anyone receive their SJ8 Pro yet?

benjos

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Dash Cam
SJ8 Pro, Rexing V1P Max, Dome D201, Xiaomi Yi
I just got mine today but haven't had much time to play with it. It supports 2.4GHz or 5GHz wireless. The back screen is touchscreen. Resolutions with max FPS: 4K at 60fps, 1440p at 60fps (no 120 fps), 1080p at 120fps, 720p at 240fps. There are two "Ultra" resolutions for 4K at 30fps and 1080p at 60fps; I don't know what the "Ultra" resolution does; there is a separate quality menu for Economy, Normal, and Fine. The recording modes are: Video, Video Laps, Slow Re, Photo, Photo Lapse, Burst Mode, Video/photo, and Car Mode. The default encoding mode was h264 but you can change it to h265; however, when using 4K at 60fps, then the encoding option is dimmed (and default setting said it was h264) and I am not sure if it is using h264 or h265 because if I changed it to 4K 30fps and h265 then go back to 4K 60fps, the encoding mode will be dimmed but show h265.

The instruction manual says when using Car Mode, "Camera will switch on automatically when the car is started while connected to a car charger." I will test this out later and see if it works without the battery installed.

I did see a "slow card speed" warning while recording at 4K at 60fps while using a U1 instead of U3 micro SD card.

On Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, the operating system does not recognize the SJ8 as a storage device (or as any device that I can direct to a Windows 10 Virtual Machine).

I installed the "SJCam Zone" android app from APKPure but Comodo Antivirus thinks that is is malware so I uninstalled it. Amazon App Store doesn't have the app available and so the only source to download from may be from Google Play which isn't available or functional on my Android phone. I'll figure out the app situation another time.
 
Where did you order it from and how long did it take to receive it?
 
Amazon has two listings for the pro.
Have you tried the voice control, Benjos?
 
And still crickets from SJCam...
 
Amazon has two listings for the pro.
Have you tried the voice control, Benjos?
Yep, $289 each. Sigh... This is so effin' stupid. "You can buy them but we won't let you in on the secret."
It's enough to make even Paul "never known to cuss" Ryan say words that would fill the "bad words fine" jar.
 
I preordered from BangGood in early or mid April. It shipped around May 10. the firmware on it is from May 5. It took about 13 days to ship not counting the preorder waiting. The item didn't include any mounts or skeleton case.

I didn't go thru the manual yet but I tried saying, "start recording", but it didn't do anything. Also I do not remember seeing any setting to enable or disable voice activation. I verified that Car Mode works (turns on and records when power is supplied) and also works without the battery installed. It takes a few seconds to turn on and record.

Sent from my VS995 using Tapatalk
 
Voice control on my 4k+ is the fifth or sixth menu selection in the video tools sub-menu!
GB had several sj8 pro choices(?) on their site USD 269-289. It appeared the second figure was the full kit incl.waterproof case!
 
The SJ8 doesn't have voice control or GPS.
 
I confirmed that it does not have voice activation or GPS.

Also the H265 encoding is not available for certain resolutions at the fastest framerate such as 4K/60fps or 1080p/120fps or 720p/240fps; it will record in H264 (and the encoding option will be grayed out). 1440p/60fps still lets me use H265 but note that 1440p is just 1920x1440 instead of the widescreen 2560x1440 resolution. The 720p resolution is only available with 240fps.

While recording, if I take out the battery, the last file does not seem to save properly; I think this would be the same situation if running it in a car without the battery and then the power is stopped; this may mean you need to press the stop button on the camera before turning off the car in order to save the video (if the battery is not installed).
 
About pulling the battery, do you need to do this? That is, how hot does the camera get? I understand that if the camera is used only with external power pulling it is a good idea. Since the SJ7 can damage batteries due to heat, it makes sense to protect the battery.

The SJ7 has a recovery routine which tries to recover an interrupted file. I take it the SJ8 doesn't?
 
About pulling the battery, do you need to do this? That is, how hot does the camera get? I understand that if the camera is used only with external power pulling it is a good idea. Since the SJ7 can damage batteries due to heat, it makes sense to protect the battery.

The SJ7 has a recovery routine which tries to recover an interrupted file. I take it the SJ8 doesn't?
I'd have to test it again to see if it fixes the file after next boot up. in my test I took out battery while recording and then ejected the micro sd to put into computer; the last video was blank (0 seconds) in VLC as if it couldn't read it but file size was over 40MB (a few seconds of video).

Sent from my VS995 using Tapatalk
 
After my sj7 freezes and I try the video recovery , I click the icon and the recovery never happens-nothing saved!
 
VLC is ...um... somewhat finicky about what it will and won't show. My player of choice is MPC-HC - its development is frozen, but it's still a good video app. https://mpc-hc.org/downloads/
 
I have gravitated towards MPC lately.
But i also have VLC on the machine.
 
VLC is not very good with 4K. After I transcoded my videos from 1080p to 4K, it often couldn't get through less than a minute of the video. It plays DVD's well, and does a good job with 1080p from the SJ7. I even can invert the image, although it takes a bit of looking looking around to find the option.

MPC-HC often struggles with 4K, too, but that seems to be a problem with a less than outstanding GPU and CPU. At least MPC-HC doesn't show strange colors as VLC does.

Overall, I look at VLC as a necessary evil. If I could find a good full replacement, I'd at least test it in a New York minute.
 
MPC-HC often struggles with 4K, too, but that seems to be a problem with a less than outstanding GPU and CPU. At least MPC-HC doesn't show strange colors as VLC does.
.

the strange colours in VLC happens when the hardware is struggling, 4k requires pretty high spec to play well
 
I saw official SJ activity on YT today, so they cant be all gone.


"we'll be soon posting LOTS of videos in VERY challenging conditions :) Please stay tuned to our official channel".
 
I saw official SJ activity on YT today, so they cant be all gone.


"we'll be soon posting LOTS of videos in VERY challenging conditions :) Please stay tuned to our official channel".
This is from SJCam?
 
the strange colours in VLC happens when the hardware is struggling, 4k requires pretty high spec to play well
VLC commits a number of sins including with audio lists, not looking up cddb titles (asked about that, the reply was fine example of the snotty reply) etc., etc. As I said it's a necessary evil. I would like to find a viable alternative. So far, nada.
 
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