Few questions about the 900s - desperate and gonna lose my job

Kitfox

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Just got this and already the boss is screaming at me. We purchased it to record training videos as well as do live streaming from the web. However, the thing can only record (in low res.) 3 second video segments. We record 2 hours of video and it's broken into segments..first nasty shock. Then we go to view the segments from the app..only to realize, it won't let us view them as one continuous video..second nasty shock. then we realize that even the blackvue windows software, MYSTERIOUSLY!, does not come with any utility to join-up the segments and save them as a normal movie.

Question 1: How can I take video with this thing as one long continuous movie? Does that involve putting it on the cloud and saving it there? I cannot believe for a second this does not allow one to save sessions as one single video.

Question 2: Assuming my bad luck holds out and there is no way to actually record or save a continuous video (even on the cloud)...does blackvue provide a utility to join up the various pieces into one single movie?

You guys get what we're trying to do here right? We bought a dashcam to record video..only it does not do this the way we need, we need an hour recording put into one, single video of 1 hour length. Can this be done via the cloud or ? Is this easy or a mission?

NOTHING on the blackvue website indicated that it was crippled in such a fashion, in fact they implied quite the opposite.

I'd like to keep my job. Please..help!
 
Why on earth did you buy a dashcam to make a training video? What you really need is a video camera.:ROFLMAO:

PS. Most every dashcam records in short 'takes', as that's what is normally wanted of a dashcam.
 
Not really helpful, I would like keep my job..okay, but good to know as a hindsight thing. We bought it because nowhere on the site does it warn you that you can't actually record video. We also got it (primarily) to live stream. So let me get this straight...you are saying that, even though the camera will live stream a continuous video to the cloud, the cloud cant be instructed to save that video a single file? It will still save the live stream as, mysteriously, segments?

Can anyone else answer my questions? How can we get this thing to save one continuous video? If it's flawed and can't do that, where is the blackvue utility to join up the individual pieces. $900 US for this turd and it can't even record a normal video and the segements can't be joined in any automatic way? I find that impossible to believe in 2018. Anyone?
 
1: you can not, by design dashcams record in several small files, so in case of a failure you only loose a little.
If the 900 have no file overlap ( which i don't think it have ) then all you have to do is drop XX number of consecutive files into any video editing program, and then you can output them as one large file.
I am not aware if dashcam viewer support the 900 or if it have simple edit features and can output to one large file, like the old registrator viewer could but don't support the 900 for sure.
you can ask the DEV here. https://dashcamtalk.com/forum/threads/dashcam-viewer-for-mac-and-windows.4357/

2: i have no clue as to the BV cloud features, i have not tried them ( never had a BV dashcam )

I use 3 minute file segments on my cameras, so to save 1 hour i would have to drop 20 of those into my pinnacle studio ultimate, and then output them to one large file or DVD for playback, that do require a little time and computer power, but i think i could do that in 15 - 20 minutes,,,,,, it may take longer as you are dealing with 4K material.

BUT ! really no problem to create one large file
 
1: explained.
So say your camera recorded in the requested 1 hour segments, if then the memory card encountered a problem creating one of those, or the camera then the last hour of driving would be lost.
With smaller segments you just loose say 3 minutes which i think are the default for many cameras.
Also for reviewing the footage to get a event, it is more easy to find the event ( if you haven't used manual event button or it have been created automatic by G-sensor or the like ) in among several smaller files than you having to view FF thru a large file.
My driving pattern are often the same, so i know by now that if something happen in so and so intersection, then i have to look at the say 12 or 13 file created as my speed and route are often the same.
It would be smarter of me to use the manual event button to lock down those moments, so i an trying to get into that habit.

Some dashcams do support up to 10 minute file size, this also have something to do with file size possible for the FAT system used in cameras, so old FAT32 only support 4Gb as max size for individual files.

IMHO the BV cameras are overly complicated and featured, i just need a camera that record to a memory card, and do so every time i turn the key in my car.

Your choice have fallen on a model with plenty of buzz words, like cloud and 4K, both things that really down to earth are not needed in dashcams.

even if you went with a action camera, the issue are the same, maybe also with a regular camcorder.
 
This is part #1 of a 9 hour drive around Denmark, i used a action camera then set to 10 minutes and using the dashcam functionality the camera also had, i have then put the 6 files in a video editor, upscale to 4 K as youtube done ruin that so much, and then speed up the 1 hour footage so its only around 10 minutes as after all who want to sit thru a 9 hour drive in rural Denmark at 1:1 speed.
 
