Dashcam Viewer - Great Product & Great Service!!!

[StrayCam]

I am new to the Dashcam World and happened upon Dashcam Viewer thanks to a member of this forum (RavenManiac). The owner John/@traveler is very responsive to customers' needs. I recently submitted a query about not being able to see dual images (front & rear). I'm hopeful that Dashcam Viewer will be able to get dual images in parking mode at the same time with the Viofo A129.

 

[kamkar]

Indeed, i found today that hotmail send mails from my new ISP to the spam folder.
Traveler was online here less than 1 hour ago, maybe you should try and MSG him thru the "start conversation" system on here.

https://dashcamtalk.com/forum/members/traveler.4689/

 

[StrayCam]

Jokiin-

Thanks for your reply. Based on my personal experience, I think you're one of the best resources on this forum!

Btw, I took your advice and also sent a message yesterday to @traveller here on this forum. Thanbks again Jokiin for your help!

 

[StrayCam]

Indeed, i found today that hotmail send mails from my new ISP to the spam folder.
Traveler was online here less than 1 hour ago, maybe you should try and MSG him thru the "start conversation" system on here.

https://dashcamtalk.com/forum/members/traveler.4689/

Thanks kamkar1 for your reply. I believe we overlapped on our messages. Jokiin suggested I send a message to John/@traveller on this forum which I did. Thanks for your input!

 

[jokiin]

I'm sure he'll get to it, maybe other things are taking him away from it right now

 

[kamkar]

There are really no alternatives, some brands of cameras provide their own player, that are more or less successful.
But for a general layer there have been nothing since the author of registrator viewer died in a MC accident some years ago, so that otherwise fine piece of software only support ancient hardware by now.

 

[kamkar]

I thought maybe he be on holiday or something, but his activity here suggest otherwise, though you can of course get to here on a phone and hotel wifi.
But yeah its just traveler that do some coding all on his own, and from what i have sen in here he seem to be pretty responsive and open.

Personally i hardly ever use a dedicated dashcam player as i cant see the need for all that additional information in my uploads to youtube of idiot drivers, and i have my own speed stamped on the footage.
So i just use the video player in windows 10.

 

[StrayCam]

I'm sure he'll get to it, maybe other things are taking him away from it right now

Yes, I'm sure @traveller will be able to handle my problem. Thanks again Jokiin!


I know Kamkar1 is also very active on this forum. And Jokiin has saved me more than once!!! - - Thanks again guys!

 

[StrayCam]

I thought maybe he be on holiday or something, but his activity here suggest otherwise, though you can of course get to here on a phone and hotel wifi.
But yeah its just traveler that do some coding all on his own, and from what i have sen in here he seem to be pretty responsive and open.

Personally i hardly ever use a dedicated dashcam player as i cant see the need for all that additional information in my uploads to youtube of idiot drivers, and i have my own speed stamped on the footage.
So i just use the video player in windows 10.

kamkar1-

Let me ask you this... can you see both front and rear view footage using Windows 10? If I decide to look at 8 hours of parked - buffered video, I sure don't want to have to look at the front view, and then go back and look at the rear view... I'd much rather see both views at the same time at a quick pace. That's my problem now with Dashcam Viewer: I'm unable to do so.

 

[kamkar]

No that i can not do, and i have 3 dual channel cameras in my car + a few other.
And yes if you have to look over parking mode footage to manual find a event, than it become a massive problem, not least if it is low bitrate video which are the kind of parking mode video i will use when i get to try parking guard.
But i do hope the G sensor can be on while that low bitrate go on, and so can provide a time point to zoom in on, i have been thinking if you do record low bitrate 1080/30 in parking mode, then really all you need G sensor to do is get triggered by a event and save a photo, so you using its time stamp can navigate to the event in the video files.

Also in regard to my own personal needs i will just use parking guard on a 1 hour timer, cuz that will cover all my shopping, and at home i have CCTV from my 2 floor apartment on my car parked in the back yard.
And it is very rare i park in a place where i think parking guard would be nice, and i am a highly apprehensive person that as a rule of thumb trust no one and think all people are A holes, cuz then i can only be positive supriced if it turn out i am wrong.
If it wasent for the internet i would hardly have any interaction with other people,,, i do have a friend ( one ) but at the moment i barely see him once a week.

BUT in regard to dashcam viewer it was my understanding it supported PIP view,,,,,, i would have been willing to bet a very small part of my pension on that.

But maybe your model are not supported yet

Dashcam Viewer for Mac and Windows

@neomax71 I'm putting the final touches on support for the DOD RC500S (2-channel). Support for this model will be in version 3.1.8. I don't have RC400S video samples so I can't say if v3.1.8 will work with it.

dashcamtalk.com

If its just a matter of model support, people normally just make a couple or so raw clips available to him and he somehow make it work.

 

[StrayCam]

The things is, I believe my model is supposed to do front & rear view at the same time (Viofo A129 Duo). - - And I can see front & rear views with "driving mode" clips; I just can't do so when the car is in "parking mode"....

