Camera stalling / freezing / crashing

A

Alan-GTC-

Member
Joined
Jan 31, 2015
Messages
59
Reaction score
25
Country
United Kingdom
Hi all,

So in the last week my camera(s), which I bought in December, has moments where it decides it is not going to work.

The unit is hardwired into my car with a Power Magic PRO. I run the unit without the Battery Backup switched ON as I do not use PARKING MODE too often.

The run of events leading up to the stall is I turn on the car ignition, I get "The Blackvue is starting recording" and all seems fine. However once in a while my eye line does gaze past the camera and I then see the recording LED has either remained solid ORANGE or OFF and the GPS light is on.

Examing the card I note straight away that the card is nearly full, less than 400Mb on a 16Gb card. I was under the impression the camera loops back and records over old files that are not locked. I have noticed this happen a few times and I was working on a theory that for some reason the camera is failing due to the memory card being near to full as it tries to write the file(s).

This happend on Saturday this week and though I did not have my a laptop at hand to check the memory card was full. I disconnected the back camera and switched everything OFF on the camera. I then plugged it back in and enabled the WIFI. I asked my wife to connect the iPhone to the camera over WIFI and watch the LIVE feed. After doing this the camera worked and did not stall for the rest of the day. So this threw some doubt in to my theory that when the memory card is full the unit crashes.

Again this morning the unit stalled twice with 5 minutes of a reboot.

I have formatted the card several times using MS windows own format tools. I have also done a zero wipe of the card (write all 00 to the sectors, then write FF to the sectors and then a random ## to each sector) to effectively wipe the entire card clean. I then load the v1.03 code to the card, I then use the Pittasoft tools to then format the card again and then reload the v1.03 code a second time.

Has anyone else experience this level of problems with the unit. I have not lost faith in the camera to work as intended and can not rely on it for the purpose it was designed.
 
Not yet. Both my wifes car and my car have the same model camera installed using the default supplied cards. I will try switching the cards around tonight.

Any recomendations on a 64Gb card to buy or avoid? I keep hearing mixed responses about transcend cards and samsung cards.
 
Hopefully Alexsoll will be kind to see this post and respond with his expertise.

Alexsoll, if you see this, can you also approve my application to http://car-dvr.info/forum/ ? I registered last week under the same username "Alan-GTC-". Thank you.
 
The Samsung EVO cards have been problematic in a few cameras recently, now that could be a problem with the cards but it could well be that because they're popular right now they've become a target for copies and it's fakes that people have been dealing with that's actually the problem, not sure what the situation is but I'd buy with caution at the moment

Transcend I haven't heard anything negative, again @alexsoll would be better able to comment on what might be the better choice for a Blackvue camera, he's the resident expert on those and I'm sure he'll offer some thoughts when he's online next, the post has been marked to his attention already
 
Alan-GTC- said:
Alexsoll, if you see this, can you also approve my application to http://car-dvr.info/forum/ ? I registered last week under the same username "Alan-GTC-". Thank you.
Click to expand...
Approved and actively
==================
I recommend
af0Fm.jpg


kiss_43kb.1410875288.png


af0Dt.jpg
 
Last edited:
Thanks Alexsoll.

I found this forum link from a UK reseller who did some tests on different SD card manufacturers in the DR6xx and DR750:- http://blackvueshop.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=721

They reported the Samsung as suitable, but has some issues with excess heat in the Camera. Have you experienced any issues with the camera running hotter than normal with Samsung as per the above link?

I am tempted to buy the Lexar, I be happy to provide my feedback on this card if I do chose to buy it.
 
I tested the Lexar on PANORAMA S she quickly soured
SanDisk does not recommend
 
Would the WRITE speed not be the most important aspect of the specification of the SD CARD? I am making the assumption that the camera would write to the card sequentially rather than BFF (Best Fit First).

In that aspect of SEQUENTIAL WRITE being most important then yes the Kingston would seem better than the Samsung. Though it sacrifices on random read/write speeds. If the DASH CAM does however do random writing to the SD CARD (i.e. skipping locked files with BFF) then the Kingston maybe less effective than the Samsung.

Of course these numbers can be subjective and may hold some merit to the real world scenario.

Who thought choosing the right Micro SD Card would be so complicated :)
 
I did a test w/ 18Mbps Front 4Mpbs Rear. All the recordings start stalling / freezing for a sec and comes back and again.

It does not happen when the setting is on 15Mbps Front and 4Mbps Rear, I believe that if files were written in SEQUENTIAL, the +3Mbps would not effect on this story.

So, which means, the camera would actually write files in RANDOM writing rather than SEQUENTIAL. And As I am using Kingston microSDXC,(you can find my 4K/512K speed at#13).
Therefore, 18Mbps+4Mbps=2.25MB/s+0.5MB/s=2.75MB/s write speed require has been limited by my card.
IMO this is the reason where my recording in today has occured stalling / freezing.
 
Just for clarification. The stalling is not the video playback issues due to the limitation of the memory card. The stalling this thread was originally about is the camera hardware stalling and needing to be hard rebooted to work again.

But thank you for giving some substance to the theories of why higher bit-rates will result in choppy video.
 
Last edited:
Camera stalled again today. :-( This time the card was not full. It still had 10Gb of the 14.9Gb available. So either the camera is faulty or the Micro SD card is bad. My other check is to disconnect the Power Magic Pro and return to using the 12v jack in the car.

My new Micro SD Card arrives today. I opted to buy the Samsung Micro SD pro (http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/B00J2C87T8) as recommended by Alesoll. I did not test my camera with my misses Micro SD card from her camera as I did not want to end up with two broken dashcams.

Are there any programs that can do a series of tests to verify there are no bad sectors in Micro SD cards?
 
Tested my Blackvue Micro SD card with "H2testw" that copied data to the card and verified the data. It found no errors in the micro SD card. I am starting to suspect it is more related to power supply issues to the Blackvue or the Blackvue itself has a fault.
 
if you're connected to a stable power source (check it, stranger things have happened) then that only really leaves the camera
 
My plan is to swap the camera in my wifes car with the camera in mine. If hers stalls in my car and mine does not stall in her car then it is 100% power related.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Thread starter Similar threads Forum Replies Date
V Rear camera not recording. No power? DR650GW (1CH or 2CH) 1
S Need Help Troubleshooting Rear Camera new blackvue user DR650GW (1CH or 2CH) 3
P Rear camera and Power Magic bit DR650GW (1CH or 2CH) 4
B Rear Camera rc650 DR650GW (1CH or 2CH) 1
GRG Since installing the new software the camera keeps going into shut down ? DR650GW (1CH or 2CH) 4
Similar threads
Rear camera not recording. No power?
Need Help Troubleshooting Rear Camera new blackvue user
Rear camera and Power Magic bit
Rear Camera rc650
Since installing the new software the camera keeps going into shut down ?
Back
Top