I get why they break it into segments. I CANNOT be the first person to ever bemoan that this company has not included any utility or option to link segments together and save them. That they did not include some wiz-bang utility for this (especially considering how pricey these things are) in 2018 is rather difficult to believe. They should have had, built into the app, a way to select a series of segments and have them automagically joined and uploaded or saved. Reading this BlackVue? That I have to do this manually is ...seriously unhappy.

We are a driving school, we bought it principally to live stream and to record new instructors so we can review them. Only, big problem is..we can't watch the video for more than 3 minutes. Plus, the cloud does not hold that much, 15gb. If I have to go on there to pull the video (after an instructor teachers a student(s), I gotta make sure he does not overwrite the online data, I gotta go pull it off the cloud remotely (which kicks him off and he has to log back in.) It's pretty sucky as a tool to do video instructor reviews, gotta say that. We literally have to have knowledge of video editing in order to do something stupid simple, gotta be able to tell the new guy how to turn the manual recording on and off so we don't waste cloud (and overwrite)...etc ...sucky tool.

Hopefully I can just get the owner to forget the idea of actually watching video of his new instructors...but considering we paid nearly $900 for this camera, he is not going to accept that easily..how _COULD_ a $900 cam not do something that simple or come with a utility to fix the glaring problem? Yeah, I don't know how to explain that and keep my job. This is one cold..cold day for me.

Thanks a lot BlackVue for not mentioning the serious limitation of your device while implying all the while it could do exactly what we wanted it to do. I'm not sure if I can sue Koreans from the U.S...but lets find out shall we?
 
well nowadays some cameras in the action category also allow for live steaming to social media, but say you use the new gopro 7 and film in 4K/60 then i don't think it will also steam that to media, probably only 1080p
If it could steam 1:1 like what end up on the memory card, then the load on your phone acting as a data relay will be hard and you will probably have to be in 4G territory the whole time ( not factoring in some masts might be overloaded and so throttling bandwidth.
Many have also jumped the steaming bandwagon for the reason, well then my data are safe in the cloud instead of a memory card some evil cop or what ever people can imaging can take away from me.
And yes that is also true, but even over here in little old and flat Denmark, which have good mobile coverage, well even here you will easy find yourself in 2G or if you stop the wrong place 0G mobile coverage.
Actually many have complained that they got to have a land line cuz at home in their rural house they have no cell coverage, so government set things in motion that will roll out with the 5G networks ( yes plural 5G )
So soon no matter where you are in Denmark you should be able to get 100 mbit at least,,,,, i don't really believe this myself i will be relying on one of all the fiber optic cables in the ground here and go for gigabit internet.
My house i sold back in 2010 or so was 11 km outside the #2 largest town here, and i could only get 4/1 mbit on the phone line, so i had fiber put in as it neared my area.
Today you can find fiber cables in little towns with like 100 houses and 30 km to the nearest "large" town with like maybe 20.000 people in it ( we are just 6 mill here in this little country, many of those in our capitol )
So back to target.
I would have no problem handling the 200 MB my my dual channel 1080p camera generate every minute, at home on my gigabit cable connection, but the 20 Hour speech & 20 Gb data plan i have on my phone would run out pretty fast if i was to move data like that and drove like normal people do ( i don't as i am a pensioner so my pension don't lend itself for much driving with gas prices 2 X of the US ones )

The problem i see in here are that many people people want to save all their data, and sure they can but if they drive like 2 - 3 hours a day ( which i don't think are uncommon for Americans or for that matter working Danes )
Then they will have to buy new hard drives often, and have something to house them inside.
Personally i see dashcams as garbage data generators, so far i have had between 1 and 8 cameras in my car since 2012 and i have had 1 event in that time ( rear ending with no need for proof as the driver took blame ) and then the one idiot i turned into the police for driving really poor ( on sidewalks and bicycle path overtaking there )
Sure i have saved a lot of other stuff from some of idiot drivers on the Danish roads, and put them on youtube and after that deleted the raw footage on my computer, but really i did not have to do that.

you have to remember if you want to oversee your 1 hour of driving in 1:1 speed, then you also had to sit and look at a screen for 1 hour, so really it is not sane to do that as it will eat up as much time behind the computer as the recording took.
Sure you can just have it going on a screen and then only look at it once in a while, but then it is more or less futile.
I take about 1 - 2 minutes ( edited footage ) and put on youtube every month, and thats MAX, and in a month i think i drive 10 - 12 hours in total where nothing happen so really my dashcams are worthless in that aspect.



