Looking to modify firmware to lower bitrate for better storage capacity

[mrtony]

Hello all,

I'm looking for some help modifying firmware to lower the bitrate. I need to store around 200 hours of footage. Video quality is not critical, just needs to be decent. This will be used as an interior camera for a business to protect against false claims. We have not purchased a camera yet. This leaves our options open to pick whatever is easiest to modify and still give us what we need: audio recording, date/time stamp, decent video quality, and as much capacity as possible. This is the original post where you can find more details.

Looking for a low-res high storage camera

I own a fleet of vehicles used for wheelchair transportation. We've had a couple of minor incidents recently where a passenger has claimed something has happened while on our vans. The claims are questionable and I trust our drivers, but you never know. We're considering installing a dash...

dashcamtalk.com

I'd be happy to pay for someone to help with this. No idea what the going rate is, but just let me know and we can work something out.

Thanks!

 

[golden99]

Hello all,

I'm looking for some help modifying firmware to lower the bitrate. I need to store around 200 hours of footage. Video quality is not critical, just needs to be decent. This will be used as an interior camera for a business to protect against false claims. We have not purchased a camera yet. This leaves our options open to pick whatever is easiest to modify and still give us what we need: audio recording, date/time stamp, decent video quality, and as much capacity as possible. This is the original post where you can find more details.

Looking for a low-res high storage camera

I own a fleet of vehicles used for wheelchair transportation. We've had a couple of minor incidents recently where a passenger has claimed something has happened while on our vans. The claims are questionable and I trust our drivers, but you never know. We're considering installing a dash...

dashcamtalk.com

I'd be happy to pay for someone to help with this. No idea what the going rate is, but just let me know and we can work something out.

Thanks!

Not sure what dash cam you have, but is there any reason you can't use a higher capacity micro SD card like this and dial down the resolution to the lowest setting? (I think some cams run up to 1TB of storage now.)

Seems like that would be considerably easier than trying to flash new firmware that could cause problems plus it would keep your videos clean and clear. Just a thought.

 

[kamkar]

Tony are trying to bypass buying a professional mobile DVR that run expensive for his fleet of cars.
And as it is mainly for interior recording then a regular system are hard on the memory card, and also keeping in mind that 256 GB are barely supported these days and 512 GB or higher much less support.
So i suggested him that he might be able to enlist one of our Firmware modding friends to turn the normal bitrate down in a system as i think it are not possible to cheat a dashcam to go into parking guard mode, well at least not without some human intervention.
So my idea was get a mature system, and get a modder to whip up a low bitrate firmware for that.
This will be a lot cheaper to run say 100 - 150 USD for each car ( camera + memory card ) VS putting +1500 USD worth of mobile DVR in his fleet of mini busses.

@Falsificator helped me with a modified firmware for a camera of mine i want to play with, i am pretty sure lowering the bitrate on a camera he are able to work with / know will be no problem and take seconds for him to do
So he is now tagged in here.

The only downside i can think off here are most single cameras do not have IR support for very low light situations, not awaree if Tony have some light in his vehicles, or mainly drive in the daytime where it should not be a problem.

 

[mrtony]

Good point with the IR for low light. When it's dark out, there's a little light from the dash when the vehicle is in motion, and some light from outside since we have street lights. During loading, there is plenty of light in the vans. And most of our trips are daytime anyway.

I'll send Falsificator a message too.

In the meantime, I'm open to suggestions for cameras so I can start researching what we need as far as wiring etc.

 

[mrtony]

Project completed. We were able to lower the bitrate to 2mbps so that over 200 hours will fit on a 512GB SD card. Camera is a VanTrue E1Lite.

 

[kamkar]

Sweet