4K 2CH Camera

Bobcat101

Member
Joined
Apr 26, 2016
Messages
49
Reaction score
16
Country
United Kingdom
I've just seen the video for the new BlackVue 900 and I have to say I'm VERY impressed.

Does SG have plans for something that offers 4K with HEVC codec?.
 
I dont think 4K are on the short list right now, i dont think SG feel the low light performance are good with the 4K sensors current available.

H.265 i think are a much more attainable goal, and it still have its drawbacks as it denamd more processing power on the users computer to handle it, and it seem a lot of people are on really weak computers.

Trying to handle H.265 on my little sisters dualcore laptop was a nightmare / no go, but on my own aging quadcore computer it was no problem, but i have 2 X the core count and those cores operate at at least 1/3 higher clock speeds.

But i for one feel H.265 or similar would be nice as it would alow for higher bitrates without file size exploding, and i feel the current sub 20 mbit are a tad on the low side.

But lets see what the official SG guys have to say.
 
HEVC is handled by any decent GPU these days, even some IGP have the ability to decode in silicon. Only ancient computers suffer but even then even the cheapest 1030 from nvidia has h/w assisted decoding so unless your PC is ancient you should be OK.

I do appreciate not everyone has a PC that can handle it but i think its worth having the option
 
Indeed and i think that will also be a option in the SOC that dashcams use ( if its not already there )

The Mobius 2 support H.264 and 265, that's where i got the footage to try out, and i only did the laptop as i was house sitting at the time.
personally i am totally pro more options or changes in file format / compression / bitrates, and i also think it will happen soon.

Cant remember what CPU/gfx is in my sisters laptop, but its no doubt really weak and cheap, as it should be cuz really she never use it for anything but the forced digital communication with public branches.
 
HEVC is handled by any decent GPU these days, even some IGP have the ability to decode in silicon. Only ancient computers suffer but even then even the cheapest 1030 from nvidia has h/w assisted decoding so unless your PC is ancient you should be OK.

I do appreciate not everyone has a PC that can handle it but i think its worth having the option
Depends on the bitrate, lots of computers struggle with 100+ Mbps HEVC video, but since this camera can only manage 12Mbps in "Highest" quality mode I guess most computers will manage it even using software decoders!

There is also a "Highest (Extreme)" mode with 25Mbps front and 10Mbps rear - wonder if there are any issues using it? If not then they would be reasonable bitrates for 1080 + 720 resolution, but for 4K + 1080 you want a lot more, real 4K has 4x the detail of 1080, even using HEVC those are low bitrates, especially for dashcam footage with a lot of movement!
 
  • Like
Reactions: Mtz
Yeah 20 - 25 mbit H.265 with 4K, that's probably just maintaining status qou at best, 20 mbit H.265 for a 1080p, that got to be awesome, and if my memory serve me right i think it are if i recall my M2 playtime right.

I would guesstimate 40 - 50 Mbit H.265 for a 4K footage will be okay.
This are something i am interested in testing if i could get my hands on a 4K camera that could do those bitrates.
 
Yeah 20 - 25 mbit H.265 with 4K, that's probably just maintaining status qou at best, 20 mbit H.265 for a 1080p, that got to be awesome, and if my memory serve me right i think it are if i recall my M2 playtime right.

I would guesstimate 40 - 50 Mbit H.265 for a 4K footage will be okay.
This are something i am interested in testing if i could get my hands on a 4K camera that could do those bitrates.
Yes, 50Mbit 4K H265 should be about the same quality as 25Mbit 1080 H264, unless you are driving through trees and then you want a bit more due to all the detail and fast movement.
 
One thing is for sure, all dashcams i have had my hands on i have also had a sneaky feeling that if i had a event with a oncoming car the wrong place / speed, then i have no issue imagining a scenario where i could not resolve the plate.
And not forgetting it is to a high degree ( i think ) youtube amplifying this little blocking and make it go really bad as you cant recompress a little blocky footage without it getting even more blocky.
Sure i have seen youtube ruin pretty good clean video too, but its my firm belief that it dont get any better if the footage are lacking a bit.
Sharing on youtube ATM i feel are hard, cuz it dont do any favors to dashcam footage, and often it look a lot worse then the raw footage, and that's a shame towards the people working hard to make good dashcams.
Then again the dashcams are not really build with public sharing of the footage in mind, so it just annoy me a little, not least when people dont understand the youtube thing and think thats a really bad dashcam about a good dashcam.

Still i will not take higher bitrate and file size as a trade off for better footage in busy situations, at least not when we are still offloading to memory cards, if i could get a 256 Gb or larger SSD then i would not care for 2 X larger file size.
 
I have been testing a camera that can create 60Mbps files, and the roadside detail has been much better than any other camera I have used. The downside of continually looping 60Mbps files is that it is hard on the DSP and microSD cards, which inevitably impacts reliability. Some cards are better than others, and compatibility issues with the DSP are a pain to figure out.
 
I have only been to 40 mbit with the joovuu x ( A7 platform ) i think i run it at 28 mbit now, create 1000 MB 3 minute files, but the X came have been running like that for a year now.

Also just took a look at the 64Gb Kingston card in the innovv C3, its still fine and have been going since day #1 with that innovv model, so quite impressing.
 
My Xiaomi Mijia Mini shoots 4k at up to 100Mbps and even then it's not really clear. I can't imagine how much detail will be lost by the blackvue if it's recording 4k at 25Mbps or less, even with HEVC.
 
My Xiaomi Mijia Mini shoots 4k at up to 100Mbps and even then it's not really clear. I can't imagine how much detail will be lost by the blackvue if it's recording 4k at 25Mbps or less, even with HEVC.

Take a look at the same videos, they look pretty good actually.
 
I would guess that with 4K the lens quality have even more to say if you want a good result.

