Dashcam Viewer for Mac and Windows

hi @LateralNW ,

can you Testing Cleaning the Cache and than load a Single front Cam file?

That seemed to have fixed it.
Thanks Rolly.

@traveler you have limit on the Plus version for the cache the same as the free version it seems. A suggestion, increase the cache for the Plus version and also remove cache files that are the oldest similar to what a dashcam does in loop mode.
 
@LateralNW each time a video is loaded, the GPS data is cached so that the next time Dashcam Viewer loads the video the GPS data is processed almost immediately. If the all-time number of videos loaded exceeds the max number of videos the cache allows (1,000 for Free/Plus and 10,000 for Pro), then Dashcam Viewer will delete the oldest files in the cache and replace them with the newest. Caching behaves like a circular buffer (similar to a dashcam).

Clearing the cache (or better yet-- temporarily disabling the cache in the Advanced Preferences) is a good diagnostic step to take when you suspect Dashcam Viewer is not showing GPS data that should be present. If you disable the cache, reload the video, and GPS data is displayed then somehow the cache became corrupted. This is when clearing the cache is helpful.
 
@LateralNW each time a video is loaded, the GPS data is cached so that the next time Dashcam Viewer loads the video the GPS data is processed almost immediately. If the all-time number of videos loaded exceeds the max number of videos the cache allows (1,000 for Free/Plus and 10,000 for Pro), then Dashcam Viewer will delete the oldest files in the cache and replace them with the newest. Caching behaves like a circular buffer (similar to a dashcam).

Clearing the cache (or better yet-- temporarily disabling the cache in the Advanced Preferences) is a good diagnostic step to take when you suspect Dashcam Viewer is not showing GPS data that should be present. If you disable the cache, reload the video, and GPS data is displayed then somehow the cache became corrupted. This is when clearing the cache is helpful.
Thanks for the reply traveler.

Perhaps it's outside of the programming capabilities of the Dashcam program, but it would from how i see it that your program be capable of error checking the cache and if corrupt have the program fix/delete it.

I wasn't aware of a solution but fortunately @Rolly stepped up and suggested a working solution.
I don't know how i would have found that solution.
I expect the program to do its own house keeping.

Cheers.
 
So I'm a newbie to the app and just purchased the Pro version. Sorry if this has been answered previously and/or is covered in the tutorials that I admittedly haven't watched yet, but is there a way to speed up loading in footage? I just tried loading in all the clips from my DR970X LTE and it was painfully slow. It would have taken just over 45 minutes to open all the clips on the card. It's faster with clips on my hard drive, but I was hoping to use the app to buzz through clips on my MicroSD card.
 
Transfer the card footage to a PC and then it's considerably faster, especially if you're on a SSD

I can load 40 3 minutes files in seconds.
 
I have the same problem with loading all the files. I go and get a coffee whilst it is doing it.
 
Transfer the card footage to a PC and then it's considerably faster, especially if you're on a SSD

I can load 40 3 minutes files in seconds.
Easier to do when working with one dashcam at a time instead of four. I was hoping for a way it could work seamlessly off the MicroSD card for quick browsing like I have currently with VLC, perhaps with an option to skip the initial processing for example. I wish this was something I knew about before paying for the app. The free trial only lets you load two video clips at a time so it wasn’t very apparent.
 
I must admit, transferring the footage to a PC isn't that quick but as it's a one off for me I don't mind.

40 X 560Mb files across USB does give it something to think about.
 
So I'm a newbie to the app and just purchased the Pro version. Sorry if this has been answered previously and/or is covered in the tutorials that I admittedly haven't watched yet, but is there a way to speed up loading in footage? I just tried loading in all the clips from my DR970X LTE and it was painfully slow. It would have taken just over 45 minutes to open all the clips on the card. It's faster with clips on my hard drive, but I was hoping to use the app to buzz through clips on my MicroSD card.
Quickly loading lots of video that way is not possible unfortunately. MicroSD cards are not fast enough.

This is a limitation of the underlying storage technology, not actually to do with the Dashcam Viewer software.

Yes it's a little inconvenient, but I always copy the card contents to my PC's storage before opening them in DV.
 
