A129 Pro firmware

[SawMaster]

Exposure value (EV) should be tried higher, go one step at a time and also view it in brighter conditions to decide if it's better or if it needs to be adjusted again.

Phil

 

[gse]

What do you guys think?

Try tilting the camera so that there is less sky in the rear camera frame, then the picture should be lighter.

 

[Nigel]

Yes, put the horizon at 50% of the way up the image on both cameras and keep the EV at zero.

 

[kamkar]

And test not in a concrete canyon where metering can be different on the 2 cameras, you need to have a look in a wide open landscape with nothing like a bunch of trees lining the road behind the car, as that will affect metering.

There was a guy posting a similar problem a while back, he was in a street where the front camera could see about 50 % of the max sky it could possible ever see, but the rear camera was ained back down the street and only have a tiny sliver of sky in the image due to tall buildings on either side, and hence the camera would / should adjust more for the darker surroundings caused by the shade of the buildings.

In your picture it look as if the front camera have 2 X more sky in the image.
look to be a 1 way street, otherwise you should try and drive in both directions and see how the cameras stack up then, i do think if you flipped your car 180 degrees in the other direction your front camera would then be the dark one.
And have the same aim on both cameras, the rear one could do with being aimed down a bit more.

 

[ogzogz]

Here's a snap. There isn't any direct sunlight in this footage, it's late afternoon and the sun is about to set (blocked by the buildings) and you can see how the rear camera is noticeably darker than the front.

What do you guys think?

The white car seen behind must be in the middle of the picture.

 

[Arese]

Thanks everyone for the, as always, insightful answers.

I'll play around the angle and exposure options next weekend then.

Last question regarding the new fw 2.2

Currently running fw 2.1 which for me has been the most stable fw as the cam has been working flawlessly. The only bug I have with the 2.1 though is that it doesn't lock events in the RO folder even when I press the button manually when I see something I want to save on the road.
It means I always need to go through all the recorded videos to find a particular video I wanted to review.

Has this been fixed with the 2.2?

 

[Mtz]

Yes, put the horizon at 50% of the way up the image on both cameras and keep the EV at zero.

This is why I asked for a snapshot, I was sure he have much more sky than road. Your advice is good to keep EV at 0.
A horizon line adjustment included in firmware would help all dashcam buyers because I have the feeling that at least 60% from dashcam users are pointing their cameras too much to the sky which means 60% of dashcam users have poor dashcam videos.

 

[Arese]

This is why I asked for a snapshot, I was sure he have much more sky than road. Your advice is good to keep EV at 0.
A horizon line adjustment included in firmware would help all dashcam buyers because I have the feeling that at least 60% from dashcam users are pointing their cameras too much to the sky which means 60% of dashcam users have poor dashcam videos.

Thanks for linking to an example of the horizon line.
I'll keep that in mind when adjusting the angle

 

[mms1361]

Came here to ask if its worth upgrading from 1.1 FW to whatever the latest is now.

 

[xiongguoy]

Yes,
1.1 had some GPS mount power issues
1.2 added time delay between mode transitions
then later ones improved on card recording issues, added some more options, lower res parking mode recording for less heat and better battery life, some new WiFi settings etc etc

 

[mms1361]

Im not experiencing gps power issues. I read somewhere around they removed beeping when the camera fails to record causing issues for some people.
Is the current release "polished" or still "receiving feedback" from users here?
Has any improvement been made to picture quality to current release?
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I sure hope they improved wifi playback speed as the constant buffering renders the wifi feature useless. It buffers for around 10 seconds and then plays 5 seconds of video before buffering again. Idk if improvements can be made as i think this is more limited by hardware, but i could be wrong. It doesnt matter whether its a 1min,3,5min clip it still takes forever to buffer and wont have a steady playback when reviewing videos. Huge annoyance.

I suppose you can download the clips over the air but that takes even longer and you have to download the whole clip (1,3,5 min) video. On 2k60fps this means the video is close to 1gb long, which takes about 5-7mins to download over (LTE)wifi. I would imagine a 4k clip takes twice as long..

 

[xiongguoy]

mine is set to 10min files 2k60fps front FHD30fps rear H265 and I have no issues streaming over WiFi.
I suggest you upgrade and try the latest firmware, countless things have been fixed and improved upon.
If you don't like it you can always flash back the old ones.

Here are download links for all known available firmware versions:
https://www.xsocam.com/downloads/viofo/

 

[Nath]

@xiongguoy @mms1361 Prior FW v2.0 there were issues with Wifi... (probably fixed by a newer driver inside more recent Novatek SDK)

...
1.1 had some GPS mount power issues
...

I'm wondering what do you mean. I'm aware of the only issue between dashcam and mount and that's HW issue with an internal cable, hardly fixable via firmware update.

 

[xiongguoy]

I have personally experienced the GPS mount power issue, when i first got it, it was 1.1.
When mounted and powered from the GPS mount, some times it will turn on, some times it won't, some times it will turn off it self, some times it won't switch to parking mode.
1.2ACC and after I no longer experience this, many have reported similar.
If you read back the threads, somewhere around oct/nov 2019, there was discussion of this, some experience similar issues and Viofo acknowledge it and it was fixed with firmware.

 

[mms1361]

just updated from 1.1 to 2.2. Had the cam for a while I can not see what improvements have made other than what i assume are 2.1 to 2.2 changes.

V2.2 firmware changelog:

1. Add 5GHz WiFi Channel option;
2. Support Norsk Language

Can anyone tell me what other changes have occured since 1.1 to 2.2 ? Im assuming they are somewhere between the 62 pages on this thread but do not wish to spend the day scrolling.
Anything important i should be aware specifically in regards to settings or parking mode?

 

[xiongguoy]

I dont think anyone of us actually documented every change each version.
from what i can remember from the top of my head:
GPS mount power issue
Option for delay transition from driving to parking, originally meant for some start-stop cars that apparently also kill power to ACC
Some fix to WDR algo
Option to have different reso for driving and parking
Some codec audio/video sync issue
Some delete/write race condition issue that causes recording to stop time to time when card is full
etc, etc

 

[LeJerk]

What's the latest version of the firmware for this dash cam? They really need to update the original post with the latest version link and the date and the version number.

 

[xiongguoy]

v2.3 20210330

 

[DAP]

v2.3 20210330

Where is this version coming from? Latest version on the Viofo web site is 2.2.

 

[xiongguoy]

From the Viofo forums.
We all know the website is the last to get updated.
Remember the time when we were all running 1.2, 1.3, 1.6, 1.7 and the website was still 1.1.
Heck most of us were on 2.2 since Feb and the website only got updated in April.