Do we really need 60P on a dash cam?

[DT MI]

...Basically until they (State Farm) got their money, I was not about to get my deductible refunded and that's even when I was not at fault and DID provide the at fault driver's info....

Just one of many reasons I dropped State Farm years ago - but that's a subject for a different forum.

 

[viofo]

According to our comparison between the A119 and A118, we can see the A119 is better to capture the car license number.
Anyway, the 60fps dash cam is coming.

 

[dirkzelf]

Not true. My insurance only requires that I'm not at fault. There is no obligation for me to show who is.

Edit: Plus in Michigan there are no front plates so all I would be getting video of would be the grill and front bumper of the approaching vehicle.

So, you don't mind if the bad guys get away with it as long as your insurance pays the damage...?

NOT cool dude....

 

[DT MI]

So, you don't mind if the bad guys get away with it as long as your insurance pays the damage...?

NOT cool dude....

That's not what I said or implied.

Go back and read my original post. Never mind, I'll repeat it here - "Never in my life has that bit of information ever been of use to me." (And there's a good chance I've been driving longer than you've been alive.)

Let's get a life. Just because something may be useful in a hypothetical situation does not mean it's necessary/mandatory/etc., - nice to have? Yes. But if it's not there civilization as we know it will not end - thus I do not understand the obsession with that specific capability.

Maybe I'll start a poll here to find out how many members have actually experienced an event where capturing the front plate of an oncoming vehicle made a difference.

 

[kamkar]

Here it is common to add a little extra for the insurance to pay.
Not so cool my fellow Danes, but thats the norm along with beeing creative with your personal taxes

And we have stolen goods going out of here by the truckload, heading east where ppl seem to have a even more tainted moral.

Buy a new bicycle here, and dont expect to have it more than 1 year or 2, after that it get stolen, all bikes i ever owned got stolen aside for 1 that got run over by a tractor trailer turning right in front of me.

Personal i dont give a damm about plate capture, i just use it in testing as it is a okay tool to determine what a camera can do.

Okay hit and run is on the up here, but so far it dont bother me much.
But i too have full coverage insurance so as long as i am not to blame then i will get full repair or refund.

 

[arcticfire]

The title says do we need 60fps but the poll says do we want 60fps, perhaps 'want' is more desired? But I'd rather have 30fps and either a min of 60fps or the option to choose your own shutter speed within the acceptable tolerances of what the gain can do to maintain a reasonably clean image whilst still exposing enough. Always good to have the choice!

 

[jokiin]

cams that do 60fps generally either drop to 30fps in low light or start frame doubling, you will see smoother video in good lighting though so can be an advantage in those situations

 

[arcticfire]

I take it that'ssimilar to what my CSC does when I manually set the shutter speed lower than the fps.

 

[dirkzelf]

That's not what I said or implied.

Go back and read my original post. Never mind, I'll repeat it here - "Never in my life has that bit of information ever been of use to me." (And there's a good chance I've been driving longer than you've been alive.)

Let's get a life. Just because something may be useful in a hypothetical situation does not mean it's necessary/mandatory/etc., - nice to have? Yes. But if it's not there civilization as we know it will not end - thus I do not understand the obsession with that specific capability.

Maybe I'll start a poll here to find out how many members have actually experienced an event where capturing the front plate of an oncoming vehicle made a difference.

From my own footage check these:

These all could have been causes for disaster, and believe me, we would have NEEDED the license plates for evidence.

I appologize if I misunderstood or misread your intention. Sometimes it's hard to "read" state of mind, sorry for that.

The fact here is that practically all big trucks are only insured for damage to others, which is legally mandatory, it's just way too expensive to insure our trucks for ALL RISKS......

SO, the need to find the bad guy is VERY important to our bosses, as they get NOTHING if some jerk throws out a half a can of cola right trough our window, or forces us in a ditch, or make evasive manouvres where we hurt (or worse) other people.

