GT550W - Memory Full (And my first wreck video starring me)

tgriffin

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I just bought the GT550W and am very pleased. As luck would have it, a woman pulled out in front of me to cross the road and I hit her with my truck. There was no dispute she was at fault because I had HD video of the incident. This happened the first day and I had only driven one mile before the incident. Watch it here.

My question is about the memory card filling up and then not recording. I would rather not loop every five minutes (assuming that the files would overwrite when the card is full). It would be best for each trip to be its own file and the oldest file being deleted when the card reaches capacity. Is there a setting to make this happen? If not, are there plans to upgrade the firmware to make this possible?

My only option right now seems to be trying to wipe the card while driving (not safe!) or waiting until my next stop to reset the card (thus missing considerable drive time video).
 
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I just bought the GT550W and am very pleased. As luck would have it, a woman pulled out in front of me to cross the road and I hit her with my truck. There was no dispute she was at fault because I had HD video of the incident. This happened the first day and I had only driven one mile before the incident. Watch it here.

My questions is about the memory card filling up and then not recording. I would rather not loop every five minutes (assuming that the files would overwrite when the card is full). It would be best for each trip to be its own file and the oldest file being deleted when the card reaches capacity. Is there a setting to make this happen? If not, are there plans to upgrade the firmware to make this possible?

My only option right now seems to be trying to wipe the card while driving (not safe!) or waiting until my next stop to reset the card (thus missing considerable drive time video).
Good title for the post! I'm sure all those buses caused a blind-spot for that lady.
 
My question is about the memory card filling up and then not recording. I would rather not loop every five minutes (assuming that the files would overwrite when the card is full). It would be best for each trip to be its own file and the oldest file being deleted when the card reaches capacity. Is there a setting to make this happen? If not, are there plans to upgrade the firmware to make this possible?
.

not clear exactly what you're asking, the camera will keep recording continuously and splitting the file each 5 minutes, once the card is full the oldest 5 minute file section is deleted to make space for the newest 5 minutes and so on

in the case of an incident the camera should mark that file as protected and not delete it, instead it would move to the next 5 minute file for deletion
 
not clear exactly what you're asking, the camera will keep recording continuously and splitting the file each 5 minutes, once the card is full the oldest 5 minute file section is deleted to make space for the newest 5 minutes and so on

in the case of an incident the camera should mark that file as protected and not delete it, instead it would move to the next 5 minute file for deletion

Thank you for your response. Let me clarify my thoughts.

The problem is the longest record time available to loop is 5 minutes. The GT550W accepts up to a 64GB card now. That means tons and tons of individual files to sort through. And there's always a chance that an incident begins on one file and continues on the next. The better solution for me would be to have a single file for each time I drive somewhere, whether that's 5 minutes or 2 hours. At the very least, an option to record video segments longer than 5 minutes would be a move in the right direction.

So unless I'm missing something, my current options are:
1) Set it to record 5 minute segments. The oldest file will be rewritten when the card fills up. I have tons of files. Some videos may need to be spliced back together.
2) Set it to not loop. I get my individual files for each drive but then the card reaches maximum capacity while driving and:
a) I have no more video recorded until I arrive at my destination and wipe the card or maybe a few larger files. (And possibly miss the chance to catch something interesting)
b) I could attempt to wipe the card while driving. (And miss the video of me doing something stupid)
c) Have another card ready to pop in while driving. (One of us would soon have a story of dropping the card in the defrost vent just before the wreck)​

What I'm hoping to gain:
1) The option to have my GT550W automatically record over the oldest, unlocked video regardless of whether I choose to loop or not. I can "set it and forget it" until I get the urge to keep a particular scene of interest. One trip = one video file.

Seems simple to me. Perhaps I'm asking for something that is of little or no use to most users?
 
Perhaps I'm asking for something that is of little or no use to most users?
maybe

Seems simple to me.

would be very hard to implement, could think of much better things DOD could do before getting to something like this, updates are not really their thing though
 
Wow... another reason I want to purchase one for my wife. She says she doesn't need it, but you never know what happens...

