Did I waste my money? (CAMERA)?

I bought a Nikon D5100 from Best Buy for about $550 so i can film sketches and other videos(not entirely for taking pictures). A couple days later i found out that It can only record up to 20 minutes in video, I was really pissed because i spent all my birthday money on this thing. I looked online and everything for different settings but i couldn't find any. So did i completely waste my money on this thing? Is there another setting on this camera that can let me record more?

Get that word film out of your vocabulary, it has nothing to do with digital cameras that record video.

20-minutes? That's pretty long. The time limit on most dslr cameras is about 12-minutes. Waste your money? I don't think so… But until you learn to operate it properly you may think so. It's called operator ignorance, and it's a real problem because unless you learn how to properly operate both camera and lens you're going to be frustrated.

Also, the reason for the time limit is sensor heat. As those billions of electrons are flowing through the sensor while it's gathering data, that causes internal heat and too much heat your camera will become a paperweight.

If I were you I'd spend some quality time with my owner's manual which you've apparently not done.
Then do some serious reading and learning about operating a dslr camera.

ALL dSLR's can only record 20 minute "takes", usually less due to CMOS overheating.

If you are shooting your video from a script, your takes will be less than 2 or 3 minutes.

If you wanted to shoot longer takes, you needed to buy a real video camera.

So do not be upset. These restrictions are physical, whether you spend $550 or $6, 300 for a Nikon D4, they are all restricted to 4 gb video files. That is just the way it is.

If you write a script before you start shooting your video, you will see that 17-20 minutes takes are just too long to facilitate relatively easy editing.

IF you were able to shoot takes that made video files over 4 gb, how would you burn them to a DVD (4.3 gb).

20 nminutes of record time on a DSLR is far better than the average. Most DLSRs will overhear the sensor in between 30 seconds to 5 minutes. If you are talking about how much you can fit into the memory, then all you have to do is buy some extra memory cards - it's very rare that if you wanted to make a useable video you would have any single shot approaching 20 minutes!

Did you waste your money, no, but your may have been better off with a video cam!

Even if you could buy a DSLR with a longer recording, international trade (WTO) agreements restrict all non-video cameras (i.e.non camcorders) to a maximum of 29mintues 59seconds. So the theoretical maximum any camera can record is under 30 minutes - by law. For that reason, DSLR manufacturers have not worried much about the overheating issue, as the point is moot.

This legal restriction was primarily because of the European Union's concern about tariffs. The restriction may be lifted though (except for cameras sold in the EU), but that remains to be seen. If that happens, we may see extended length video from cameras.

You may be able to lengthen your video session by reducing the resolution and/or image size. By doing so, you reduce the data that has to be processed, and may reduce the heating. But you will also reduce quality, so this may not be to your liking (although you may be able to do so without noticing it).

However, the professional method of video is to take short segments of videos, then assemble them in post-processing editing. Windows Movie Maker and iMac can both do this (and are both included with their respective operating systems).

Nikon is well known for the best photography not for video recording. There no way you can extend video recording but you can capture good moment from that.