I totally get you guys want to evaluate your own and employees performance, thats only commendable (y) but if someone have to sit and dig thru the recordings of another person then that will take him a long time, and he will have to be a skilled person to see the less obvious flaws made in the car/s.
you can ask the instructors to say them self that they had a instance they would like feedback on or maybe talk about, some people can do that just fine, while others have too high thoughts about them self and so are pretty much flawless.
And Yes i think Blackvue and others really push the envelope with these smart features, and yes the follow thru are probably less than desired.
Too bad you dident find this site before, i do think many of us would at least have tried to talk you out of your endavour, or at least get your suited up with not too high expectations of what is technically doable which are also some thing that happen often.
your dashcam are still a good safeguard in regard to accidents,,,,, that hopefully don't happen and so the camera will be a waste,,,,, but just in case, the camera can also pay for itself in a blink of a eye as they have for quite a few people in here over time..

But yes, tell the boss that if he plan on reviewing every drivers performance, then if the instructor have been in the car for 6 hours one day, the boss will also have to sit and watch video for 6 hours to make sure nothing slip under the radar.
 
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@Kitfox.
The 900 was not designed as a continuous video recorder (but the BV reviewing program does stitch the video int a continuous viewing experience) so calling it a turd is particularly distasteful, as it is actually pretty good at the job for which it was designed.
Suggesting that my answer was not helpful was not helpful either. Perhaps you should check that a device that you are buying that would result in you getting the sack if it were wrong, is suitable for the intended use. A quick question to someone in a dashcam store (or here) would have resolved that for you.
 
Check out my .cmd files that use ffmpeg in the thread at https://dashcamtalk.com/forum/threa...nerate-single-pip-video-from-front-read.32570
It uses ffmpeg to do the stitching (among other things). I don't know if it'll work with h.265 videos from the DS900. You may need to convert to h.264. And you'll probably need to do a bit of playing with the various settings to get what you want. But once you have the magic combination of options, you should be able to use your own variant of the .cmd going forward.
Note that stitching videos is a processor-intensive process and will take a while.

If you only have to go through this exercise the one time, then using one of the many clip-joining apps mentioned above may help. The caveat is that the recorded segments have a 3-second overlap, so doing it "manually" is going to take you a long time.

Good luck.
 
h.265 isn't yet commonly supported in the usual video players, but h.264 is, so convert the files. Many players will "stitch" them together for you. Personally I'd have chosen a "taxi cam" so as to cover the front driving and the interior of the car, which would also show some of what was happening behind the car. But that's water under the bridge now. IMHO Blackvue is not a good choice of dashcam unless your main desired feature is the excellent parking mode. It can be equalled and/or bettered in every other aspect by cheaper cams. Not a "bad" product but not as great as they'd want you to believe.

Phil
 
The only think flawed is your brain for not knowing how dashcams work and firing ahead with out doing your research. They WILL play continuously if you use the Blackvue viewer. Another alternative is to put all the video files into something like Wondershare Video converter and join them all into one long file

Horses for courses You bought a sprinter when you needed a stayer

To belittle a quality product when you have no knowledge of what you are doing is unfair and your boss is probably right as he misplaced his trust in your ability to do what he asked.

Bought the wrong product
Has no idea how it works
Cant read instructions which advise to watch in BV Viewer and has been providing that for use with these cameras for over 6 years Is provided in the Download section of BV's site

Suffers from ID ten T syndrome
 
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I agree. What happened to being polite and helpful?
 
I don’t think its polite, helpful or even acceptable to make fun out of this situation. OP clearly mentioned that the situation is truly critical and the consequences could be really bad if this issue does not get solved

The cameras are already bought and they are already in use, deal with this FACT and help the guy out to solve this problem instead of throwing blames and jokes arround

Just a reminder, OP didn’t approach a high school class asking for help, he approached a professional and specialized community!
 
I'd like to help, but I have no knowledge of blackvue or live streaming video.

The OP said live streaming was a primary reason for choosing the 900S, not 4K. I'd recommend that the OP tries 1080p video, to bring down the file size on long videos so they are easier to use.
 
The OP hasn't been back to mention how he's fared with any of the possible solutions presented, so at this point the entire conversation has pretty much exceeded its worth. Hopefully one of the solutions will work for him.
 
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