Newbie wants to know how to best manage the videos

[Bjaspud]

I purchased a A229Plus and a 128gb and 256gb sd cards to record a trip through the mountains. From what I can tell the cards will have the ability to film literally all day long. My goal is to save the recordings of 6 or 8 mountain passes per day. I really don't care about anything in between those sections. My question is .... if I leave the dashcam recording all day long how do I search for, isolate and save those 6 or 8 specific sections of road? Do I just need to make a note of the time of day I enter those passes and then search out the video by time? Or does the 'lock' function let me 'tag' or 'lock' those sections to be downloaded and preserved later. Does the lock function just save 10 minutes worth of video (my camera is set to record 10 second videos) or can it be used to 'lock' or save 30 or 40 minutes worth of driving? How does it work? Thanks in advance for your replies.

 

[DT MI]

Do I just need to make a note of the time of day I enter those passes and then search out the video by time?

That's pretty much the only way assuming the camera is continuously recording. As an alternative you could turn the camera on/off during those sections of the trip you're interested in recording.

As to the 'lock' function it will only lock 1 or 2 files - the one that's currently recording and, depending on the specific camera, possibly the one preceding or following it.

 

[mentadent]

I would make a note of the time.
I was initially going to say extend the segment duration to 10 minutes to reduce the number of joins, but nowadays dashcams don't even drop a frame between segments, so it doesn't matter.

 

[kamkar]

In the old days i just remembered when something happened of interest, but with my former pothead head, it was a flawed approach.
I now use the event button, but of course that only save a little, but you can still use just as a marker for when particular longer sections of interest start / stop

It is the same reason as to why i have G-sensor ON when i use parking guard and my favorite low bitrate recording, CUZ that kind of parking files are treated just like regular files, but are easy to spot in there as the file size of the segments are much smaller.
BUT ! the reason i also have G-sensor on while parked ( only time i use G-sensor ) is that if something actually happen i do not have to sit filtering thru hours of low bitrate parking footage. CUZ the triggered G-sensor and the event file it save will work as a marked for when that something actually happened.

So i can pull a little low bitrate footage from before the event, then the actual G-sensor locked event ( will also be saved as low bitrate as that's the mode ) and then some more low bitrate from after the event, and so i have a nice little video of before - now and after.
Of course that way i have to get my footage in 2 folders on the card, the event itself locked by G-sensor is in the event / RO folder, and the before / after footage i will have to find in the normal folder, same you would have to do saving a larger chunk of drive, it would just be you getting the #1 segment in the event folder, then followed by ?? miles of footage from the normal folder, and then finished off by your " stop " event from the event folder.

Before in my parking example could maybe some punk in the BMW his family just got him doing doughnuts on the parking lot, and then later he hit my car, and after could maybe be him leaving the scene of a accident.

 

[kamkar]

you could of course just jut down the start time and end time on a piece of paper if its safe to do that in the moment, then you just have to pull the XX files that make up that time window.

I would not recommend using the large segment sizes, though really it should be just fine to do as smaller also is as metadent mention, years ago dashcam footage segments would actually overlap with a frame or 2 to make sure nothing was lost, so you had to use specialized software to strip that overlap to make a longer video out of XX segments, it was however automated so not a pain as it would have to be doing that manual in a video editing program.

It is easy to make a big file out of XX smaller ones, just import into a video editor program, grab / highlight all of the files in the import folder and drop them on the timeline to make one big video, the program should put the files in order in relation to their time/date file names.
And then if you do not want to do anything else to the footage it is just export it, and BOOM you have a say a 30 minute long video made out of 10 3 minute video segments.

 

[kamkar]

In general though, what a dashcam do is generate garbage data, CUZ it is just filming you going along, only worth saving stuff is when something happen, be that drastic or just funny / worth sharing.
If you save it all, or even just much of it i think, you will be buying large spinning hard drives often to house it.

But if you want to save stuff just for saving it, well no need to mix it into one large file, just put what ever number of files you have in a folder for safe keeping.
I guesstimate in the past 10-15 years of having dashcam i have saved a total of 5 - 8 hours of footage, mostly just idiots performing in traffic i have shared.

If you have captured a " performer " in traffic, well no need to share the whole 3 minute segment he is captured in, but just the 10 - 20 seconds of his crowning performance should be enough.

 

[bhb]

The A229 Plus has voice commands. The voice command "Take photo" makes a snapshot of that moment (in settings set the option Date Stamp on) and is put in a separate folder DCIM\Photo. When entering the passes say "Take photo". Afterwards look in the DCIM/Photo map for the snapshots and there you have the date and timestamp when you entered the pass.