Firmware 129 Plus

I wish the new FW can increase the brightness of the REC LED or we can have a Low or High in the Setting Menu.
It's difficult to see whether the dashcam is ON or OFF during bright daytime, especially people who like me using either low bitrate or auto even detection parking mode.
My A129 Plus Duo sometimes does not boot up after cutting off power (set at 12.2V) from low bitrate parking mode.
I can think one of the reason might be my car is a Hybrid with HK3 hardwire installed.
After the HK3 cutting off the power to the A129, the auxiliary battery is still below/equal 12.2V when I turn on my car.
Therefore, in a few cases the HK3 cannot provide power to the dashcam even I already set the boot delay to 10 seconds and I might not know it.

Thanks a lot!!!
 
... so long to have this new stable firmware.


Anyway, WDR (or HDR but I would insist on WDR instead of HDR) improves image quality in high contrast scenes, for example in very sunny days. (I say this because I was literally horrified by the low quality of the images in sunny days without HDR/WDR activated, especially when the Sun is very low in sky - late autumn, winter and early springtime) Even that software/chipset WDR provided by the chipset is way better than HDR in daylight. HDR doubles car plates, it's a full fiasco. In the night HDR is a little better with car plates, but brings nothing in terms of dynamic range. On the other hand software/chipset WDR is worse in the night, it tends to overreact at environment's variations of brightnes.


The fact that they chose a sensor without WDR support is a failure, in my opinion. I don't expect miracles anymore... from this camera advertised as one capable of Super Night Vision.
 
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I think if a camera must to be able to do 60 FPS + HDR then same camera must be able to do 120 FPS with no HDR
Thats why so far also in action cameras, the ones you have seen to be able to do say 4K/30 HDR can also do 4K/60 but no HDR.
 
I said nothing about framerate. Read again my ideas. Framerate is irrelevant in what I meant. ;)

PS: I never dreamed at 60fps HDR. But 60 fps with WDR IS possible, but it looks horrible. It was a good WDR firmware on A119V3. I don't get why they gave up to put it (ported) on A129 Plus... I would be more than satisfied to have on my A129+ the WDR like in those video.
 
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ursamajor said:
It was a good WDR firmware on A119V3. I don't get why they gave up to put it (ported) on A129 Plus... I would be more than satisfied to have on my A129+ the WDR like in those video.
Click to expand...
Maybe the processor is maxed out on the A119V3 and the A129 Plus lacks the power to do the same and also process data from the rear camera so they need to work out a compromise...
 
Rear camera has its own processor. ;)
And, anyway, I only have A129+ single.
 
ursamajor said:
Rear camera has its own processor. ;)
And, anyway, I only have A129+ single.
Click to expand...
I know it does, problably for 264 encoding. But the front camera is still designed with the option of displaying & recording input from 2 sources, which probably eats away at some processing power.
The firmware must be written so that the camera does not crash if you conect the rear camera (mine does even on the old firmware but Viofo sent me a replacement that will hopefully fix this - waiting for it to arrive...)
 
Frodo said:
I know it does, problably for 264 encoding. But the front camera is still designed with the option of displaying & recording input from 2 sources
Click to expand...
Are you sure? Displaying, I agree, recording, I doubt it.
 
ursamajor said:
Are you sure? Displaying, I agree, recording, I doubt it.
Click to expand...
Assuming all A129+ have rear camera connection (if not, I'm wrong), I assume they also have the option of recording both sources like the DUO.
 
Yes, but the rear camera will record somehow independently (using its processor in process), without charging front processor. That's why you can still have 60fps at full resolution on front camera.
 
Not much processing may be required but it's still something: displaying (problably must decode h.264 from rear camera to display, which takes some "muscle"), writing to card, error checking (and switching to eMMC if available etc.). We are used to powerful multi-core, multi-threaded processors with all types of hardware acceleration from computers and smartphones that can do many things at the same time, in the background etc. without breaking a sweat. If the A129+ has a sufficiently powerful CPU then porting A119V3 firmware should be very easy indeed. I'm not sure this is the case.
 
Most of features present on V3 was already added/ported on Plus. Also WDR, but it's not fully functional. That's because the firmware of A129+ is still young, not so mature as V3's. That's why I only suggested them to improve it, by making same settings (in firmware) as for V3. I assure you that the problems of WDR aren't processor's power related. The processor do it, but it do it wrong.

