1: you should record at the cameras native resolution, not something lesser to save space.
2: the Lock button just save / lock the current file being made.
3: dashcams usually have the option to record in 1-2-3-5-10 minute segment size, this is a safety thing so if something happen you only loose a little VS if the camera recorded one big file or as big as the file system would allow.
These smaller files are drop dead easy stitching together in a editing tool, just drop them on time line and they should be placed in order according to the file names.
I personally porefer to use 3 minute segments.
You will need a laptop to DL the footage to when the card is about full, sadly there is no warning for such things as the dashcam para dime is to delete oldest files when full to make room for more, this can not be disabled.
If you do not have a video editing tool you can DL for instance Davinci resolve which is a HUGE program that even in its free edition can do just about everything, it do have a learning curve, but for just stitching together XXX files into one large file, that should be a cake walk, the software also have tutorials on youtube on how to use,,,,, most editing softwares have that
You should of course use as big as possible memory card to not have to save often, and you will need a card reader to read the card on a laptop or something like that, you could also just use the laptop as a tool and move raw filed strait to a external harddrive or thumb drive attached to a USB port.
I have only used 256 Gb memory cards for the past years, but some will even support 512 GB cards, i have not yet gotten around to adding 512 Gb cards to my collection of test cards, but the 256 Gb ones i have like 12 different ones of.
As i recall tools like dashcam viewer can also splice up a whole drive video and export it as one file, but i dont use such dedicated dashcam tools i am after the video itself and in it i can see where i drive just fine, though i do have GPS speed logged in the footage, for a ´journey video you might want to bypass that.
Also i am sure no one, not even yourself will sit and watch your videos at 1:1 speed, CUZ it would take as long as it took you to make them, so the norm is to speed these up a little in post production, so say 1 hour of footage is 10 minutes instead.
That work fine out in the country, in a town that might be a little hectiic to watch
Also the true journey videos do not have dash / hood / A pillars in the footage, like a wide angle dashcam would have, but you can crop into the footage in post production too so you do not have those in frame.
Journey videos should be like YT user American roads make them, he however used a camcorder and not a dashcam so he could optical zoom in a little to not have unwanted things in the footage.
Time-lapsed video collections of my trips along the highways and roads in America. Most of the videos will come from the southwest, particularly Southern California. Join many other road videographers at FreewayJim group on Facebook as well!
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