Thank you for sharing the video.
 
maybe



would be very hard to implement, could think of much better things DOD could do before getting to something like this, updates are not really their thing though

Hard to implement? Absolutely not. Simply write the code to delete/overwrite the oldest unlocked file when space is required. It already does that for files when using the "loop" option.
 
Is there any publicly available information on what dev env/SDK is needed?

not really, most are built on an an embedded *nix type platform of some sort (it varies between chipset manufacturers) but the SDK's are not public

the ability to delete unlocked files is no problem, wanting to create files of any length depending on the journey yet still be able to recycle, that's an issue, particularly when locked files may exist that would then encompass a whole journey

recycling is problematic for a lot of platforms even when dealing with fixed sizes, throw a variable in there like this and reliability is going to be an issue
 
not really, most are built on an an embedded *nix type platform of some sort (it varies between chipset manufacturers) but the SDK's are not public

That's a shame...I really was hoping to be able to go right ahead and play around with it. :D Many pet peeves would probably be fix/changeable.
 
Possibly, I think in the Novatek based product there's little you could do as its quite limited, the Ambarella product is much more flexible in this respect

What type of thing would you like to see fixed or improved anyway? I'm always interested in end user ideas and feedback to see if there's something we can do to improve our product
 
What type of thing would you like to see fixed or improved anyway? I'm always interested in end user ideas and feedback to see if there's something we can do to improve our product

Pet peeves - both these things I'm fairly sure I would be able to do myself with access to the SDKs:
  1. More options in the screensaver time or no screen at all. I vaguely remember from another thread your cameras had updated firmware for a 10-second option (so this is really just my GT550W peeves list)
  2. Turning off / changing the bootup logo - yep its a good plug for the manufacturer, but from driver point of view its another distraction in the cabin since I'd like a minimalistic design
More hardware features than firmware-tweakable:
  1. LCD brightness - obviously very dependent on the hardware here. Something that adapts brightness depending on time of the day would be nice, like many GPSes having a day/night skin.
  2. High G events triggers a wide angle higher resolution sensor to take several successive still photos. Probably more gimmicky than useful and probably doesn't make any business sense to have a feature like this, but just a thought.
 
Actually your last suggestion is something we could probably do with the A7 product where we have the option to take photos while recording and also has the option to use the full sensor size, will look at doing this as a triggered event, good idea I think

The other stuff mentioned is all very straightforward on an Ambarella platform
 
Haha, good one, Jokiin. Some people can only talk the talk, but can't walk the walk.
To be honest I'd really like to do an open source camera to see what the community could come up with, I'm sure there's things we haven't even thought of yet that are possible
 
Actually your last suggestion is something we could probably do with the A7 product where we have the option to take photos while recording and also has the option to use the full sensor size, will look at doing this as a triggered event, good idea I think

My VicoTF2 has a Photo button, and it places the photos in the same folder as the video right underneath whatever clip the video was taken from. It also creates a photo of the second i pressed the event button to go along with the 1 min video clip. I have only used it once or twice though and usually ignore the event photos, but they did look a little worse then if i would have just paused the video. I'm guessing this means the full sensor size is not being used as you mentioned?

It's also nice to see someone was able to have a camera before an accident happens most times it is unfortunately after someones accident that they get interested in buying a camera.
 
Watched video. Feel sorry for accident. I am impressed that no F... - word heard after an accident. You must had a shock or you just have strong nerves :)
 
My VicoTF2 has a Photo button, and it places the photos in the same folder as the video right underneath whatever clip the video was taken from. It also creates a photo of the second i pressed the event button to go along with the 1 min video clip. I have only used it once or twice though and usually ignore the event photos, but they did look a little worse then if i would have just paused the video. I'm guessing this means the full sensor size is not being used as you mentioned?

yeah the full sensor size pic is an A7 thing, it can do the same where you can take a shot anytime, I think setting that up as an optional triggered event though is a valid idea
 
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