Buffered Parking mode

[Nigel]

@viofo - are you going to fix the G-Sensor problem in buffered parking mode?

It is waiting for an SDK update from Novatek, timescale unknown, but it will be fixed.

Meanwhile, it does record, using the 15 second pre-buffer, whenever it sees motion, so any impact that moves the car should still be recorded into the event buffered parking mode loop recording (max 30% of card space), the only issue is that g-sensor impacts do not get locked, but they also do not get overwritten by normal driving recording because they are in a separate loop, they will eventually get overwritten by event buffered parking mode recordings, but each motion detection only results in 45 seconds of 8Mbps video (45MB), so it takes a long time to overwrite unless you park on a very busy road.

 

[StrayCam]

@viofo - are you going to fix the G-Sensor problem in buffered parking mode?

Answer to your question: Not anytime in the near future. They promised it would be fixed by end of August. = Broken Promise
Viofo told Sdeel7491 the problem would be fixed in October. = Most likely another broken promise!

It is waiting for an SDK update from Novatek, timescale unknown, but it will be fixed.

Meanwhile, it does record, using the 15 second pre-buffer, whenever it sees motion, so any impact that moves the car should still be recorded into the event buffered parking mode loop recording (max 30% of card space), the only issue is that g-sensor impacts do not get locked, but they also do not get overwritten by normal driving recording because they are in a separate loop, they will eventually get overwritten by event buffered parking mode recordings, but each motion detection only results in 45 seconds of 8Mbps video (45MB), so it takes a long time to overwrite unless you park on a very busy road.

Nigel-

Stop making stuff up!!! The problem has to do with the sensitivity of the g-sensor. One very well respected (if not the best) beta-tester said at one point Viofo had the g-sensor "too sensitive"; and now of course it's not sensitive enough. - - The beta tester told me it's an easy fix and merely requires an "in between setting". He also told me that Viofo has no intention of working on this problem now as they are scrambling to get their new products out for "more Viofo sales"! - - I am not making this up. This is coming from one of the best Viofo beta testers!

Nigel is a fanboy that wants to make up excuses for Viofo and tell you the problem is with Novatek's sdk.... - - - This is all made up!!!

And Nigel doesn't answer your question accurately. If your car gets bumped on the side (out of view of your cam) your cam is not going to record anything! Of course giving facts is not one his strengths.

Nigel is also incorrect on motion detection events getting stored with g-sensor triggered events...."Motion Detection Events" ARE NOT stored in a separate loop. - - You'd think that such a Viofo fanboy would know how things actually work with the A129. - - Events that are triggered by motion, get stored in the "regular movie folder"; events that are triggered by g-sensor get stored in the RO (Read Only) folder. - - Incidentally, Bill Zhou (the head guy at Viofo) didn't even know that this is how "their a129 works". - - I believe I finally got him corrected on understanding how his product works.

Btw, you won't see Bill Zhou post to these issues because he is embarrassed about how poorly Viofo has performed.

Bad Performance/Bad Customer Service = Less Sales

 

[Nigel]

Nigel is also incorrect on motion detection events getting stored with g-sensor triggered events...."Motion Detection Events" ARE NOT stored in a separate loop. - - You'd think that such a Viofo fanboy would know how things actually work with the A129. - - Events that are triggered by motion, get stored in the "regular movie folder"; events that are triggered by g-sensor get stored in the RO (Read Only) folder. - - Incidentally, Bill Zhou (the head guy at Viofo) didn't even know that this is how "their a129 works". - - I believe I finally got him corrected on understanding how his product works.

I never said that "motion detection events getting stored with g-sensor triggered events", you are correct that they get stored in the "regular movie folder", but apparently you failed to understand what Bill was saying!

What I did write in my previous post was:

but they also do not get overwritten by normal driving recording because they are in a separate loop,

- a separate loop in the "regular movie folder".

If your car gets bumped on the side (out of view of your cam) your cam is not going to record anything!

It records when it sees something move, so to miss an event, the thing that bumps your car would need to sneak up from the side and then sneak away again on the same side, staying out of view of both cameras at all times, and when it bumped your car it would have to do so without moving the car and thus allowing the camera to see movement in the image. In reality there is a very good chance that it will record the event, and include the contents of the 15 second pre-buffer (A longer buffer than some of the competitors!) In the event that it didn't record, it would be because there was nothing to see, at least not within the view of either camera lens, in which case there would be little point in having a recording!