That's why WE need crisp and clear license plates..... We can tell and show the police all sorts of evidence, but without license plates (or reliable eyewitnesses) many companies could go bankrupt because of one road idiot.....

 

[DT MI]

From my own footage check these:.....

I don't dispute anything you say and agree with it. But the issue people seem to be having a problem with was my comment about capturing the plate number of on oncoming vehicle - "I never could understand the interest/obsession of capturing the plate number of an oncoming vehicle."

As I said I've never had need of that information nor have I seen an example of where it would have been of value, your examples included.

 

[Rajagra]

As I said I've never had need of that information nor have I seen an example of where it would have been of value, your examples included.

In this video I was forced to reverse. I checked it was clear first but somehow bumped another vehicle.
(Remember, no rear windows in my van but there is a reversing camera.)
It was the Chrysler Ypsilon that approached from in front of me. It had darted behind me in a race to get at a parking spot.
I was confused about how it happened until I watched the video. It was handy to know what happened - and be able to prove it.
(It is low speed though, so not strictly relevant.)

 

[DennisOlof]

Well it more or less depends on if you want to, or have the need to read license plates, that ability will improve a lot with 60fps, and the video
is more smooth. Of course bitrate does come into play, but not as much I guess. Here are some samples at the bottom of the page, you can tell
there is a huge difference if you do 30fps or 60fps. But the question is do you need it. I would argue that you probably do not need the 60fps,
when are you going to use it ?

I am just getting angry with people saying it makes not difference at all, watch the samples and get the facts straight, it does give you better
video, but IF you need it, THAT is another story !

The thing is like 95 percent of dashcam video is dumped anyway, and if there is a accident or something you can still grab your phone and
take some photos of license plates or whatever you need, you will get better pictures, good angles, and distance. That is something you will
never get with a mounted dashcam in the car.

So the bottom line is, if you get 60fps capability from a chip (for free) or is included in all new chips anyway, why should you not have it,
even if you do not use it, it is there, you might need it for some situations, what do I know. Technology evolves, just as way back, people
where arguing, we do not need HDTV. Or we do not need dashcams recording HD. Where are these critics now !

http://www.photographyblog.com/reviews/sony_a5100_review/sample_images/

End note, another thing that has huge impact is vibrations, having a vibration free mounting (like on radio controlled aircraft that have mounted cameras) will make a huge difference to the video as well. Plus digital image stabilization that all new chips have.

 

[tomintx]

Thank you for posting this. I have long felt that resolution is not the key factor with dash cams (they are limited by lens and sensor) and that your 720p image looks so much better than the 1080p seems to demonstrate this.
BUT I wonder where the non-Cobra (VLC player) image came from--is the 720p from your Cobra 840, then the 1080p is from...what? You have two dashcams mounted in tandem? What is the second model.

 

[Nigel]

I am just getting angry with people saying it makes not difference at all, watch the samples and get the facts straight, it does give you better video, but IF you need it, THAT is another story !

It will depend on the camera, on some the 30fps video may have the clearest frames, on others the 60fps frames may be the clearest.

The exposure time and thus the amount of motion blur should be the same for both, in good lighting both will use exposure times far faster than 1/60 second, in dark conditions both will use around 1/30th and the 60fps video will have duplicate frames. However it does depend on how the camera is programmed, the camera could decide that on 60fps video it will always add a stop on the ISO setting and thus have half the motion blur on all 60fps video, or it could reduce the ISO a stop and have twice the motion blur on all 60fps video.

On most cameras the 60fps video will have a higher bitrate, and that means more detail can be recorded, however if the camera is capable of higher bitrates then it could use a higher bitrate for 30 fps video too, if it used the same bitrate for both then the 30 fps video would have the clearest frames.