No the fastest i see are 70 - 80 MB/s even if the cards support a faster than that speed, i think this is something to do with the file size.

For a new PC i am looking to get USB 4 and NVMe gen 5 drive ( for my C: at least )
I am also entertaining the idea of getting a new NAS / remote storage that support NVMe drives, but that would then need to be on a USB 4 connection, my old NAS while it is on a 10 gbit cable, well i have never bothered benching it as its spinning drives are pretty slow.
I would also like fast NVMe drives for hardware encryption, even if do not deal in dubious data or practices on my computer, then my government and other evil entities do, forcing me to think along those lines..

In regard to dashcams, well for storage a cold pluggable NVMe gen 4 X 4 drive, that would let me offload a lot of data in no time, if i had a dock plugged into a fast USB port.
and a 2 TB one of those, you can get for a reasonable price these days, giving you a theoretical read speed of 6 GB/s
 
Quickly loading lots of video that way is not possible unfortunately. MicroSD cards are not fast enough.

This is a limitation of the underlying storage technology, not actually to do with the Dashcam Viewer software.

Yes it's a little inconvenient, but I always copy the card contents to my PC's storage before opening them in DV.
Yes and no. I get that DV needs to analyze the videos for things like audio spikes, GPS location info, max speed, and so forth. What I'm asking if there's a way to simply play videos immediately and let that extra stuff load in the background for a few seconds. This way I can quickly buzz through lots of clips to manually find what I'm needing and then have DV load in the additional capabilities when I land on a clip.
 
No the fastest i see are 70 - 80 MB/s even if the cards support a faster than that speed, i think this is something to do with the file size.

For a new PC i am looking to get USB 4 and NVMe gen 5 drive ( for my C: at least )
I am also entertaining the idea of getting a new NAS / remote storage that support NVMe drives, but that would then need to be on a USB 4 connection, my old NAS while it is on a 10 gbit cable, well i have never bothered benching it as its spinning drives are pretty slow.
I would also like fast NVMe drives for hardware encryption, even if do not deal in dubious data or practices on my computer, then my government and other evil entities do, forcing me to think along those lines..

In regard to dashcams, well for storage a cold pluggable NVMe gen 4 X 4 drive, that would let me offload a lot of data in no time, if i had a dock plugged into a fast USB port.
and a 2 TB one of those, you can get for a reasonable price these days, giving you a theoretical read speed of 6 GB/s
I hear you. I've got 8 TB in SSD's plugged into my computer which I use for temporary storage and as working drives while editing videos. Internal drives are expensive when you get into multi-TB setups and so it's much more cost effective to use external drives. They're not as fast as internal ones, but still miles faster than MicroSD cards at around 800 MB/s read/write.

Going for a 10 gigabit NAS is a great idea too. I've got a 1 gigabit setup and it takes forever to transfer tons of data. I've tried editing videos off of it, but it's too slow so I primarily use it for backup and archival purposes. If you're okay with the extra noise from all the hard drives (say you're not making videos and need a quiet studio for audio, for example), it's easy enough to keep it in your same office. I keep mine in a separate room in the house to keep things quiet in my office.
 
Well my NAS itself, it is not !0 gbit, i just use that port on my PC as it have 3 build in network cards, two 1 gbit and then the one 10 gbit. ( HEDT ) High End Desktop, Baby :)
I have 3 unused NVMe drive slots on the motherboard. ( just use one of them for my C: drive )
 
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I use an 8 TB NAS disk as my backup copy of the "daily" video files from the various dash cameras in my car. I've created a series of Windows CMD scripts that copy the video files from the microSD card to the NAS disk.

1682454573228.png

Using a USB 3 microSD card reader connected to my Windows 11 laptop, I use the Windows CMD script that corresponds to that dash camera manufacturer/model that has a predefined date string pattern and it iterates over the hours of the day (or the limited hours based on a command line arg) to copy the video files to the NAS disk. I can override the date value via a command line arg if the files I want to copy are not from the current day.