 

[Sdeel7491]

And the motion detection in parking mode needs to have more control! At the moment it just records everything!
Looking forward to these issues being sorted out! It is October so it can't be far away!!!

Watch this space

 

[TonyM]

I received another beta FW to test recently. I've not had time to test it yet. I'll see what I can do tonight.

 

[DarthMaul]

@StrayCam - I perfectly understand your frustration. I am not happy about slow reaction from @viofo in this matter either, but IMHO that's not a reason to over react and be rude to other people on this forum.

 

[Airborne]

@viofo - are you going to fix the G-Sensor problem in buffered parking mode?

Post this question on VIOFO site maybe you will get a answer, lots of us are waiting along side you.

 

[Airborne]

@StrayCam - I perfectly understand your frustration. I am not happy about slow reaction from @viofo in this matter either, but IMHO that's not a reason to over react and be rude to other people on this forum.

Hey he is posting the facts, I see no rudeness in his post

 

[Mtz]

One very well respected (if not the best) beta-tester

LOL, the best beta tester is... @Nigel . He knows much much more things than your idol which many times is just confusing the people. Yes, from the first view, your idol seems to be very professional but when you study him more and more you will discover that is not like you observed first time. But the more you will study Nigel and his posts you will see that (maybe) is one of the most valuable users of this forum. Of course, your idol have many good jobs done and added real value to this forum, he is a great user, but sometimes he is screwing the things and worst, he is not agreeing when doing mistakes. Nigel is much more careful to not make mistakes and is not making mistakes because he is well prepared.

enjoy,
Mtz

 

[joe384]

It is waiting for an SDK update from Novatek, timescale unknown, but it will be fixed.

Meanwhile, it does record, using the 15 second pre-buffer, whenever it sees motion, so any impact that moves the car should still be recorded into the event buffered parking mode loop recording (max 30% of card space), the only issue is that g-sensor impacts do not get locked, but they also do not get overwritten by normal driving recording because they are in a separate loop, they will eventually get overwritten by event buffered parking mode recordings, but each motion detection only results in 45 seconds of 8Mbps video (45MB), so it takes a long time to overwrite unless you park on a very busy road.

Hi Nigel,

Could you elaborate on the "max 30% of card space"? Is this only in buffered parking mode?

 

[Nigel]

Hi Nigel,

Could you elaborate on the "max 30% of card space"? Is this only in buffered parking mode?

Based on my testing of the A129 Pro, which I think works the same as the current standard A129 firmware, yes, the 45 second buffered parking mode files that go in the normal record folder are marked as Read Only on their attributes, and these have a seperate loop recording to the normal files which will not exceed 30% of the space available to the normal folder (it will be less GB if there are a lot of files in the RO folder). So if you leave it overnight and it records some people walking around your car, and then you drive 10 hours the next day, the buffered parking videos from the night before are protected.

In low bitrate parking mode the parking mode files in the normal folder are not marked Read Only and go in the same loop as the normal files, so have no protection against overwrite unless there is a g-sensor event which moves them to the RO folder.

 

[joe384]

That's interesting, I assumed buffered parking mode events were treated as normal driving since they don't get put in the ro folder.

So potentially if I park up and something is triggering buffered parking constantly, once the 30% of the card is filled up, it will loop.

Buffered parking mode clips are 60s and ~135Mbytes (correct me if I'm wrong) so that's ~8Gbytes per hour worst case scenario

I typically park for around 8 hours so if I was really unlucky and parked near a main road I guess I could miss an important event even using 128Gbyte card.

 

[Nigel]

That's interesting, I assumed buffered parking mode events were treated as normal driving since they don't get put in the ro folder.

So potentially if I park up and something is triggering buffered parking constantly, once the 30% of the card is filled up, it will loop.

Buffered parking mode clips are 60s and ~135Mbytes (correct me if I'm wrong) so that's ~8Gbytes per hour worst case scenario

I typically park for around 8 hours so if I was really unlucky and parked near a main road I guess I could miss an important event even using 128Gbyte card.

Mine are 45 seconds and 45 MB, but as I said, I am testing an A129 Pro which may have some differences.
So for me and a 128GB card, my overnight parking mode footage is quite safe, and the driving from yesterday is also quite safe, as long as I didn't drive for too many hours, and I do take a look around my car for damage reasonably often, but then I am supposed to check tire pressures etc before driving so should be noticing serious damage fairly quickly!

