Is this Viofo 129 Dual good ?

RichardIstSauer

New Member
Joined
Jan 11, 2020
Messages
5
Reaction score
0
Location
Osnabrück
Country
Germany
Hello yesterday I bought the Viofo 129 Dual on amazon and I heard of the quality fluctuations. So now I tested the cam and I dont now if the video quality is as good as the normal quality from the Viofo 129 Dual. I think its not so good because at the day it sough a little bit but you can read all license plate. But at the night you cant see any license plate. I dont know if I have to high expetations from the camera so it would be kind if anyone can help me.
Best regards Richard
 
you won't get license plates at night with any camera except under some very specific conditions, for the most part it won't happen
 
Okay thx but is the footage good to keep the camera or should I refund it and order again to hope I get a better one ?
 
For a camera to be good in low light you have 2 options:

1: expose the sensor to light for a longer period so it can capture more light and so make a bright image, the downside is this make motion blur, in a extreme way you can see this in photos with a many second long exposure and so the road are just filled with lines of the colours of the cars light ( red or white )

2: you can crank up the ISO, which are the sensitivity of the sensor, the problem here is when you get too high you get noise in the image so it look grainy.


The golden rule in photography and video making is if you want to capture something that are moving, you need to at least use a exposure of 1:500 second, even faster if it is something fast like a F1 car.
BUT ! dashcams drop to 1:30 second which are the slowest you can go if you also want to have 30 frames every second, and 1:30 second are too slow for anything faster than crawl speed.

You can easy get a plate at night if it is on a car that just move a very little faster or slower than you, or if you pass parked cars while you drive at idle speed in #1 gear.

This is the simple nature of photo and videography, and the quality of sensors currently used in dashcams.
 
looks like it should, don't see anything wrong with it, aim your lens a bit lower will improve the results also
 
the 129 duo use as good hardware as you can get, and viofo are also using as good as they can with their firmware.
So changing to any other brand will not give you better footage in general, if any it will be very little and not worth it if you change to a camera 2 X more expensive than the 129 duo
 
You are also not the first and you will not be the last one, that was expecting better from his dashcam.
But the limitations we see now in what they are able to do for us, are all down to the hardware used ( hardware normal people can afford )
You can get super sensors and so on even today, but then you will be paying several 1000 euro for the dashcam, so no one make cameras like that as they will find it hard to sell any.
 
if you have a event in low light, the very best option is that yourself see the plate on the other car, and call it out for the dashcam microphone to record, not least if the other car drive away.

But in general the dashcam will log you placement on the road / lane just fine, so no one can lie and claim you changed lane just in front of them. And the dashcam will also capture the colour of all intersections you pass thru, so no one can claim you run red light.
But very little details start to become a problem as the light fade, even in the daytime this time of the year, and if the sun are not out in force, you can get problems capturing a plate.
But this are the problems for all brand and models of dashcams, things do get better slowly but we will not be capturing license plates at night anytime soon, unless someone come up with a cheap revolutionary photo sensor for our cameras.
 
those conditions driving through tree lined streets with no leaves are about the worst for a dashcam, try driving in the city and see how it looks
 
Yes areas with a lot of detail, like trees lining a road, and maybe sun filtering thru them to cast lines of light and shade on the ground are hard for a dashcam to deal due to the limited bitrate.
And the camera react to this by trying to process things in larger blocks, and then that's what you see in the footage.
The fix is easy just crank up the bitrate, but then instead of 100 MB for a minute of video you have 300 MB or more and also the camera generate more heat with a high bitrate.
You don't see this with a nice camcorder or action camera, but then they use around 100 Mbit and our dashcams only use 20 or so and those cinematic cameras don't record all the time or are places in the direct sun with little ventilation.
And that's why dashcams run with a modest bitrate, and can struggle with fine detail.
 
Yes I have checked and I saw whenever there is a tree without leaves the camera struggles and the picture is like mosaique. Should I flash I custom rom or keep original ?
 
Yes I have checked and I saw whenever there is a tree without leaves the camera struggles and the picture is like mosaique. Should I flash I custom rom or keep original ?
all cameras will struggle with that scene, some more than others, but it will never look perfect
 
One leading scan tool that best fits your vehicle is the Foxwell Scanner https://theeffectiveguide.com/best-obd2-scanner/foxwell-scanner/. The company offers a wide range of obd2 scan tool for different users. It also designs professional and technologically advanced scan tools that users have fallen in love with. Know more about this brand in the review.
 
Last edited:
I thing models with the cameras remote are the way forward, this way you don't have the bulk of the system sitting in the sun, and you can make the main unit larger with better cooling, so to me this mean you can run higher bitrates, and i assume it should also help with heat tolerances for parking mode as the main unit can be placed low in the car out of the sun.

Still i would like another form of storage not least for big files as a result of larger resolutions ( 4k ) and higher bitrates, even if the small memory cards are also cheaper now.
 
Back
Top