There is a reason Sony use Carl Zeiss lenses on their products.
 
H.265 encoding is very resource-intense in comparison to H.264, meaning that the dashcam would need to have very good hardware to handle it.
Also, due to it being so resource demanding, it might result in the dashcam overheating easily.
I like how BlackVue 900's allows to switch between H.265 and H.264. If you are living in Florida and leaving your dashcam running in a parking mode while being left in a parking lot under Florida's sun for 12 hours - you can use H.264 to avoid overheating. If you are in some colder place like Alaska or Russia, you can have H.265 running all the time.

4k video looks more detailed indeed, but I'm dissatisfied with BlackVue 900's 4k. Something like GITUP F1 160° 4K Action Camera has a lot more detailed image and a lot less motion blur. So one 4k camera can be vastly different from another 4k camera, they are not made equal.

Having 2 cameras writing 4k (or 4k + 1080p) to an sd card might be a bit too much for the sd card to handle, it might require lowering quality of the 4k H.264/H.265 encoding in order to fit within bandwidth and space limitations of an sd card. I see that Street Guardian is offering 400gb sd card option for their SG9663DC on Amazon, which is almost 200 USD more than the base 64gb option. For 200 USD you can get a 1TB SSD in either 2.5" or M.2 form factor (example), which offers a lot more space and a lot higher bandwidth, meaning that you could use the highest quality setting for H.264/H.265 encoders and not having to care about exceeding the write speed or running out of disk space.

So, in my opinion, a high end dashcam of the next generation should offer 4k video quality on par or better than GITUP F1, should not overheat when left on sun in parking mode in Florida (that's where I live), and maybe even have a 1TB ssd option (it's a high-end dashcam afterall!).
 
It has been months since my last post. During this time the price of SD cards and SSDs has decreased drastically.

SD cards:
Samsung 256GB Evo is down from $150 in January to $110 in July, $60 in November and $45 on Black Friday https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B072HRDM55
SanDisk Ultra 400GB A1 is down from $250 in January to $170 in July, $115 in November and $80 on Black Friday https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B074RNRM2B

SSDs:
Samsung 860 EVO 500GB 2.5 Inch SATA III Internal SSD is down from $170 in January to $120 in July, $85 in November and $73 on Black Friday https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B0781Z7Y3S
Samsung 860 EVO 1TB 2.5 Inch SATA III Internal SSD is down from $330 in January to $220 in July, $145 in November and $127 on Black Friday https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B078DPCY3T

NVMe SSDs (Crucial MX500 in particular) seem to cost around $20 more than the mentioned SATA SSDs.

500GB SATA SSD costs about the same as 400GB SD card.
1TB SATA SSD now costs as much as 400GB SD card did when SG first added it as an option for SG9663DC.

All of this means that, assuming there exists a camera board with SATA III port, the two 4k camera high-quality encoding setup is no longer limited by the SD card's write speed, we can just switch to using SSD which costs about the same.

There is an upper bound to how much data you can write to SSDs before it fails. You can google "ssd endurance test" to see some findings. In practice, SSDs tend to outlive the promised TBW ratings of manufacturers, sometimes even doubling them.
Samsung 860 EVO 500GB has 300 TBW and 1TB version has 600 TBW https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/product/consumer/860evo/
Using this calculator, 5 Megapixel, H.264, high quality, 2-camera, 30 FPS, 24-hour 1-day recording uses 414.7GB of storage, meaning 300 TBW would last for almost 2 years of non-stop 24-hour recording, 600 TBW would last for almost 4 years of that.
If we instead use the estimation of 50MBit/s for H.265 kamkar1 gave in an earlier post, 2-camera setup would use 1055GB of storage, meaning 300 TBW would last for almost 1 year of non-stop 24-hour recording, 600 TBW would last for almost 2 years of that. That's a bit low, but still okay-ish.
So far it sounds like using SSD is feasible in theory. The only other concern might be the power draw in comparison to the SD card, but I'm not going to go into it, too tired to continue writing this post :D

Anyway, looking forward to seeing dual 4k camera dashcams powered by SSDs in the near future (1-3 years?).
 
I just saw savings around 20% on the 500 GB samsung 970 EVO NVME / M2 drive i put in my computer days ago :rolleyes: of course this was on Amazon UK and not in danish stores where price are the same as when i got mine.
Storage on other things than memory cards are #2 on my wish list right behind my wish for higher bitrates in dashcams, but i think the 2 follow each other i would not like higher bitrates on memory card cameras.

Samsung / Hynix / micron have had a really good 2018 it seem.
https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20181123PD206.html?chid=2
 
Anyway, looking forward to seeing dual 4k camera dashcams powered by SSDs in the near future (1-3 years?).
By the time we have good 4K dashcams, we will also have terabyte microSD cards available or nearing production, no need for SSDs.

As for reliability, the microSD cards use the same storage technology as the SSDs, maybe even the same chips, just a different interface, so reliability (write cycles) is the same.

So far heat has been a problem for 4K dashcams, but the Gitup F1 has shown that it doesn't have to be a problem, it is smaller than nearly all dashcams, even makes the B1W look big, but does not appear to have any heat problems even though it uses a battery.

I'm expecting some decent 4K dashcams next year, but maybe only FHD for the rear camera.

Although given that 1080 sensors still win by quite a wide margin at night and in lower light levels during the day when it comes to motion blur, I think a dual front lens (wide + narrow field of view) + single rear lens dashcam makes more sense. A 4K video only gives 2x the number plate resolution of a FHD video, and often less than 2x because some of the extra resolution is used up giving a wider field of view, but with wide+narrow lenses you can have a 4x difference with a really wide lens so that you don't miss anything off the sides and a really good narrow view of the number plates.
 
Back
Top