The only way that 60fps is definitely better on all cameras, however the camera is programmed, is that it has twice the number of frames per second and thus gives more chance of having a frame that shows what you need. Normally things don't happen fast enough for that to be much of an advantage, but in this 30fps video my Git1 on the side view was quite lucky to get a frame with the bikes plate readable:

 

[BobDiaz]

When you are traveling at 60MPH (96.56kPH), a car moves a distance of 88 feet (26.82 meters) in one second. Now if we look at 1/30 of a second, 88 feet /30 = 2.93 feet (26.82 meters / 30 = 0.894M). Now one can make a case that the car could be coming at you resulting in a total of 60MPH+60MPH = 120MPH (96.56KPH+96.56kPH =193.12kPH). SO our roughly 3 feet (0.9M) in 1/030 of a second would be doubled to 6 feet (1.8M).

In looking over videos it appears that if the car is close enough, I can read the license plate, BUT if shot at night, it can't be read most of the time.

 

[2000rpm]

Thank you for posting this. I have long felt that resolution is not the key factor with dash cams (they are limited by lens and sensor) and that your 720p image looks so much better than the 1080p seems to demonstrate this.
BUT I wonder where the non-Cobra (VLC player) image came from--is the 720p from your Cobra 840, then the 1080p is from...what? You have two dashcams mounted in tandem? What is the second model.

Both cams were Cobras (notice the two images look very similar apart from motion blur), mounted adjacent to each other. The 1080p30 image was then cropped and laid over the top of the 720p60 image in the Cobra player.

The picture was mainly created for my own records and not necessarily intended for a public forum, although it seemed relevant to this topic so I posted it. I keep it as a reminder that in daylight and high speed 720p60 can outperform 1080p30.
At slower speeds and low light conditions 1080p30 outperforms; in the former it's because the car doesn't move too far across the cam's field of view at slower speed (less blur) and in the latter it's because 60fps doesn't give long enough exposure for good night images.

 

[kamkar]

I prefer 60 FPS, but my reason is if i then capture somthing spectacular i can slow it down to half speed and still have okay footage.

If i was able to get my dream dashcam with a SSD in it, i would not mind 120 FPS, but for SD card based cameras i will pass on that.

 

[sludgeguts]

In the past, I've had a couple of instances where oncoming traffic has been too far out from the kerb with the resultant meeting of mirrors.
On one occasion, a woman on the school run in her chelsea tractor, believing she owned the road - our wing mirrors collided, mine folded but stayed intact, hers disintegrated. Even though I stopped fairly sharply, she carried on. Reviewing the footage, she was over the white line, on my side of the road. I had braked sharply from around 50mph to around 30, she was probably still doing 50 - 60mph.
I wasn't able to get a clear image of her plate.
On another occasion, I had a coming together with a campervan. Despite him having room, he insisted on sitting on the white line. Being 8'4" wide, I had no choice.
Both mirrors smashed. I was lucky in that I managed to get a new indicator lens & stick on mirror - otherwise that'd cost us over £200 to have a new unit installed.
Checking the footage frame by frame, I wasn't able to pull out a decent clip of the front plate.
I was running the cam at maximum resolution (18mbps). 60fps 'might' have given me a clear picture. It 'might' have given me several pics where I could make out the reg a few characters at a time.

I would far rather HAVE 60fps (or higher) and not need it than not have it & find myself needing it.

On a slightly different tack. I saw a clip some time ago where the cam owner was hoping someone could make out the rear plate from some footage.
Unfortunately, he'd gone for one of the cheapo cams on ebay & mounted it on his dash rather than up high. A car comes in from his nearside & cuts in front at a roundabout. There is enough room for him to pull straight out.
Sadly, 720p meant that even the two frames we could grab, the quality was so bad as to make the plates illegible. The two frames came just as the plate passed between the dash & the wiper.
Sadly, the cammer was left nursing a hefty repair bill for a NSF wing & bumper.

Which is why I always advise fitting the cam as high in the screen as possible & avoiding the cheapo cams. (I have noticed an increase in footage where half the screen is someone's dash! or the cam is tilted so high as to be washed out with the slightest bit of light)

 

[Dashmellow]

https://frames-per-second.appspot.com/

 

[jokiin]

https://frames-per-second.appspot.com/

nice find