I have some naming conventions that I've come up with that work for me, but I'm sure there's room for improvement. I create a directory with a name that describes the date/day_or_night/weather_type (Sunny, Cloudy, Rainy, Night, etc). Within that directory, I use the make_dirs.cmd script to create a directory for each of the dash camera(s) installed in the car with a prefix number that corresponds to the installation position on the front windshield (1 = dash camera on the extreme left and then up to the number of dash cameras installed at that time). If there are optional features, configuration settings or firmware versions that are important to remember, I try to put that in a text string in the status line in the video, but at a minimum I place that info in the directory name.

1=On/Present
0=Off/Absent
A=Auto (for example the HDR Timer feature in the VIOFO dash cameras)
H=HDR
W=WDR
C=CPL

1682453551248.png

The average copy speed from the microSD cards to the NAS disk is about 84 MB/sec.

After the files are copied to the NAS disk, I can use Dashcam Viewer to open a directory and the files that are loaded are only the ones related to that date/trip which helps limit the amount files that Dashcam Viewer must preprocess before being ready to play the videos.

This file copy method results in preserving the directory structure on the microSD card's file system (helpful at time when submitting a problem report the manufacturer). Depending on how the dash camera stores its files (in separate directories for events or types of recording), this approach may not be the most Dashcam Viewer friendly since it does not copy all files from the trip in one directory so that Dashcam Viewer sees all of the files.

BlackVue dash cameras store all video file types in one directory (Record) on the micorSD card with a filename suffix to distinguish the various video file types. The files end up that way on the NAS disk after the copy which makes if very Dashcam Viewer friendly.

This is one way to tackle the task of backing up the dash camera video files and making it a bit quicker to load into Dashcam Viewer. It's certainly not the only way to handle it.
 
I use an 8 TB NAS disk as my backup copy of the "daily" video files from the various dash cameras in my car. I've created a series of Windows CMD scripts that copy the video files from the microSD card to the NAS disk.

View attachment 64828

Using a USB 3 microSD card reader connected to my Windows 11 laptop, I use the Windows CMD script that corresponds to that dash camera manufacturer/model that has a predefined date string pattern and it iterates over the hours of the day (or the limited hours based on a command line arg) to copy the video files to the NAS disk. I can override the date value via a command line arg if the files I want to copy are not from the current day.

I have some naming conventions that I've come up with that work for me, but I'm sure there's room for improvement. I create a directory with a name that describes the date/day_or_night/weather_type (Sunny, Cloudy, Rainy, Night, etc). Within that directory, I use the make_dirs.cmd script to create a directory for each of the dash camera(s) installed in the car with a prefix number that corresponds to the installation position on the front windshield (1 = dash camera on the extreme left and then up to the number of dash cameras installed at that time). If there are optional features, configuration settings or firmware versions that are important to remember, I try to put that in a text string in the status line in the video, but at a minimum I place that info in the directory name.

1=On/Present
0=Off/Absent
A=Auto (for example the HDR Timer feature in the VIOFO dash cameras)
H=HDR
W=WDR
C=CPL

View attachment 64826

The average copy speed from the microSD cards to the NAS disk is about 84 MB/sec.

After the files are copied to the NAS disk, I can use Dashcam Viewer to open a directory and the files that are loaded are only the ones related to that date/trip which helps limit the amount files that Dashcam Viewer must preprocess before being ready to play the videos.

This file copy method results in preserving the directory structure on the microSD card's file system (helpful at time when submitting a problem report the manufacturer). Depending on how the dash camera stores its files (in separate directories for events or types of recording), this approach may not be the most Dashcam Viewer friendly since it does not copy all files from the trip in one directory so that Dashcam Viewer sees all of the files.

BlackVue dash cameras store all video file types in one directory (Record) on the micorSD card with a filename suffix to distinguish the various video file types. The files end up that way on the NAS disk after the copy which makes if very Dashcam Viewer friendly.

This is one way to tackle the task of backing up the dash camera video files and making it a bit quicker to load into Dashcam Viewer. It's certainly not the only way to handle it.
I like that approach. Something I have to consider myself, at least something similar.
 
I see that Vantrue N4 seems recently added support. I have 3 channel N4 and am trying with the free version which says it supports 2 channels but whenever I try to load files it only allows to load the A file.
I get an error that says "You are trying to load one or more 2nd channel videos by themselves...." (see attached image)
But I have ensured many times that I'm adding related files. I can try the A and the B or the A and the C with same results. If I load 2 A files there is no problem.