 

[jokiin]

it's just the player not sorting the files correctly, to be fair to @traveler there have been some recent changes to the parking modes on your camera, unless someone submits files and details it's not something he would know about, changes take time to test and implement also

you can still see the files, just use Windows explorer etc and view the files and play using the built in player, parking files don't need the extra features that Dashcam Viewer offers such as GPS and map view anyway

 

[kamkar]

I am surprised there are a difference in driving and parking mode,,,, other than the obvious things you can select like time lapse ASO.
But its not the first time my brain have oversimplified things.

 

[StrayCam]

Jokiin-

Thanks for your follow-up reply. My parking mode files are all in sequential order. I notice sometimes the front video is listed first followed by the rear video, and sometimes vice versa... I don't know if that makes any difference.

As I mentioned to kamar1, I only want a means of reviewing front and rear video at the same time...gps and map make no difference. The weird thing is I can view both views at the same time when in driving mode... It's only during parking mode that I am not able to see both views.


I've done re-sorts in Windows sorting by name rather than date/time order before having Dashcam Viewer index them. That doesn't seem to make any difference.

Although I was under the impression a fair number of users in the A129 Buffered Parking Thread also use this program, no one there has replied if they are experiencing the same problem I'm having or not.

I also looked over on the Viofo forum for the A129, and didn't see any mention of the problem I'm experiencing.

I may try downgrading my firmware to 1.5 to see if that has any impact on this process...

Thanks again for your help.

 

[traveler]

I understand that some dashcam users on this forum use "Dashcam Viewer", but I've found their customer support to be woefully lacking! - - I've sent 4 emails to this Company and have not received one single reply! - - This, to me, is totally unacceptable.

Is there another dashcam viewer that is better and, as importantly, has "good customer service"??? - Thanks very much for any tips!

@StrayCam Indeed I see that you sent me 4 emails in the last 24 hours (in addition to this thread). I apologize for not responding sooner. I try to respond to business emails within 1-2 days but sometimes I get behind.

Jokiin-

... The weird thing is I can view both views at the same time when in driving mode... It's only during parking mode that I am not able to see both views.

it's just the player not sorting the files correctly, to be fair to @traveler there have been some recent changes to the parking modes on your camera, unless someone submits files and details it's not something he would know about, changes take time to test and implement also

@jokiin is exactly right. Dashcam Viewer applies fuzzy logic to match front/rear video pairs. My guess is that the A129 Parking mode filename conventions are different than Driving mode, and DCV is not able to make the pairing. I can fix this but I'll need Parking Mode sample files (or at least the filenames) to understand the file-naming conventions. If you could email me a directory listing of your SD card's Parking Mode directory, I'll add A129 Parking Mode support to my ToDo list.

Thanks,
John

 

[kamkar]

It is kind of important to have this working for parking guard files too, at least for the people using parking guard, people which i think are increasing in numbers every day.

 

[jokiin]

It is kind of important to have this working for parking guard files too, at least for the people using parking guard, people which i think are increasing in numbers every day.

for sure, the naming convention is different on the parking files so that will need to be accounted for by the software to correctly deal with the files, I'm sure once the required info is supplied it will be able to be sorted

 

[kamkar]

Yeah, as far as i can remember i cant think of something traveler have given up on, and you cant fix a problem if you dont know it exist, so once he get some sample files ASO i am sure it will be fixed.

 

[StrayCam]

@StrayCam Indeed I see that you sent me 4 emails in the last 24 hours (in addition to this thread). I apologize for not responding sooner. I try to respond to business emails within 1-2 days but sometimes I get behind.





@jokiin is exactly right. Dashcam Viewer applies fuzzy logic to match front/rear video pairs. My guess is that the A129 Parking mode filename conventions are different than Driving mode, and DCV is not able to make the pairing. I can fix this but I'll need Parking Mode sample files (or at least the filenames) to understand the file-naming conventions. If you could email me a directory listing of your SD card's Parking Mode directory, I'll add A129 Parking Mode support to my ToDo list.

Thanks,
John

John,

Thanks for your reply. I sent a shared link from Dropbox with a sample of "drive mode" and "parking mode" videos. Let me know if you need something other than what I sent you. Thanks.

 

[StrayCam]

for sure, the naming convention is different on the parking files so that will need to be accounted for by the software to correctly deal with the files, I'm sure once the required info is supplied it will be able to be sorted

Jokiin-

Funny enough, fw 1.5 didn't have this problem. You can see front and rear views at the same time. It seems the length of videos on that fw was about 1 minute vs 45 seconds that Viofo uses now. Notice on the two attached pics, fw 1.5 does not use the PF and PR notations like fw 1.8 does.... Unfortunately everything triggers events with 1.5, so you may as well just use low bit rate if you're going to use 1.5. Not to mention 1.5 did not have buffer parking mode.

I don't believe the sensitivity adjustment for parking mode came until fw ver 1.9 which was just released today. I'm pretty sure the numbering convention used on 1.9 is the same as 1.8 with PF and PR. Another thing you might notice in the 1.8 pic attached is the numbers seem to skip around a bit at times for the parking mode...???

Oh well, I'm sure this will all get sorted out and fixed eventually.