I am needing a long recoding dual dash cam.

MindyM.

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I live in the county, and constantly have people crossing the yellow line in front of me. One missed my back end by inches. Or jacked up trucks on my tail pipe.
Or is what I need a bigger recording card? And just keep hitting the record button?
 
Welcome to the forum Mindy

For how long or rather how many hours of storage a dashcam can store depend on the memory card, but as all dashcams delete the oldest footage to make room for new stuff when the card is full you dont really need to have a super large memory card.

BUT ! you should not go too small either, i personally recommend a 128 GB card as the smallest, this will give you many hours of recording even from a dual channel system with two 1080p cameras ( one on windscreen, and one in the rear window )
I do also recommend people to get a dual channel camera, but a single are also good in regard to liability, cuz what that one camera on your windscreen do is, that it record all you do with your car, and i think in Texas if you do nothing wrong than surely you can not be to blame for what ever go on off camera.

A dashcam will record as soon as you start your car, and will stop when you turn off the car, so no need to press any buttons.
But ! all dashcams have a so called event button, pressing that make a event recording which are safe from the cameras routine of deleting stuff when the memory card are full.
I personally use that button for little crazy things in traffic i want to share, then once a month i go to the folder where protected files are saved ( often called RO,,, Read Only ) and pick the new recordings for a youtube upload.

dashcams record in smaller segments of video, this is in case something go wrong you just loose a little and not the hour long file that was in progress.
But the files are consecutive and seamless so you can just edit 37 files to one long video if you like, but you do have to do that in some video editing program.
The norm segment size i think are 3 minutes, but most cameras do offer a choice for this, and the options usually are 1 - 2 - 3 - 5 - 10 minute segments.

One thing to recall is no dashcam are set and forget, you be wise to look over your recordings every few months, for me it take me about 15 minutes to look over a 256GB large and full memory card on the PC

You be surprised how many times a new user have come here and say " i put a cheap dashcam in my car with a memory card 3 years ago, and now i have had a accident and my camera have not recorded anything for months"
Good & new dashcams do now have a alarm they sound if the memory card go bad, and they will do that sooner or later, memory card endurance are measured in number of full read / write cycles.
By local ( in your country ) both dashcam and memory card ( memory card are often falsified in some places )
So paramount for this is to ensure good warranty and a chance for service from your own country.

Maybe list what car you have, that will make it more easy to recommend you a setup.
 
I live in the county, and constantly have people crossing the yellow line in front of me. One missed my back end by inches. Or jacked up trucks on my tail pipe.
Or is what I need a bigger recording card? And just keep hitting the record button?
"Most" dashcams are the "set and forget" types without the need to "...keep hitting the record button". They continuously record in small segments while the vehicle is on. As @kamkar stated, it's the size of the memory card that will dictate how long it will record.
It sounds like you hit the record button for every "incident". You shouldn't have to. Everything should be recorded without you needing to hit buttons. What you might have is an "incident" or "manual" record button that highlights that recording as important. Regardless, you shouldn't have to.

What make and model is your dashcam? What size is your memory card?
 
Up until recently, well recent in my dashcam timeline at least, i just used mental notes when and where something happened, but this meant i had to pull the memory card right after the drive if there was any chance of my abused brain remembering anything.
With newer cameras i have resorted to just use the event button and then only pull the card once every month or so, only newer cameras i test i look at the footage more often.
I especially like the way SG cameras do their event recordings, most cameras deal with a short buffer ( 20 seconds or so ), meaning if you want to save a event you better hit the button right away.
But my SG cameras deal in recording segments instead ( i use 3 minute ) so when i press the button lets say 1 minute into the current recording segment, it will get saved but also the previous segment, alternative if i am 2 minutes into the current segment when i press the event button the current one will be saved but also the next one., so in case of the SG camera i get 2 X 3 minutes saved,,,,, from each camera and it is a 2 channel system a total of 12 minutes are locked away, or 2 X 3 minutes from both front and rear camera.
A camera using old style buffer might only have 20 seconds from before event and then say 30 seconds after, which i feel can be very little, but again - again, not a huge problem as what are before and after the event are in among the regular files, i just feel it is more convenient to have it all locked away with no chance of it getting deleted, even if i always run plenty large memory cards ( only use 128 and 256GB cards now )

This i feel is convenient as in case of something where you might be freaked out a little, you do not have to rush to the event button to have the actual event locked away safe, so you can pull over, compose yourself, and then hit the button, and the event + the lead up and some aftermath should still be safe in the read Only / event folder.
The buffer style cameras TBH i only think of their event recordings as "flags" of a event, parts of it might be outside of the saved event recording, so in among the regular files where there are a chance of it getting deleted,,, not least if you have a very small memory card, with a ample sized one, this are less of a problem as you will have to record for many hours still before the part of a event outside of a locked file might be in danger from deletion.
Some brands have also started to deal in segments, viofo for instance now lock the whole segment too, but just the one being made right then the event happen, so if your event are right at the end of the segment and say you still record 3 minute segments, well you have say 2.5 minutes from before the event, and then 30 seconds with the event and after, but then it end and you will have to look for more of interest in the regular files,,,,,, which is also fine again if you have a ample sized memory card.

Some brands even respectable well know ones, will still sell you a high end dashcam with a 16 GB card,,,,, IMO that is outrageous.
You can under extreme duress make do with 64Gb for a camera / each camera in a system, but really IMO you should go for 128 GB
 
My Blackvue with 256GB card can do 14 hours in its best video quality.
 
There is a recording calculator here on the "page" which still give a okay ballpark estimate what you can expect.
But many dashcams do not list the bitrate they use, so often just a tool you can use after you have gotten a camera and you can look at one of its files properties to get bitrate.
1080p cameras now are often 18 - 20 mbit i think, but some are also lower with 12 - 16 in the low range, for larger resolution cameras it is of course larger, this is also why the bitrate calculator here are just ballpark now as it was made with 1080p cameras in mind.
 
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