as well. Many video cameras of that period had only 30-40 minutes of record time if they used cassette(such as mini DVcam) Others had DVD and could record longer.
Of course older VHS models could record longer but these are also much larger and heavier.
Clayton seems to expect that a lot of people in the area were walking about with their handy cams, or that a lot of people in apartment buildings in the area would first of all have them and second, immediately(within 20 minutes of hearing the first aircraft) run and find their video recorder.
I suspect most people just stared at the burning north tower. For them the aircraft impact had already occurred. They had no reason to expect a second plane. In NYC one knows that every network will have their cameras at the scene within minutes. There is no compelling reason for anyone not already holding their camera, to immediately grab it and start taping.
Clayton jumped into this topic without actually thinking it through. First of all he demanded the cell phone videos. It was pointed out to him how silly an idea that was. Then before revising his expectation of the number of videos he assumes should have been taken with the fact that there would be no video capable phones about, he assumes that there would be many more video cameras out and about.
He has no reasoning to back such an expectation, yet refuses to even consider that his expectation is erroneous.
Stunning!
