Micro SD - class 2 vs class 10

[bronze84]

Hi guys

Question - would a class 10 card make any difference to the playback quality of a dash cam on a pc compared to a class 2 card?

I understand it won't make much difference when recording due to the limitations of the camera, sensor, processor etc. I'm thinking that maybe it would encode with more quality?

Just to note, I use class 10 now but have a class 2 as back up

 

[Adam42]

Not sure if I've seen a class 2 card. Heard of class 4, 6 and class 10.

Class 4 or 6 drops to many frames where class 10 doesn't.

 

[bronze84]

So class 10 should give better video playback?

 

[ShPioN]

So class 10 should give better video playback?

the difference between Class 4/6/10 is only in read/write speed. if we talk about quality, it is the same, as it is digital technology So if your microSD card can guarantee writing speed up to 4 MB/s, it means that it can handle up to 32 mbit/s bitrate writing. To handle overlapping and avoid problems, we can divide the speed by two, so Class 4 card is enough up to 16 mbit/s, Class 6 up to 24 mbit/s and Class 10 up to 40 mbit/s. Of course it's approx. For ex., my GS9000 has bitrate around 13-15 mbit/s and there is no problem with original Class 4 card.

 

[Adam42]

So class 10 should give better video playback?

the difference between Class 4/6/10 is only in read/write speed. if we talk about quality, it is the same, as it is digital technology So if your microSD card can guarantee writing speed up to 4 MB/s, it means that it can handle up to 32 mbit/s bitrate writing. To handle overlapping and avoid problems, we can divide the speed by two, so Class 4 card is enough up to 16 mbit/s, Class 6 up to 24 mbit/s and Class 10 up to 40 mbit/s. Of course it's approx. For ex., my GS9000 has bitrate around 13-15 mbit/s and there is no problem with original Class 4 card.

Do you own a class 4 or 6 card. I made the mistake of buying these at officeworks to save a bit of money. That was my first mistake.
These can't do 1080p at all well where the class 10 can. Same goes with my video camera. I'll only use class 10 cards due to frames being dropped by class 4 or 6 cards.

If you look on the card packaging the class 10 all support 1080p full hd video where the class 4 or 6 don't mention that for a very good reason.

 

[Adam42]

So class 10 should give better video playback?

Yes and you will notice this straight away.
If you are not sure buy a 4Gb card and do some recording. Then when that records without dropping frames then you can go buy a larger card.

Many cams or video cameras only support up to 32gb. Class 10 cards go up to 128gb which cost a fair bit. 64Gb cards are not to bad in price.
32gb for a car camera should be ample of recording time.

 

[ShPioN]

Do you own a class 4 or 6 card. I made the mistake of buying these at officeworks to save a bit of money. That was my first mistake.
These can't do 1080p at all well where the class 10 can. Same goes with my video camera. I'll only use class 10 cards due to frames being dropped by class 4 or 6 cards.

If you look on the card packaging the class 10 all support 1080p full hd video where the class 4 or 6 don't mention that for a very good reason.

I own original class 4 card, it writes up to 5MB/s. In China there are many fake Class 4/6/10 cards, which are marked so, but in fact they provide only Class 4 speeds in best case. FullHD 1080p supporting is only marketing trick, because card has only to write RAW data, it doesn't care what it is: FullHD or 720p or even 4k resolution HD. in any case, today difference in price between class 4 and class 10 is not so big, so if you're buying a new card, it's better to buy Class 10 card and have a reserve for a future.

 

[ShPioN]

Class 10 cards go up to 128gb which cost a fair bit. 64Gb cards are not to bad in price.
32gb for a car camera should be ample of recording time.

I think you are little bit confusing about speed Class and microSD generation. Generally, microSD HighCapacity cards are divided to Class 4/6/10, accroding to their min. write speed ability. But all of them can support only up to 32GB capacity. To further increase capacity, microSD eXtended Capacity(XC) was developed, so it now supports up to 2TB capacity. microSDHC and microSDXC and speed Class are not the same.

 

[bronze84]

So class 10 should give better video playback?

Yes and you will notice this straight away.
If you are not sure buy a 4Gb card and do some recording. Then when that records without dropping frames then you can go buy a larger card.

Many cams or video cameras only support up to 32gb. Class 10 cards go up to 128gb which cost a fair bit. 64Gb cards are not to bad in price.
32gb for a car camera should be ample of recording time.

I already have an 8gb class 10 which does the job, the class 2 that I have is purely for back up. I get 2 1/2 hrs recording time @ 720p with the 8gb

 

[gerardthebutler]

Regarding SD cards, there are some fakes out there. This piece of freee s/w will write a number of files to your SD card and then read them back. It will give you the read/write speeds from which you can work out what class card you've got if not sure and also tell you if you've been sold a pup. It will also test USBs.

http://sosfakeflash.wordpress.com/2008/ ... it-drives/

Sample reports:

Good

Warning: Only 15188 of 15189 MByte tested.
Test finished without errors.
You can now delete the test files *.h2w or verify them again.
Writing speed: 6.67 MByte/s
Reading speed: 19.2 MByte/s
H2testw v1.4

Not so good (fake 64G card)

The media is likely to be defective.
3.8 GByte OK (8084847 sectors)
58.6 GByte DATA LOST (122921617 sectors)
Details:710.5 KByte overwritten (1421 sectors)
7.6 MByte slightly changed (< 8 bit/sector, 15630 sectors)
58.6 byte corrupted (122904566 sectors)
710.5 KByte aliased memory (1421 sectors)
First error at offset: 0x000000003cef8470
Expected: 0xeb7ac43a237c5170
Found: 0xeb7a843a237c5170
H2testw version 1.3
Writing speed: 9.24 MByte/s
Reading speed: 10.8 MByte/s
H2testw v1.4

 

[bronze84]

Regarding SD cards, there are some fakes out there. This piece of freee s/w will write a number of files to your SD card and then read them back. It will give you the read/write speeds from which you can work out what class card you've got if not sure and also tell you if you've been sold a pup. It will also test USBs.

http://sosfakeflash.wordpress.com/2008/ ... it-drives/

Sample reports:

Good

Warning: Only 15188 of 15189 MByte tested.
Test finished without errors.
You can now delete the test files *.h2w or verify them again.
Writing speed: 6.67 MByte/s
Reading speed: 19.2 MByte/s
H2testw v1.4

Not so good (fake 64G card)

The media is likely to be defective.
3.8 GByte OK (8084847 sectors)
58.6 GByte DATA LOST (122921617 sectors)
Details:710.5 KByte overwritten (1421 sectors)
7.6 MByte slightly changed (< 8 bit/sector, 15630 sectors)
58.6 byte corrupted (122904566 sectors)
710.5 KByte aliased memory (1421 sectors)
First error at offset: 0x000000003cef8470
Expected: 0xeb7ac43a237c5170
Found: 0xeb7a843a237c5170
H2testw version 1.3
Writing speed: 9.24 MByte/s
Reading speed: 10.8 MByte/s
H2testw v1.4

Great info, thanks for sharing

 

[murathoca]

Amazingly my class2 card was not bad. It was skipping some frames though. But it wasn't disturbing. I'm now using a class 10 Kingston card and it is excellent.

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