F800pro and abyssal video quality

[mmmzon]

Good day, Forum

I had today a rather bad experience on the road, with some rather unhappy person testing their breaks in front of me. Long story short, I pulled video file from my F800pro and hoped to report them to the police, but ... I cannot make the registration plate out. Looking at the video, it is super grainy and really bad quality for what the dash cam promised to be.

My past F750 unit had at least limited ability to control the video saving quality and I was really disappointed at how bad the quality is. I can make the end of the license plate but good luck with the first 3 characters. I tried de-noising the video, filtering it in many ways, including some of the decent video processing tools I use on daily basis and nothing. The information is just not there, i.e., whatever encoding tools are used in the camera just blot the initial portion of the plates. There was not much light (cloud cover) as you can tell, but plates are hard to read even during sunny day.



I am seriously disappointed with the way the video content comes out. I really hope there is some magic way to improve video quality because what the dash cam produces right now is pretty much useless. I can see the car, sure, but we use dash cams for a reason, mostly in cases where other drivers do something oddball and unexpected, and things need to be reported.

I was considering upgrading to Q800pro model but all reviews I have seen to date imply the quality improvement is close to none. I wonder whether it is time to just get rid of Thinkware and go with some other brand that at least does a decent job at capturing video. I am OK with larger files, I have no problem getting 128GB card for it. Any recommendations from members here?

Thanks

M

 

[TKSX]

The F800 Pro is ~ 4 year old since it was introduced. You can't expect too much compared to late model offerings.

 

[EGS]

Welcome to the DCT forums @mmmzon

AMQ-R79 ?? That is what my brain whants to make out of it but not quite sure.

I agree that the picture quality is not good, particularly at picking up details on registration plates.
So far one of the best (if not the best) at capturing better detailed pictures is the 4k Viofo A129 Pro @ daytime but not so good under the dark or under fast motion on heavily cloudy days.

The other option several members here recomend is the viofo A119v3 which is a 2k but image quality is quite good and has a better performance at night compared to the A129 Pro.

I think it would be worth while for you to do more research on them to see if any meet your needs. There are a few others that you may find do fairly well.

 

[Nigel]

AMQ-R79 ?? That is what my brain whants to make out of it but not quite sure.

Yes, very likely, and that is good enough to send to the police, they can confirm it against the model of Mercedes.

General quality is not great because the bitrate is low, but that doesn't make much difference to the readability of plates in this situation, more resolution would have helped a lot.

 

[TKSX]

Usually when such situation occurs I will dictate the licence plate and color of the offening vehicle so that my camera will record my voice. When you play it back, you have your voice and the video at your disposal. I started doing that 4 years ago.

 

[mmmzon]

Usually when such situation occurs I will dictate the licence plate and color of the offening vehicle so that my camera will record my voice. When you play it back, you have your voice and the video at your disposal. I started doing that 4 years ago.

Good idea, thank you for reference.

AMQ-R79

Thanks, that is what it looks to me as well ... but it is hard to make it out, irrespective.

 

[mmmzon]

4k Viofo A129 Pro @ daytime

I was looking at these, given good reviews but wanted to skip the extra screen - I do not use it and find it distracting. Yes, I am sure it can be disabled, but why pay for something I have zero use for?

 

[mentadent]

Do you have the original file?

 

[mentadent]

AMQ R79 is what came out when I ran it through machine vision a few times

 

[mmmzon]

Do you have the original file?

Yes, I do. I can share via PM, not sure whether the original file can be attached directly here due to size.

 

[mentadent]

Yes, I do. I can share via PM, not sure whether the original file can be attached directly here due to size.

Please do.

 

[EGS]

I was looking at these, given good reviews but wanted to skip the extra screen - I do not use it and find it distracting. Yes, I am sure it can be disabled, but why pay for something I have zero use for?

The question is if there is anything comparable in image quality with out the screen at a lower cost.

 

[mmmzon]

The question is if there is anything comparable in image quality with out the screen at a lower cost.

Fair, I do not feel like experimenting. I will read reviews of this 4k Viofo A129 Pro to see whether it is worth the money. The good part is that I seem to be able to reuse the back-front cable with no need to pull it through.

 

[TKSX]

I am not sure if you can reuse the front back cable if you switch from F800 pro to the Viofo A129 Pro. I have the F800 pro (retired) and the A129 Pro. The video quality of the A129 Pro at night is very good (I am super impressed). The only issue I have with that camera is that the parking mode is not as feature rich as the F800 pro and the memory card format is Fat 32 (I think the F800 uses exFat. For those of you who used Windows 95 to Windows ME probably knows how reliable Fat 32 is (Hint: Scandisk.exe).