I get the same behavior if I open indiv files from the menu, open a whole folder from the menu or if I drag and drop onto the DCV window.

This is v 3.9.1 free on Win 10.

Is this expected or does anyone know what is wrong?
Or have I found a bug?


Thx.
 
Sorry, forgot to attach img of the error and can't edit my prev. post

Clipboard01.jpg
 
Hi @JAz909 with multi-channel dashcams Dashcam Viewer works likes this:

1. User selects a folder full of videos. For example, suppose the folder contains these Vantrue N4 sample files:

2021_12_13_132814_N_A.MP4
2021_12_13_132814_N_B.MP4
2021_12_13_132814_N_C.MP4
2021_12_13_133114_N_A.MP4
2021_12_13_133114_N_B.MP4
2021_12_13_133114_N_C.MP4

2. Upon selection, Dashcam Viewer will first 'prune' out the non-channel A files. This leaves only the Channel A files for processing.
3. For each channel A file, Dashcam Viewer will look for a corresponding Channel B file based on a filename matching heuristic (i.e., not based on your selection of files).
4. If there are 3 channels (Viofo A139 or Vantrue N4 for example) the third channel will be ignored (since DCV only supports 2 channels at the moment).
5. With all A/B pairs matched (if possible), DCV proceeds as normal (displays PiP, etc).

If you try to select just the B channel (interior) or just the C channel (rear), DCV will issue that error message you reported. This is because DCV needs to identify the "master" A (front) video to discover the 2nd channel, and not the other way around. The front channel is required because it is usually the only channel with the GPS data. For the N4 specifically, since the "B" channel is actually the interior (unlike most dashcams which use B for the rear), DCV will show PiP with Front/Interior. To view PiP with Front/Rear the somewhat painful workaround is to rename the "B" files to "C" and vice versa.

Hope this helps..

John
 
Hi @JAz909 with multi-channel dashcams Dashcam Viewer works likes this:

1. User selects a folder full of videos. For example, suppose the folder contains these Vantrue N4 sample files:

2021_12_13_132814_N_A.MP4
2021_12_13_132814_N_B.MP4
2021_12_13_132814_N_C.MP4
2021_12_13_133114_N_A.MP4
2021_12_13_133114_N_B.MP4
2021_12_13_133114_N_C.MP4

2. Upon selection, Dashcam Viewer will first 'prune' out the non-channel A files. This leaves only the Channel A files for processing.
3. For each channel A file, Dashcam Viewer will look for a corresponding Channel B file based on a filename matching heuristic (i.e., not based on your selection of files).
4. If there are 3 channels (Viofo A139 or Vantrue N4 for example) the third channel will be ignored (since DCV only supports 2 channels at the moment).
5. With all A/B pairs matched (if possible), DCV proceeds as normal (displays PiP, etc).

If you try to select just the B channel (interior) or just the C channel (rear), DCV will issue that error message you reported. This is because DCV needs to identify the "master" A (front) video to discover the 2nd channel, and not the other way around. The front channel is required because it is usually the only channel with the GPS data. For the N4 specifically, since the "B" channel is actually the interior (unlike most dashcams which use B for the rear), DCV will show PiP with Front/Interior. To view PiP with Front/Rear the somewhat painful workaround is to rename the "B" files to "C" and vice versa.

Hope this helps..

John
Thanks John. That's about what I understood/expected.

The problem is that it's not showing the channel B cam. Ever.

Regardless if I drop just an A and B pair on the viewer window or open the entire folder (weeks of all three channels) with DCV. It only ever throws the error above. I can only watch A channels as long as I only drop A channel files on the viewer window.
 
Hi,

I would like to archive a vacation trip.
Recorded by a BlackVue DR900X-2Ch Plus.
The BlackVue creates clips of 1 minute length.
The vacation trip contains 284 files. The export with PIP has therefore only 1 minute length.
Merging creates a 50GB file for the front camera only.
Unfortunately DCV Pro (Mac) always crashes when importing the 50GB file.
I am using a Mac mini 2018 I5 with 32GB RAM, 256GB SSD internally and an external Samsung T7 2TB.
How do I get a complete video of the vacation trip with PiP in one file?

Frank
 
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