 

[StrayCam]

I never said that "motion detection events getting stored with g-sensor triggered events", you are correct that they get stored in the "regular movie folder", but apparently you failed to understand what Bill was saying!

No, I did not misunderstand what Viofo told me regarding g-sensor parking mode videos. Here is their direct quote:

"With the latest A129 Duo firmware releases, we provide advanced buffered parking mode for VIOFO A129 Duo. Both G-sensor and motion could trigger buffered parking mode. That means the recorded videos of G-sensor won't be saved into the RO folder. It will be saved in the Movie folder as the same as the recorded videos of motion.

If you want the G-sensor videos to be saved into the RO folder instead of buffered parking mode, you can downgrade the camera firmware to V1.5. (See attachment)"


I went on to tell them how it actually works which is the way anyone would prefer it: g-sensor videos are saved to the RO (Read Only File)

In low bitrate parking mode the parking mode files in the normal folder are not marked Read Only and go in the same loop as the normal files, so have no protection against overwrite unless there is a g-sensor event which moves them to the RO folder.

So the method that most experts here on this forum are recommending "low bitrate parking mode", does not offer any protection at all to the parking mode files! - - If you don't happen to notice someone damaging your car before your regular driving videos write-over the evidence of someone doing the damage to your car, you are simply out of luck. - - That's just one of the downsides of having a "non-working g-sensor" in parking mode!


And the fact remains that the g-sensor still does not work in parking mode for the A129. Of course you are not testing for that right now as you are too busy working on the A129 Pro... - How nice!!!
In the meantime Viofo keeps telling customers lies just to appease them: They told me they would fix the g-sensor parking mode problem by the end of August; and they told Sdeel7491 it would be fixed by October. And they'll tell the next guy November or December. - Why don't they just tell the truth and say "We might fix it sometime in 2020. And then again, we just might not fix it at all because we have new products coming out like the A129 Pro.

 

[TonyM]

So the method that most experts here on this forum are recommending "low bitrate parking mode", does not offer any protection at all to the parking mode files! - - If you don't happen to notice someone damaging your car before your regular driving videos write-over the evidence of someone doing the damage to your car, you are simply out of luck.

Low bitrate parking mode is just that. Instead of recording continuously at normal 16Mbps, your camera can record continuously at 4Mbps whilst parked. If the g-sensor is triggered in either normal or low bitrate mode, the file is saved in the RO folder. Low bitrate offers no more, or less, protection than normal video mode.

 

[StrayCam]

Low bitrate parking mode is just that. Instead of recording continuously at normal 16Mbps, your camera can record continuously at 4Mbps whilst parked. If the g-sensor is triggered in either normal or low bitrate mode, the file is saved in the RO folder. Low bitrate offers no more, or less, protection than normal video mode.

I can appreciate "if the G-sensor is working in parking mode" with low bitrate parking, the file will get stored in the RO (Read Only Folder). The problem is, as we all know, the g-sensor in parking mode does not work. It doesn't pick up signifcant movement or impacts to your car. - - If it did, everyone would be happy.

And of course we keep getting promises from Viofo as to when the g-sensor in parking mode will be fixed. - Quite a while back when Sdeel7491 said he was told on Viofo's forum that it would be fixed in October, I said that will never happen! Well, we are half way through October and there has not been a fix yet. I went as far to say it will not even be fixed by November. - - It's a shame that Vifofo just doesn't tell their customers the truth...

 

[TonyM]

As I said a few days ago, I have a new beta FW to test. Viofo are trying to fix this.

 

[StrayCam]

Thanks Tony. Hopefully it indeed gets fixed soon!

 

[DarthMaul]

Are they understaffed or what? They would receive a lot of help from the community if they go open source...

 

[valkyrie]

Are they understaffed or what? They would receive a lot of help from the community if they go open source...

I suspect they are very understaffed, at least in the customer service department. I have an unanswered Viofo support ticket with them for over a month now while they check with their engineers to get back with me with a solution. Waiting 17 days for them to respond to a question on their Viofo community forum, where it seems @CaptureYourAction is the only one offering support there (hope he's being compensated). And another 22 days waiting for them to answer a question on this forum.

I don't really expect them to be prompt here or any other site that's not affiliated with their brand, but I certainly would expect them to have a presence on their own forum to answer questions / post updates etc.. but they don't. I also would expect to get a response from them in their ticketing system but that doesn't appear to be important to them either.