So, your arguments aren't valid. ;)

PS: and maybe you don't know but V3 and Plus have same sensor and chipset. That tiny chipset is capable to handle multiple channels. So, what are we talking about? Let not compare a PC processor with these specialized processing units. It's like comparing apples with plums.
 
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You assume "True HDR" doesn't strain the processor to the limit. If it does, your argumments aren't valid. ;)
"Let not compare a PC processor with these specialized processing units. It's like comparing apples with plums." - In addition to what I wrote previously, PC/smartphone processors today feature hardware acceleration that has a huge impact on e.g. speed and quality of video encoding/decoding/processing so the comparison is perfectly valid.
 
See the difference between WDR and HDR, then we will continue the dialogue. Then use your phone or PC as dashcam and see the results. ;)
 
ursamajor said:
See the difference between WDR and HDR, then we will continue the dialogue. Then use your phone or PC as dashcam and see the results. ;)
Click to expand...
My phone produces excellent video (but it's also much more expensive) so I'm not sure what's your point...
My phone is also fully reliable whereas so far my experience with Viofo is terrible: rear camera switches on and off, front camera freezes!
Had several cameras and never such poor experience!
So I'm definitely not buying anything Viofo or testing until a replacement arrives (from China).
I want front and rear so 119V3 was not an option.
Regret not returning it (didn't have time to install right away and Aliexpress return window closed) since it's taking so long (weeks since I contacted Viofo support) but now we will see...
Only plus: it can only get better, cannot get any worse.
 
I wish you succes to using the phone as dashcam!

Regarding Viofo, me also I had a bad experience with an A119V3 camera. I returned it and I bought this A129Plus instead (single channel). It's a pretty good camera, but it has some minuses:

- very bad quality at night, in low light, huge noise and, as consequence, smeared image,
- false and lying marketing about Super Night Vision, HDR or WDR (I don't care what they thought at), for now none of them is functional,
- bad image quality in high contrast scenes,
- HDR (using consecutive frames) is a disaster in daylight.

The good is that:
- it has good image quality in daylight (except high contrast scenes),
- WDR works good in daylight and correct somehow bad images from high contrast scenes,
- HDR can help, in some conditions, to read car plates in the night. But the advantage is too small compared to the deterioration of images it brings,
- I never had freezes or other similar issues with my single camera.

PS: until it improves, another model will surpass it in quality and features, maybe a bit cheaper, like 70mai or another.
 
"I wish you succes to using the phone as dashcam!" - this was never my plan, nor did I ever say that it's a good idea, it's you who has *twice* suggested that I do this.
I will wait to see if the new A129 Plus Viofo is sending me is any good. Hopefully yes, if not, I'll never touch another Viofo again.
This probably was the first and *last* relatively expensive (>100 USD) item I bought from China (I wanted to try the eMMC version and it was not available locally).
May try 70mai as you suggested but bought locally with good & easy return policy. As the saying goes: once bitten, twice shy! ;)
I was watching this forum for some beta firmware that would maybe help but mine is likely a hardware problem - hopefull just with my camera not a whole batch of cameras so that a replacement will help!
UPDATE: thanks for the + and - of A129+. Let me know if you can suggest a good dual cam in case Viofo turns into an expensive disaster.
 
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Frodo said:
this was never my plan, nor did I ever say that it's a good idea, it's you who has *twice* suggested that I do this.
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Only said it to reinforce my affirmation from above about specialized items. ;)

But, again, I don't expect miracles from Viofo. Good and bad have all cameras. Viofo cameras have a little more "good" than others. :) It's somehow a fair camera for its price for now. A little bit too expensive for what it offers though.
I also wait the solution for that Super Night Sight, otherwise I'll accuse them of lying marketing. And I would prefer WDR (chipset provided) instead of HDR as is right now, I mean using consecutive frames@different exposures for increase dynamic range.
 
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@viofo, please consider more control over rear camera: e.g. with x265 enabled, rear camera low bitrate parking files are much bigger than front. It seems that even 720p would be more than enough for parking - this would give smaller files and likely even reduced energy consumption. Rear camera is something that should be a nice *small, lower quality* addition, not something that eats away the memory card much more than the front camera.
 
Firstly and urgently, they should make two intensely advertised things functional: Super Night Vision and buffered parking. Only then the other finesse works. ;) But for now, they only provide custom firmwares for one or another, having WiFi on by default. :eek:(n)
 
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