Justifying cost of DR900S-2CH for cross-country trip documentation - is it worth it?

[ShedMonkeySaysNo]

Hi guys, just discovered this site and registered to ask this question: Can a high-quality 2 channel setup like the DR900S-2CH be used to document a trip? Let me rewind for a second...

My wife has a new truck and luck seems to find us in all the wrong places. I currently have 4 security cameras (Arlo Pro) around the house we live in and while it's good for our rental situation; when we buy a house we have a serious upgrade in our future. Anyway, I am very pro-security camera. I didn't even know as of a couple of days ago that dash cam technology had come so far as to offer parking security coverage. I thought only Tesla's Sentry Mode came close to that. So with my toes wet here is what I want:

2 channel (front and rear facing)
As much storage space as possible (appears to be 128gb for most systems)
Additional power for parking security (Cellink etc)
Hardwired but peace of mind that we wont drain our battery, cause electrical issues, or void/make problematic any warranty issues (truck has less than 4k miles)
Buffered parking security coverage (i want the crime captured along with the license plate)
Easy video access, easy download, near-instant notifications, the works!

So far I have fallen in love with the BlackVue DR900S-2CH. Every time I start feeling like the ~$1k cost is maybe excessive and for a few hundred less we can have comparative coverage, I find a video talking me back into the DR900S.

That said, the A129 seems like a perfectly legitimate option and is significantly less money. Chances are, it covers 99% of what might happen. If it was purely for security then I think it'd probably be ok. But, this is where I come back to my original question:

Can a high-quality 2 channel setup like the DR900S-2CH be used to document a trip?

My wife and I are going to be driving from California to Florida in a few months. It will just be her, me and our dog driving just under 3k miles. It looks like I can make the trip more interesting (hit more known cities) by adding less than 300 miles, and a trip like this can either be a huge logistical nightmare that you cant wait to be over, or can be a fun adventure. I can justify the cost of getting a better system several ways. One way is if I can figure out a way to save a ton of the travel video and probably never end up doing anything with it lol, but I've googled and youtubed and am curious what y'all's opinions are. Can a dashcam system document a cross-country trip very well? Worth upgrading to the better quality video?

I am 99% sold on this set up I just wanted to enter the community with a (to me) fun topic. I'm super excited about the move, the trip, and this setup. thanks!

 

[M8TJT]

A couple of things to consider is the fact they you will have a very large number of 1 or 3 minute 'clips' that you will possibly want to stitch together later. And you will likely need a small truck load of SD cards unless you download the video to an alternative storage device regularly.

 

[flank]

I used to document my trips a lot with a dash cam. Action cam was used while hiking and I would intergrate the dash cam with the action cam footage for home videos. Well worth the cost. I would normally save the footage in the evening. Carrying multiple memory cards for the dash cam is a must just in case you drive for over 8 hours a day.

Example of mine

 

[Nigel]

Can a high-quality 2 channel setup like the DR900S-2CH be used to document a trip?

The DR900 is a high resolution dashcam. When it comes to video quality it is rather lacking in other aspects such as colour fidelity and background detail. If you want to make movies it is far from the best choice.

Currently the Viofo A129 is a good choice, especially with the modified high bitrate firmwares available on this forum.
The Gitup F1 4K, again with modified firmware, is even better for movies, although you will need to take a large disk drive to store all the big video files.

 

[SawMaster]

Welcome to DCT @ShedMonkeySaysNo
While either the DR900s or the A129 Duo should serve you well for dashcam work, they are not really optimal for recording scenery and points of interest. You might consider adding an action cam for those occurrences, and that has the added benefit of being able to use the action cam as a hand-held video and still-pic recorder.
Dashcams tend to have a narrower FOV, less accurate color representation, and more distortion at the edges than action cams do. They're meant for different purposes.

I'd recommend that you look at videos from both dashcams you're considering to see if their performance is suitable to you for both purposes. You're the only one who can decide on what is good enough for you. Note that action cams often don't do well in low-light situations, and while dashcams aren't exactly great at that, they will do far better in this. Personally I think Blackvue cams are far overpriced for the videos they render, and I think the A129 matches or betters the DR900S in that department. The Blackvue does have the lead in certain features such as wireless capabilities and experience with buffered parking mode function. Again you decide what you want to have and if it's good enough for you doing those things. I know little of action cams but others here can help you with that.

Whichever way you go you will need enough cards to be able to save what you want to keep while on the road and a method for saving that. Dashcams "loop record" and overwrite old files, so you'll want a large enough size to allow card swaps to be done during your stops; you don't want to be doing that while in motion. Action cams don't "loop" but stop recording when the card gets full, so again card size needs to match time-in-use expectations. Cards for video recorders can't be just anything- they need high write-speed capability and reliability in use. Stick with only the cards people here recommend and you should be OK in this. Also note that Blackvue uses high-priced proprietary cards, and while some people have found a few other cards which work in these cams, you'll be far more limited in card choice with Blackvue than with any other cams.

Some cams handle both purposes well such as the GitUp F1and the old Mobius. Those are all single-channel cams so you'd need 2 cams and 2 cards for dashcam work front and rear. Accessing the rear cam may be a pain as might be pulling and replacing one for use as a hand-held recorder. With these, recording time is generally less than with an uncompromised action cam and the Mobius doesn't have an easily swappable battery so you have to charge it instead of dropping in an extra battery. Other action cams may not handle high heat well and are not meant for continuous recording the way dashcams are though some can handle it OK.

Sorry for the 'wall of text' but cam choice is not always a simple matter and the more you know the better your choices will be

Phil

 

[Ralph2]

Out of that 3K trip a very large percent will be boring highway footage. Using an always on dash-cam to record your trip will require an awful amount of time to edit out the boring bits.

