Dashcam Viewer for Mac and Windows

[traveler]

Wow, huge images.

Trend Micro Security Folder Shield is overly possessive about some files. I advised the user to make an exception and it ran without incident. Dashcam Viewer stores user prefs in the Registry which is probably what Trend is complaining about.

 

[jokiin]

Yeah I would have preferred screenshots from the PC rather than his photos, hard to convey what is needed with some users sometimes

 

[PedroN]

Is it me or is the dashcam viewer terribly slow if the folder contains much data. The initial reading is slow but also when I want to skip to the next 10 files it takes some time.
The RegistratorViewer is much faster and I have the idea that it caches the data once it is read. At the next start of the program most data is already cached (the trip length and time).
The initial read of the folder with 204GB of data takes about 24 minutes to process. What is it exactly doing? Reading the GPS data?

 

[Street Guardian USA]

You're on a roll with updates.

My next two requests would be

1) file loading playback performance improvements (like @PedroN pointed out above)

2) an option to only have one window for everything (like registratorviewer does it) or maybe a one button dock everything into one window view.

I know having separate windows for everything is a normal Mac thing, but based on mine and others feedback, most windows users prefer one window instead of many.

 

[DT MI]

You're on a roll with updates.

My next two requests would be

1) file loading playback performance improvements (like @PedroN pointed out above)

2) an option to only have one window for everything (like registratorviewer does it) or maybe a one button dock everything into one window view.

I know having separate windows for everything is a normal Mac thing, but based on mine and others feedback, most windows users prefer one window instead of many.

Add to the list playback performance improvement(s). On my Win 7 Pro (64 bit, 12 GB, quad core) machine playback 'stutters' so bad it's virtually useless. It's even worse on lesser machines. RV playback (on all my machines) is smooth as silk so I know it's not a hardware deficiency.

 

[antonispgs]

New Features:

• Users can now ignore (skip) the first few seconds of each movie to support dashcams whose consecutive movies overlap. The skip amount is set in the Preferences window. ToDo: apply the skip value to the "merge videos" feature.

I love the improvements, make the software more functional with each update.
I already purchased even while waiting for the skip value to be applied to the merge videos feature, as this is what I would actually need.

 

[looper]

I use timelapse functionality of A119... Unfortunately dashcamviewer cannot handle this. It gets completely confused and loses sync between the GPS position in the map and the video. Any chance of a fix?

Other feature request - export video with embedded google map in the corner.

 

[traveler]

Thanks for the feedback. Let me address some of the issues.

Regarding movie load performance: this is primarily a function of the dashcam model. After you choose a movie folder or set of movie files to load, Dashcam Viewer immediately begins the work of identifying which method of GPS data encapsulation was used and extracting the GPS data for all of the files. This step occurs before movie playback begins.

For dashcams that store their GPS data in separate text files, like the MINI 080x, this is an extremely fast process.

For dashcams that embed their GPS data inside the movie file itself the process is slower. If the dashcam embeds all of its GPS data at the end of the movie file, like the Panorama 2, then the GPS load process is still relatively fast. If the dashcam scatters its GPS data throughout the movie file (A119 and many others), then the extraction process is slower since it requires many file 'seeks'.

Also keep in mind that in 90% of the dashcam models supported, I have received no help from the manufacturer regarding their GPS data encoding scheme. The manufacturer may have a slick way of finding and extracting the data, but I'm not privy to it. At least one manufacturer actually encrypts their GPS data to make it harder to decode. Although there are GPS data encoding standards (like NMEA) only some manufacturers use them, and even then there are some deviations.

When I don't recognize the scheme I use brute force techniques to find and decipher it, which can be difficult and slow with binary data. In some cases I haven't been able to "crack the code" (NextBase, DOD Tech, Garmin) and have reached out to the manufacturer for help. The response is almost always "we'll get back to you" and that's the last I hear from them.

Regarding video playback stuttering: this is much more common on Win7 machines, which is why I recommend Win10 for use with Dashcam Viewer. I think Win10 has better codecs that DV is able to take advantage of. Having a better video chipset helps too. My ASUS Win10 laptop w/Nvidia 950M can play the videos without stuttering but my cheapo $400 Win8 laptop has the stuttering. YMMV.

 

[PedroN]

How is it determined where the GPS data is stored, for my Viofo A119s I use NovaTrakt-v2.3 to extract the GPS data to a separate folder so I can use RegistratorViewer to view my trips on the charts.
I hoped once the GPS data was extracted and stored in the folder GPS (like the mini0806) the loading with Dashcam viewer was also much faster but that isn't the case.
Nonetheless it is a nice program!

 

[jokiin]

Regarding movie load performance: this is primarily a function of the dashcam model. After you choose a movie folder or set of movie files to load, Dashcam Viewer immediately begins the work of identifying which method of GPS data encapsulation was used and extracting the GPS data for all of the files. This step occurs before movie playback begins.

