A119 last video are broken

Got my A119 yesterday. Same problem - if it was recording when power is cut, the lights go out at once and the last file is corrupt and unplayable. No GPS mount.
The memory card is brand new, I literally just bought and unpacked it.
 
Got my A119 yesterday. Same problem - if it was recording when power is cut, the lights go out at once and the last file is corrupt and unplayable. No GPS mount.
The memory card is brand new, I literally just bought and unpacked it.
Try powering it with a USB charger (phone charger) plugged into a wall outlet. Let it record for a minute or so, then pull the power and see if it acts the same.
 
Try powering it with a USB charger (phone charger) plugged into a wall outlet. Let it record for a minute or so, then pull the power and see if it acts the same.
Thanks for the tip.
I've been using a 2A wall charger all along. However, I assumed the caps take a dozen seconds to charge up, but upon further reading I've found out it's way longer (a couple minutes). If I let it record for 2-15 minutes, it shuts down gracefully more often than not, but not always. So far I'm unable to find the pattern or reason for the failures.

Actually, it's not the last video itself that bothers me (seems that playing it in the cam repairs it?). It's the fact that all the settings are lost.

Hey Viofo, why not save settings in EEPROM, or in a config file on the card? How hard could it possibly be to store 20 bytes of data in a non-volatile memory?..
 
It sounds like you have both bad caps and a bad RTC button battery. You'll want to contact your seller for warranty replacement.
 
The clock never gets reset, by the way. Only the other settings. So they do not seem to be powered by the same supplementary power source. It stands to reason that RTC chip would have its own power while the rest is managed by the main chipset.
If I were to return it, I have to wait a month for it to ship back + another month for a replacement. Not the kind of time penalty I want to take even though you're probably right.

If I let it run for at least 3 minutes, the success rate seems to be close to 80% (1 failure out of 5 attempts). Odd.
 
I had customer report re-updating the firmware fixed that behavior (when it wasn't quite the RTC)
Re-update the firmware to 1.7 (or use the new beta 2.x)
Be sure to reset the camera to factory defaults afterwards to flush out anything stuck
 
It's running 2.06 out of the box, will look for 1.7, thank you!
 
When selecting your settings, be sure to press the emergency (!) button to confirm the setting change before exiting back to the main menu. If you don't confirm with the ! Button, settings will default.
 
Thanks for the tip.
I've been using a 2A wall charger all along. However, I assumed the caps take a dozen seconds to charge up, but upon further reading I've found out it's way longer (a couple minutes). If I let it record for 2-15 minutes, it shuts down gracefully more often than not, but not always. So far I'm unable to find the pattern or reason for the failures.

Actually, it's not the last video itself that bothers me (seems that playing it in the cam repairs it?). It's the fact that all the settings are lost.

Hey Viofo, why not save settings in EEPROM, or in a config file on the card? How hard could it possibly be to store 20 bytes of data in a non-volatile memory?..
The settings should be saved every time.
If lose date/time, it is the RTC battery issue, if lose settings, maybe other issue like capacitor.
You can try upgrade firmware first.
 
The settings should be saved every time.
If lose date/time, it is the RTC battery issue, if lose settings, maybe other issue like capacitor.
It's not the time, it's all the other settings that are lost. I've installed 3.1 firmware yesterday, it seems to have made a difference: the REC button light still may go out immediately instead of remaining on for a couple seconds after power disconnect, but I have not lost the settings during that incident! With 2.06, I would lose settings 100% guaranteed every time the REC light dies immediately. However, "after" does not mean "because of", maybe it's just a coincidence that behavior changed after flashing 3.1. I shall observe further.

Thanks for the help / advice!
 
hope this also helps

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After doing two dozen more power disconnect tests today, I'm positive that the problem no longer occurs, or its occurrence rate has greatly diminished. I'm speculating it's related either to the 3.1 upgrade, or to my resetting the settings to defaults prior to the upgrade.
 
Maybe it could be related to the length of clips? I go by the 3 min setting which givs clips of max half a Gigabyte. Never seen a problem with corrupted last files but the larger the last file may be the larger the likelihood of a problem if the capacitors are not really specified for the more extreme file sizes.
 
file size doesn't matter, closing a 1 minute file or closing a 1 hour file is the same process

Ok, great to know if I should run into trouble later on. Never seen the slightest sign of trouble yet, all files are recorded perfectly. I'm following this thread with great interest.
 
After doing two dozen more power disconnect tests today, I'm positive that the problem no longer occurs, or its occurrence rate has greatly diminished. I'm speculating it's related either to the 3.1 upgrade, or to my resetting the settings to defaults prior to the upgrade.
Hello James,
I have the same problem: When ignition is turned off, LED blinks for several seconds. I think that capacitors are ok.
Last file is always saved, but not readable. I discovered it on my A119+GPSmodule with V1.1 firmware, yesterday I upgraded to latest V3.4 and did "Reset to defaut" after FW upgrade. FW upgrade did not solve the problem. What do you recommend? Reset to default and FW reflash again?
 
Hello James,
I have the same problem: When ignition is turned off, LED blinks for several seconds. I think that capacitors are ok.
Last file is always saved, but not readable. I discovered it on my A119+GPSmodule with V1.1 firmware, yesterday I upgraded to latest V3.4 and did "Reset to defaut" after FW upgrade. FW upgrade did not solve the problem. What do you recommend? Reset to default and FW reflash again?
Since you were on V1.1, you needed to update the boot loader first. Did you do that?
 
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