New owner question about video length 1/3/5

[Daali]

New owner here, should arrive Friday from Blueskysea's Amazon store. I also picked up the high endurance 64mb microSD card.

What is the general consensus on video length and what length does most use?

 

[estore009]

Default video length was 1 min in APP, it will be more easy to download and to share, But it will have more files name in your memory card because at 1min duration they're not large files.

 

[DT MI]

...What is the general consensus on video length and what length does most use?

Welcome to DCT.

There is no general consensus - some like smaller for ease of handling the individual files, others prefer larger files because there are fewer of them. Some prefer smaller files on the off chance if one gets lost or corrupt there is less video lost. I've never had that happen during the course of normal operation so that's of no concern to me.

If you plan on creating 'feature length' movies of your travels it would probably be easier with larger files as there would be fewer to have to stitch together. Larger files potentially make it easier to find something specific for the simple reason there are fewer to look through.

Everyone has their preference for their own reasons.

I like 5 minutes myself. Why? Because I just happen to like 5 minute files. My wife's car has a Blacksys CF-100 and it only creates 1 minute files - drives me crazy every time I have to do anything with them.

 

[TexMex]

5 minute setting is my preference as well.

 

[Nigel]

Because it is a wifi cam and not very fast to download video, go for 1 minute, makes it easier to watch the videos over the wifi in the car and there is no real disadvantage of 1 minute.

 

[Rajagra]

there is no real disadvantage of 1 minute.

I'm not familiar with this cam. Does it have a save button? Would this save just the current 1 minute section? What if you're a bit slow hitting the save button, and you only save a minute of worthless footage that happens after the critical event?

This is a problem I have with a camera I have fitted now. Several times I've lost interesting footage, even with 5 minute segments. Just got unlucky.

I know in an important event you'd pull the card. But I still see this as a downside, and it makes 1 minute segments a non - starter on that cam.

Sent from my SM-G903F using Tapatalk

 

[TonyM]

I'm not familiar with this cam. Does it have a save button? Would this save just the current 1 minute section? What if you're a bit slow hitting the save button, and you only save a minute of worthless footage that happens after the critical event?

This is a problem I have with a camera I have fitted now. Several times I've lost interesting footage, even with 5 minute segments. Just got unlucky.

I know in an important event you'd pull the card. But I still see this as a downside, and it makes 1 minute segments a non - starter on that cam.

Sent from my SM-G903F using Tapatalk

Yes, it has a save button. And yes, it only saves the current 1/3/5 minute section, so with 5 minutes you do get more chance to save the clip you want.

However I use 1 minute files for dashcam testing as they are quicker to upload.

 

[Nigel]

Because it has a fairly low bitrate, things don't tend to get wiped out before the end of the day anyway, and if they are really important then either swap cards, or connect your phone to the wifi and download the important bits into phone memory so that you have a backup copy. The app has a function to download selected files into the phone, very easy to do, and quicker if the files are not too big.

 

[Rajagra]

I use(d) one minute segments on my mini 0806, which worked great because its button saves the current time period, the previous, and the next. You don't really appreciate how useful such features are until you lose them.

Sent from my SM-G903F using Tapatalk

 

[Module 79L]

What is the general consensus on video length and what length does most use?

I started with the 3 min setting but my "luck" dictated that many of the interesting clips I captured usually happened when one clip was ending and the next was starting, meaning it was a PITA having to cut the end of one clip and the beginning of the next one and then joining the 2 segments together again to create a single clip. It didn't take long before I switched to 5 mins. I still get some situations cut in the middle but they're much less.

I also read somewhere that the less amount of files strains the card less.

 

[TonyM]

I suppose it depends on how you use your dashcam. If you are frequently saving interesting clips to edit later and upload to your youtube channel, then I can see that 5min is better to reduce the chance of the event spanning across two files.

Personally I don't use the save button on my cameras. I keep the duration as short as possible for quicker and easier sharing of original unedited video files.

 

[kamkar]

3 minute user here

 

[llllllmb]

I started with the 3 min setting but my "luck" dictated that many of the interesting clips I captured usually happened when one clip was ending and the next was starting, meaning it was a PITA having to cut the end of one clip and the beginning of the next one and then joining the 2 segments together again to create a single clip. It didn't take long before I switched to 5 mins. I still get some situations cut in the middle but they're much less.

I often sample video files and generate pictures of tours, kind of like DIY streetview, for mapping on OpenStreetMap. A 10 or 15 minute setting would be great, less work with stitching...

 

[estore009]

I often sample video files and generate pictures of tours, kind of like DIY streetview, for mapping on OpenStreetMap. A 10 or 15 minute setting would be great, less work with stitching...

A 10 or 15 mins video footage is not practical to download..., it will take 15 minutes to download 15-mins-long video footage!

 

[llllllmb]

A 10 or 15 mins video footage is not practical to download..., it will take 15 minutes to download 15-mins-long video footage!

I know that wifi is a bit slow, but I transfer files to my PC anyway and have an sdcard reader for that purpose (or I can bring the camera indoors )

 

[Module 79L]

I often sample video files and generate pictures of tours, kind of like DIY streetview, for mapping on OpenStreetMap. A 10 or 15 minute setting would be great, less work with stitching...

If it's only 10 or 15 mins that you need you can use continuous recording. Just remember that once the card reach the limit for a single file it won't store any more files.

 

[estore009]

If it's only 10 or 15 mins that you need you can use continuous recording. Just remember that once the card reach the limit for a single file it won't store any more files.

Do you mean that FAT32 Partition Size Limit?

 

[Nigel]

I often sample video files and generate pictures of tours, kind of like DIY streetview, for mapping on OpenStreetMap. A 10 or 15 minute setting would be great, less work with stitching...

I just tried 2 methods of copying files off my B2W memory card using a USB3 card reader,

This simple way:

• Open folder on the memory card.
• Select all yesterdays files.
• Copy selected files.
• Open destination folder.
• Paste selected files.

And the easy way:

1. Open destination folder.
2. Drag and drop ffmpeg batch file into folder.
3. Edit the batch file to specify yesterdays date and select front view files only.
4. Run batch file.

After 9 minutes the first method resulted in a folder containing 72 files, 3 hours 36 minutes of video, 18GB used, and with front and rear video files all mixed up.

After 5 minutes the second method resulted in a folder containing the batch file and 1 video file containing 1 hour 48 minutes, 11GB of front view only.

I normally do it the easy way, much easier to view and edit a single video file
Note that ffmpeg can concatenate all the files without reencoding, so there is no loss of quality.

 

[llllllmb]

Well I need to refresh my ffmpeg and command line skills then, sounds doable, thanks for the input!

 

[Nigel]

Well I need to refresh my ffmpeg and command line skills then, sounds doable, thanks for the input!

If you are using Windows, here is some assistance:

set source=E:\CARDV\Movie
set output=_Front.MP4
set files=2019_0531_*_F.MP4

(for /f "tokens=*" %%i in ('dir /b /o:d %source%\%files%') do @echo file '%source%\%%i') > ~concat_Front.txt
\camera\ffmpeg\ffmpeg -f concat -safe 0 -i ~concat_Front.txt -c copy -y %output%
del ~concat_Front.txt

You will need to set the path to the files on your memory card reader, the output video file name, the pattern for the input file names and the path to ffmpeg on your computer.