Would it be possible to maybe index the first few files and commence the ability to playback while scanning further files as a background process? Thinking if maybe 3 to 5 files were read before playback and then it was possible to just be pulling the data from the files ahead would be a lot more acceptable, the challenge with the current method is people try the trial version which can only load 5 files so see a delay of a few minutes while it's doing its thing, when they upgrade to the full version and have the ability to load the whole card they're finding out the program will take 30 minutes or more before anything happens

 

[Dashmellow]

Sitting in front of a computer drumming one's fingers on the desk can be frustrating but many of us have gotten used to doing that over the years using one application or another. I remember using Photoshop plug-ins 20 years ago when you might as well go have lunch while a filter was running.

I have at times needed to sit down in front my computer with law enforcement personnel and an attorney to review multiple dash cam footage clips in reference to a legal matter I've been involved with. Waiting excessively long periods of time for files to load would be out of the question in such situations and so it requires the use of a different viewer than DashCam Viewer. On the Mac I use QuickTime Player for this because it is lightning fast, allows the key features of frame by frame forward and back via the arrow keys, mouse scroll-able forward and backwards scrubbing and also has other useful hidden features like variable speed slow motion. Of course, you don't get the use of GPS data with QuickTime Player.

Would it be possible to create an option to load files into DashCam Viewer without the embedded or attached GPS data so that you could quickly view videos in DCV just using it as the excellent media player it is with the option of reloading the files later when you have to time for GPS functionality?

 

[jokiin]

Some sort of quick preview option might be a workable alternative, quite often you don't need to review all the footage anyway so quickly finding what you want and then only loading the data for that could be acceptable

 

[Dashmellow]

Some sort of quick preview option might be a workable alternative, quite often you don't need to review all the footage anyway so quickly finding what you want and then only loading the data for that could be acceptable

Yes, that is exactly what I do with QuckTime Player. And I can scrub back and forth in variable speed fast and slow motion or just jump around in the video until I locate what I need to view.

 

[jokiin]

Would be nice to be able to do it with the one program though

 

[Dashmellow]

It would.

Also, many people don't seem to be aware that you can use QuickTime Player on the Mac to view files at speeds from 0.1 to 32x forward or backwards (including sound).

I have a hunch that DashCam Viewer might eventually be able to do something similar.

 

[traveler]

...
I hoped once the GPS data was extracted and stored in the folder GPS (like the mini0806) the loading with Dashcam viewer was also much faster but that isn't the case.
Nonetheless it is a nice program!

Yes, @PedroN , there is a way to do this!

The first thing Dashcam Viewer does after you select the movies is to look for .gpx files of the same movie name in your folder. If it finds .gpx files, it loads them preferentially and doesn't try to dig for the GPS data in the movie itself. This will dramatically improve load times. The trick is to create GPX files for each movie. But this is easy to do. Here's how:

1. Load all your movies the usual (slow) way. You only have to do this once.
2. Select Export to GPX from the toolbar and choose your movie directory for the output.
3. Select "Yes" when asked "Do you want to export individual GPX files".
4. Click OK

This will produce a GPX file for each movie you loaded. The gpx files will have the same base filename as the movie (e.g., CLIP001.MOV ==> CLIP001.gpx) so the next time you load this set of movies, the gpx files will be used for the GPS data instead of the movie files themselves. This will speed up load time significantly.

 

[traveler]

...Would it be possible to create an option to load files into DashCam Viewer without the embedded or attached GPS data so that you could quickly view videos in DCV just using it as the excellent media player it is with the option of reloading the files later when you have to time for GPS functionality?

Yes, @Dashmellow, there is a way to do this too!

1. Create a dummy text file and drop it in your movie folder. It doesn't matter what's in the file.
2. Change the file extension to .srt
3. Now load your movies.

Dashcam Viewer will not try to scan your movies for GPS data. What you are doing is fooling DV into thinking there is GPS data in an SRT file. It doesn't find any so it gives up for all the files. Just be sure to delete the .srt file if you want to see your GPS data.

John

 

[Dashmellow]

Yes, @Dashmellow, there is a way to do this too!

1. Create a dummy text file and drop it in your movie folder. It doesn't matter what's in the file.
2. Change the file extension to .srt
3. Now load your movies.

Dashcam Viewer will not try to scan your movies for GPS data. What you are doing is fooling DV into thinking there is GPS data in an SRT file. It doesn't find any so it gives up for all the files. Just be sure to delete the .srt file if you want to see your GPS data.

John

Thanks, that sounds great! What an excellent tip.

What you are saying suggests that DashCam Viewer could potentially have a toggle and a dummy .srt file could be built-into or always available to the app?

 

[jokiin]

If it's that simple then maybe an on/off switch within the program to tell it not to scan the GPS data when first launched would be doable, still not as good as quick loading but better than waiting 30 minutes before anything happens

 

[traveler]

Would it be possible to maybe index the first few files and commence the ability to playback while scanning further files as a background process?

@jokiin, I appreciate the suggestion. In fact, I've thought about this type of background processing before. The gotcha is that both the foreground process (playback) and background process (loading) would be in contention for the hard drive at the same time. This could lead to playback stuttering until the background process is complete. Also, if the user immediately jumps ahead a few movies, playback would have to pause until all the GPS data is loaded. The bottom line is that something could be done along these lines but it would be complex to implement.

John