How long do you keep videos recorded by dash cam?

[DerrickDFromAsia]

I usually keep videos of the past week if nothing happens. How about you guys?

 

[Nigel]

However long it takes the loop recording to loop.

After long journeys I used to swap the card to avoid the loop recording overwriting that journey the next day, but now that cards have got bigger I rarely do more than reduce the bitrate to extend the loop time for long journeys.

 

[DerrickDFromAsia]

However long it takes the loop recording to loop.

After long journeys I used to swap the card to avoid the loop recording overwriting that journey the next day, but now that cards have got bigger I rarely do more than reduce the bitrate to extend the loop time for long journeys.

Thanks for sharing

 

[kamkar]

Not at all, i do save some moments now and then using the event button to safeguard those from overwriting in the RO folder, and then once in a while i mix those up and put them on youtube.

But i dont drive much and i use a 128 GB card so in general i have a week worth of driving on the memory card, backing up everything to a NAS or computer, thats just a waste of time to me.
And i am in the process of upgrading to 256GB memory cards, and i recon one of those will have around 3 weeks with my level of driving.

I have never had a memory card die on me in the sense of it becoming unreadable, but i have had a few going into read only mode, or in other ways start to record erratic in which case it is time to replace the card.
So for me using the memory card itself as my "buffer" seem sensible to me.

 

[Privateer]

I run a Viofo A119 V3, set to 2560x1440P, 30FPS, with the highest bitrate. I use a 128GB micro SD card which gives around 9 hours of recording before overwriting the earlier footage. I don't do much driving as I live close to my place of work. In a week I will usually do no more than 5 or 6 hours of driving.

I keep all footage for at least two years. This is achievable because I don't drive too much and portable hard drives continue to increase in size and drop in price. My current hard drive is 3TB and has 13 months of footage yet is only 75% used.

When we go on holiday (vacation) we generally take the car and the footage from these holidays are kept much longer.

Why do I keep footage so long? Because I can! Primarily I intended to keep general footage (non-holiday) for three weeks because in the UK that normally gives you enough time to receive notification of driving offences such as speeding, not that I intend to speed but it may occasionally happen. That would allow me to retrieve the footage and see whether I agree with the notification.

I have also had need to check footage older than three weeks when I was accused of staying too long in a private car park of a Cornish beach. I received a grainy b&w image on a letter and I would have fought the case if I had had two videos of my driving in and out and again an hour or so later. Unfortunately, my then dashcam wasn't working properly else I'd have had proof in colour HD video.

When we go on holiday, it's nice to review the footage and to take some of it to create a holiday video to bore our friends and family. It's nice to have some B Roll of driving, especially if you're driving in a foreign country on the wrong side of the road!

It's amazing how many times you might want to or even need to refer back to footage taken some time ago.

Regards,

 

[DT MI]

As long as I have storage space for the videos. I regularly copy my SD card to an external HD and spot check the videos on the HD to insure they're good - if they're good on the HD they're good on the SD. Right now I have 14TB of disk space available for video archiving. (For the camera in my wife's car it's whatever will fit on the SD card - I don't save that at all. She drives so little the files on her camera probably go back at least 2 or 3 months.)

I used to dabble heavily in video editing and photography so needed the disk space for multiple projects I would have going at the same time. I don't do that anymore but still have the hardware so might as well use it for something. I currently have videos from an SG9665GC going back to May, 2017. It's actually proven useful on a couple of occasions having videos going back into ancient history - when a firmware bug surfaces I've been able to search back and see when it
first appeared. When the primary drive (6TB) starts getting full I migrate older files to the 8TB after deleting the really ancient stuff from it (although I'd be lying, at least a little, if I said I hadn't considered getting another drive - hoarding can be addictive ).

Attached screen grab is my current directory (folder) structure across the 2 external drives.

 

[DAP]

I only save the videos that are youtube worthy, and I seem to have higher requirements for this than some other youtube users.

 

[SawMaster]

When I first started dashcamming I saved everything- I think many do- but in time it was just too much hassle to bother with But now I don't save much, mostly things I'm involved with or which happen close to me. I've got some 'cam review' footage on YT and I think a little more. But most of what I have there is unlisted or private since I use YT for backup storage in case this cheap laptop dies suddenly I'm not interested in publishing car-crash or bad driving vids. If I had done them from where I used to live I could have compiled 5 minutes worth every day and I only drove on average 40 minutes per day back then My cams and their footage are for protecting me so there's little I feel a need to save. One dual cam of mine has a card which holds around 2 1/2 days of my average driving and that's probably more than I'll ever need but if the money becomes handy I'll be getting more and bigger cards.



Phil

 

[HonestReview]

I usually keep videos of the past week if nothing happens. How about you guys?

I let me memory card loop record and erase so long as there isn't anything I need to pull off (accident, damage to vehicle, etc).

 

[HonestReview]

When I first started dashcamming I saved everything- I think many do- but in time it was just too much hassle to bother with But now I don't save much, mostly things I'm involved with or which happen close to me. I've got some 'cam review' footage on YT and I think a little more. But most of what I have there is unlisted or private since I use YT for backup storage in case this cheap laptop dies suddenly I'm not interested in publishing car-crash or bad driving vids. If I had done them from where I used to live I could have compiled 5 minutes worth every day and I only drove on average 40 minutes per day back then My cams and their footage are for protecting me so there's little I feel a need to save. One dual cam of mine has a card which holds around 2 1/2 days of my average driving and that's probably more than I'll ever need but if the money becomes handy I'll be getting more and bigger cards.

Phil

Agreed. Most interesting events I've seen are a car on fire and then if someone hit my car. Of course, I save the person hitting my car for insurance reasons. I do have the Car-BQ footage saved for my own posterity. However, I'm mainly concerned about events impacting me. As I haven't witnessed any accidents, there's been no need to intervene on other's behalf.

 

[Privateer]

I don't post videos on YouTube and although I've seen a few bad examples of driving I've not submitted anything to those YT compilation channels either.

Back in 2013, I offered to tow my father's caravan (a trailer in the US) to and from the campsite where he was going to meet up with friends for a short vacation, he drove in convoy with us both ways. On the way home I was travelling on a dual carriageway in lane one (couldn't move over as traffic was in lane two) and was cut up by a white van from a sliproad (ramp) who received the attention of my horn and headlights as I had to do an emergency brake. The van then proceeded to take the next exit only half a mile away.

The van was sign-written with the name of an American multinational information technology company and when I got home I tried to find the contact of somebody in the UK to complain about the driver. There was no contact so I ended up emailing to clip from my dashcam to the US CEO's email address and after a while got a reply saying that the incident had been investigated and I received an apology as well.

My email was not malicious, it was just sent to state that I was driving a rig of the combined weight of just around three tonnes and there could have been a serious accident.

Regards,

 

[Tony lovelock]

I only have 128gb cards in my cameras, I check the how much memory is left almost every other day. Then when I've got about 5gb left I tend to swao it for a fully formatted card, then leave the new one in for a few days