Disappointed with Viofo for Abandoning A129 Duo Owners

HonestReview

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Bill from Viofo was contacted about the double frame issue and said techs were going to work on a solution. Seems that promise hasn't come to fruition. While I realize the new 4K A129 is Viofo's latest and greatest product, the A129 4K is pre-order only. Meaning those with the A129 Duo still have Viofo's latest technology. And I believe we're owed a resolution to the problem.

I can't be the only one that feels this way?
 
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In your own post last month, you said Viofo were forwarding the problem to their engineers. That doesn't sound like 'abandoning A129 Duo owners'.

Email from Bill at Viofo acknowledged receipt of my email today and stated the problem would be forwarded on to Viofo Engineers.
 
In your own post last month, you said Viofo were forwarding the problem to their engineers. That doesn't sound like 'abandoning A129 Duo owners'.

Yes....But then radio silence since then. Which is over a month. Pretty sure the resolution would be to set each camera to the same FPS. I.E. 29.97 instead of 30 and one at 29. We discussed how that technical hiccup would end up with a dupe frame every 90 frames or so...

So unless there's more to the underlying problem, don't see why a firmware update hasn't been released to resolve.
 
In real life what is the problem if you have 1 duplicate frame at each 90 frames? Do you think anybody will observe in a normal play that there is one duplicate frame? The court will refuse the A129 video evidence because of one duplicate frame? I remember few years ago when during night each frame was duplicate and people still bought a lot of dash cameras. Now we have one duplicate frame every 90 and we feel abandoned? Of course also I like to have zero duplicate frames but for just one I am not feeling abandoned by a brand which is offering updates even for models which are 3-4 years old. How many brands do you know with such support?

enjoy,
Mtz
 
A duplicate frame here and there don't bother me,but a duplicate frame every 3 seconds is annoying.It reminds me of these old cameras you said..I know viofo is a good company and finally will fix this issue anyway..it's just a matter of time..
 
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In real life what is the problem if you have 1 duplicate frame at each 90 frames? Do you think anybody will observe in a normal play that there is one duplicate frame? The court will refuse the A129 video evidence because of one duplicate frame? I remember few years ago when during night each frame was duplicate and people still bought a lot of dash cameras. Now we have one duplicate frame every 90 and we feel abandoned? Of course also I like to have zero duplicate frames but for just one I am not feeling abandoned by a brand which is offering updates even for models which are 3-4 years old. How many brands do you know with such support?

enjoy,
Mtz

More like this issue seems straight forward to resolve and hasn't been addressed.
 
More like this issue seems straight forward to resolve and hasn't been addressed.
Based on 30+ or so years in software development (and firmware is just a form of software) I can assure you the vast majority of issues are neither simple nor straight forward - no matter how they 'seem to be' to an outside observer.
 
I've never seen a duplicated frame in any of my (10 or 12) dashcams.

I assume to find this 1 in 90, you would have to use software to check each frame in turn? I doubt that I could spot this with the naked eye. Can anyone else see it with the naked eye, or is my sight defective?
 
Can anyone else see it with the naked eye, or is my sight defective?
Yes, we can see it by eye.

To check, you just need any video player that lets you advance frame by frame.
 
I've never seen a duplicated frame in any of my (10 or 12) dashcams.

I assume to find this 1 in 90, you would have to use software to check each frame in turn? I doubt that I could spot this with the naked eye. Can anyone else see it with the naked eye, or is my sight defective?
If you watch it on your TV, which probably gives a very consistent frame interval compared to a computer, then you may see a slight pause every 3 seconds.

However there is quite a large variation in people's ability to see such pauses, many people can't see the difference between 30 fps and 60 fps, a few people can see the difference between 60 fps and 90 fps, so if you can't see it then I wouldn't worry, but that doesn't mean that it isn't annoying to some people who can see it clearly.
 
Thanks Nigel.

Seems like none of mine have had extras!
 
Based on 30+ or so years in software development (and firmware is just a form of software) I can assure you the vast majority of issues are neither simple nor straight forward - no matter how they 'seem to be' to an outside observer.

Which may be the case in most instances, but not this one. It doesn't require much coding to set the front and rear camera to the same frame rate. Merely editing existing code to ensure front and rear both record at 29.97 FPS.
 
Which may be the case in most instances, but not this one. It doesn't require much coding to set the front and rear camera to the same frame rate.
feel free to submit your changes then so they can update the code :LOL:
 
Which may be the case in most instances, but not this one. It doesn't require much coding to set the front and rear camera to the same frame rate. Merely editing existing code to ensure front and rear both record at 29.97 FPS.
I'm curious, what are your qualifications for making that determination? Are SDKs used by VIOFO a limiting factor? Have you seen the current code?

Just wondering where your expertise comes from. :unsure:
 
A129 Duo is released less than 15 months, definitely, we do not and will not abandon this model.

For some of our other models like GitUp Git2P action camera which released 3 years ago, we will still have a new firmware, adding features mainly based on user requirements.

Actually say we don't think this is the most important issue for us to fix on A129.
 
A129 Duo is released less than 15 months, definitely, we do not and will not abandon this model.

For some of our other models like GitUp Git2P action camera which released 3 years ago, we will still have a new firmware, adding features mainly based on user requirements.

Actually say we don't think this is the most important issue for us to fix on A129.

Might I ask, why wouldn't this be an important issue to fix? Duplicate frames create choppy playback. Will this prevent an accident from being captured? No. But will this affect the overall quality of the video, YES.

I think this issue is due a proper resolution. Or it wouldn't have a thread with 100s of posts where people are all saying the same thing.
 
feel free to submit your changes then so they can update the code :LOL:
I'm curious, what are your qualifications for making that determination? Are SDKs used by VIOFO a limiting factor? Have you seen the current code?

Just wondering where your expertise comes from. :unsure:

No I haven't seen their code. BcHobbyist who regularly creates mods had the same theory.

You ever had a computer lag? It definitely won't duplicate frames, but instead drop them. So if this were a Ram or Processor limitation (hardware related), duplicating a frame wouldn't be the likely culprit.

Could the length of the Cable be creating the problem? Again, unlikely. I would think if the cable couldn't handle the throughput due to a design flaw, there wouldn't be a consistence dropping of frames.

@TonyM posted this message in the original thread:
Looking for a sample rear camera file, I found one from June 2018 on pre-release firmware. I can't see any duplicate frames. Perhaps someone else can check?

https://mega.nz/#!Hs42VSIB!F_E9JaQJYJyP_EYiJMkh9DKrUmhXv6NA_oCJnuWRzsw - 363MB

So clearly, the beta version of this camera and firmware didn't suffer the same issue. Which leads us to believe that a bug got introduced somewhere between pre production and post production.
 
...@TonyM posted this message in the original thread:
Looking for a sample rear camera file, I found one from June 2018 on pre-release firmware. I can't see any duplicate frames. Perhaps someone else can check?

https://mega.nz/#!Hs42VSIB!F_E9JaQJYJyP_EYiJMkh9DKrUmhXv6NA_oCJnuWRzsw - 363MB

So clearly, the beta version of this camera and firmware didn't suffer the same issue...
So when did a sample size of 1 become statistically valid? I clearly remember being taught otherwise in every class I ever took on statistics.
 
Because you will find a dupe every 3 seconds in all other firmware versions,all footages on a full 128GB card..
 
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