 

[Aronis]

Go Pro cam, and set to take interval photos, every 10 minutes? 20 minutes? Document enough without hours and hours of video to go through?

 

[kamkar]

You will have to speed up some if not all of the footage, and there are 2 ways of doing that.
1: The hyper lapse ( gopro ) or time lapse some cameras ( action ) offer
2: In post production, but this will take a lot of time even if you have a substantial PC with lots of processing power.

Also road trips IMO are better with a more narrow FOV camera where you don't have A pillars and dashboard in frame.
And if you want cinematic footage the modest bitrates of dashcams are not that usable, here action cameras or regular camcorders will be better.

The downside are action cameras are not really meant for operation hours on end, some even cant do it and will shut down for thermal reasons.

A few years ago i did a 9 hour road trip, which i saved using my SJ6 legend camera ( 1080 / 60 ) i then speed up and upscale to 4 K in post as youtube favor 4 K when they recode your footage to something else.

It is not optimal as it have dash and a pillars in footage, i prefer the looks of American roads recordings made with a camcorder.

 

[Michael_K]

2 channel (front and rear facing)
As much storage space as possible (appears to be 128gb for most systems)
Additional power for parking security (Cellink etc)
Hardwired but peace of mind that we wont drain our battery, cause electrical issues, or void/make problematic any warranty issues (truck has less than 4k miles)
Buffered parking security coverage (i want the crime captured along with the license plate)
Easy video access, easy download, near-instant notifications, the works!

So far I have fallen in love with the BlackVue DR900S-2CH. Every time I start feeling like the ~$1k cost is maybe excessive and for a few hundred less we can have comparative coverage, I find a video talking me back into the DR900S.

Hello.
Did you consider the Thinkware F800 Pro? It checks off all off your criteria, but costs much less!
I think that the only feature the DR900 has over it is real-time video (over internet). The F800 Pro comes close, with notifications when something happens.

One important detail that I didn't see mentioned in this thread is that, with 4K video, night-time video isn't as good as full HD. So, the F800 Pro is actually better in that respect.

To save dashcam (or actioncam) video -- whenever you pull off to rest, you could download to your mobile device (wifi, cable, or remove card and use an adapter), and save to a harddrive (hooked up with an OTG cable). Also, consider taking an old phone for this duty.

I agree with the advice that you should use an action camera to document the important parts. My idea is that you still need a dashcam -- whether on a trip on your normal life.

 

[BlackboxMyCar]

Like the other replies, the BlackVue DR900S, Viofo A129 and Thinkware F800 Pro (or, better yet, wait for the Q800 Pro which will be available in a few weeks) should be your top considerations.

The A129 no doubt has the best video quality but lacks a true parking-mode feature. The DR900S and F800/Q800 Pro all have true parking-mode feature with the DR900S having 4K resolution (better video quality) and the F800/Q800 Pro with memory partitioning (better parking-mode).

Regardless of what you choose, you'll definitely want to carry a lot of spare microSD cards if you're looking to save footage, or simply take a laptop/external hard drive with you so you can upload footage every day or so.

 

[kamkar]

I forgot to write, if you want to share you got to split your recordings up into segments, no one will be sitting on youtube watching you drive 9 hours strait in 1:1 speed or faster.
10 minutes are about the most you can expect people to hang in there.
So whatever you do, there will be post production to do anyway, adding info text on the footage like American roads do are also a way to keep peoples attention.

You can get pretty small camcorders today, so if you go that route its not like you have to strap some unholy contraption to your car or windscreen, but some form of suction cup mount will be fine i think ( this might be illegal in some states / countries )
Using a camcorder have the + that you can take it off its mount and film locations where you make a stop.
You can do that too with a action or even dashcam powered by a USB power bank, but their wide angle lenses will be less than ideal for filming panoramic views, where a camcorder will even give you optical zoom.

As said in the case of the US and going around or across it, for that you will need something to offload video on in bulk, so a laptop with a big hard drive inside or a external hard drive attached will be needed.
Little old Denmark you can drive across in 9 hours just fine, well that you can do on a single memory card without it having to be one of the really big ones.

 

[ShedMonkeySaysNo]

Hi all, thanks for all the replies! I am definitely not planning on uploading the entire trip lol. I am continuing my research. Thanks again!

 

[blazn420]

Western Digital makes a portable hard drive with a SD card slot, you can offload files without a tablet or laptop.

 

[SidewaysChair]

For what it's worth, sample footage from my 4C over past of couple months. I need to actually order a polarizer to remove the daytime reflection.

Goal with this was to show how camera responds in various lighting/weather environments.

4C Sample Footage - DR900S

 

[kamkar]

As they say, you not a car guy before you have owned a Alfa
At least thats the saying over here in Euro-ville

 

[SidewaysChair]

They say the same thing here. Heck, was in a restaurant the other day, one of the employees had seen the car when I parked, he knew it was Alfa and made a similar statement to me (maybe he was 21 if lucky). Glad to see all generations share the Alfa love.

 

[kamkar]

Hard to bypass, but i think i also heard the top gear guys ( well one of them ) say Alfa had children do the wiring of their cars.
The brand never really been big in Denmark, maybe apart from the alfasuds from the 70ties, that pretty much rotted up in a few years.

 

[M8TJT]

Really strange position for the rear cam window. Still there were some really interesting sky shots.

 

[SidewaysChair]

Have to remember, rear engine so window is tiny (couple shots from Valley Forge PA). Best place I could mount camera and still see back.

 

[kamkar]

Yeah with that car it cant get much better, you could go outside with a waterproof camera up higher, but then you would drive a teletubby car, and teletubby driving i think we better leave to motorcyclists with gopro on their helmet.