13 second gap between continuous recording dashcam videos - IS THIS NORMAL?

[boruto]

I had two cards blow a red right and nearly t-bone me. I went into my dashcam footage for the first time to try to get a license plate to report them. The incident was partially not captured, because it took place during what appears to be a 13 second gap between recording files. Is this normal? Seems very problematic? I have a thinkware dashcam.

 

[DAP]

No, it is not normal. I don't have that dashcam, but I do have a Sony camera. I found through experimentation, trying to capture video longer than 10 minutes with that camera, that in order to get continuous video, I had to use the "cat" command to join the 10 minute files together into a single longer file in order for it to play without glitches at the transition between files. Trying to join them in a video editor always created problems at the junction.
You may not be having the same problem, but it is something you can try.

 

[kamkar]

Welcome to the forum boruto.
No that is not normal at all, these days dashcams have 0 overlap between segments in the old days they often had a 1 second overlap.
But a gap,,,,,, that is not supposed to be there, and 17 seconds are a massive gap to have every X minutes.

I cant recvall how it is with the Thinkware cameras, you could try to use another segment size if possible, i personally prefer 3 minutes.
Format your memory card in the camera, this need to be done now and then to restore the FAT as the card can get fragmented from all this recording and deleting stuff.
Maybe test the card on the computer using programs like H2testw or other storage benchmarking tools, i have myself experienced a brand new card that was supposed to have a 100 MB/s write speed only have like 30,,,,, a full format with the SDformatter tool from the SD organization fixed that up.
Though the card still do not work in any of my fdashcams, but it work fine in my action camera that hit the card with 4K footage at 100 mbit, so A LOT harder then a dashcam would ever hit it.

PS: testing your memory cards speed on the computer, that will only work if your card reader support the speed of your memory card, i personally use a USB 3.0 card reader, it support the 100 MB/s or so my fastest memory cards are.
If your card reader are not snappy or on a old USB port, it might only be able to read your card at 50 MB/s even if the card are functional and able to do 100, but aside for speed the programs will list bad sectors ASO which could also be a problem.

What memory card do you use, thinkware systems can be a bit fuzzy as i understand it ( never owned a thinkware system )

 

[boruto]

UPDATE:
I figured out the issue. The sudden stop caused the event recording to initiate. So, the I found the full video in my event recording oder

 

[boruto]

Did you check your incident or events folder? If you slammed on the brakes, it might have triggered it as a "collision". Also, check your sensitivity settings. I find that if it's too sensitive and detects a second event while the first one is still recording, you end up with a small gap.
All in all, the Thinkware cameras are quite different than most of the camera systems out there in that you're not supposed to be digging through the continuous or time lapse/motion detect parking footage. Ideally you should be checking your events/incidents folders and then review the non-event footage before and after the event for context.
It seems that most people would actually be happier with their Thinkware cameras if they turned off incident detection altogether because they want to watch the continuous recordings. I'm the opposite, so I set the partition scheme to "incident priority" and use the 3-hour time lapse parking mode. The non-event recordings are just a circular buffer anyway.

Anyway, those are just my thoughts after using my Thinkware for a month.

This is what happened!!