Recordings on hard drive won't play.

[sandiego69]

I have, after a holiday in France for three weeks, about a 1000 files I transferred to my hard drive.
The method was to daily plug the sd card into my laptop and copy across.

Now I cannot get anything to play in the Dashcam Viewer.

Any ideas what to do?

 

[cacherjoe]

I may be a little off here, but by default Dashcam Viewer looks for a removable drive to automatically bring up your video files. Are you saying it is not finding the files on your hard drive automatically or it won't play the files when you choose File -> Open?

When I choose File then open I am able to add one file at a time to the list, adding 1000 files may be a little time consuming.

 

[sandiego69]

It does not find the files in total but will play individually.

Therefore your comment about loading 1000 is spot on.

 

[WA3PNT]

Here is my experience in transferring Video Files from my SD Card to the Computer Hard Drive.

When I transfer files two at a time, they transfer and play in Dashcam Viewer fine.
When I select a large number of files (5 or more) some of the files play in Dashcam Viewer, and some don't.

In the Folder View on the Computer, I have expanded the fields that are displayed to include the Bit Rate, Duration, Frame Rate, and several other items.
When I transfer a large number of files, not all the fields are populated in the Folder View on the Computer for all the files. The files with missing fields are the ones that do not play on Dashcam Viewer.
I believe it is a Windows File Manager issue. I am using a very powerful (home built 4.7GHz CPU, 32GB RAM, SSDs, GTX980 GPU) Computer running Windows 8.1 Pro.

If I delete the files which are missing fields, and recopy them, they play fine.
Hope this helps.

RodeoGeorge

 

[sandiego69]

Ping RodeoGeorge

Theoretically your suggestion was more than feasible. I just cannot make it work for me. I have tried to copy onto various media with your suggestions in mind but the only way I can make it work is if I put the SD card into a Lexar USB adapter and instantly the files are seen from the card.

This seems to be a major failure on Thinkwares part not to allow a copy to be made easily onto a hard drive for archival purposes.

The upsetting thing is that I religiously copied each days journey onto my hard drive but now are virtually all lost.

I have sent them an e-mail to their UK web site address but as yet no response. (Did I really expect to get one)

 

[cacherjoe]

What about this? Since DashCam Viewer seems to want to look for the files on a removable drive (USB or Card), could you copy the files to a portable hard drive or a larger capacity thumb drive. I'm not sure what the app uses to determine it is the one it wants, but perhaps by naming the drive (F750) like the with the cards, it may work? This way the app sees it like it wants and you get the ability to store large amounts of files while having the convenience of not having to load them in small groups.

 

[sandiego69]

I have tried a spare laptop drive (even a Samsung SSD) both of which are powered and connected by USB port.
This is what I did in the first place. In other words every evening the SD card's contents were copied onto the Hard Drive.

It was only on reaching home that we discovered that nothing would play in sequence but single files could be viewed and also in the VLC player.
The problem there is immediately evident that you get a front file followed by a rear file unlike the behaviour in Dashcam Viewer.

I say again, it cannot be beyond the wit of man to devise a method of archiving more than a handful of files.

Basically, Thinkware have not thought it through enough.

 

[sandiego69]

Just an update:

Spoke with support at Chameleon who are being far more helpful than Thinkware themselves.
Thinkware's answer was to transfer no more than 64Gb's worth of files onto a SD card and try that.
They are missing the point. What myself and I am sure some other people would like to do is archive their journeys or maybe their holiday trips onto a hard drive. The way the Viewer software has been written is obviously only pointing to a SD card and not a hard drive. This is useless.

Chameleon are looking into this with some tests of their own and hopefully will find an answer. I don't have any faith in getting an answer from Korea.

 

[cacherjoe]

Good point Sandlego69. We are heading out on Vacation this week. Driving from Halifax, NS to Ottawa, ON via the Canadian route then coming back through the US. I'm sure there are some areas in the mountains that we will want to save. I'll have to try this out and see what happens.

 

[sandiego69]

I urge you, as a matter of some urgency, to make your local Thinkware support aware of your concerns and get them to feed this back to the developers again urgently.

 

[Maddog1974]

Thinkware suggested copying all the folders from the memory card onto the portable hard drive unit and then dragging all your driving files into the continuous recording folder. The Dashcam viewer should then recognise that as if a memory card was plugged into the PC. I have just had a play but only with an 8GB USB stick and it did work but i was only dragging 25 video files to it. Actually i just needed the cont_rec folder and put the SETTING folder on there, then it works so it looks like this

 

[sandiego69]

Just an update. I have tried every suggestion and copied onto a 8gb usb stick, a 16gb stick, a 32 gb usb hard drive, a 1tb usb hard drive.

So far nothing works unless it is on a SD card. This is not what I want. I have indicated this to UK support and I sincerely hope this has been raised by them with the developers.

There is at least one other person on this Forum that wants to save his holiday trip. Surely this limitation to archive is an oversight or is it just plain bad programming.

 

[Maddog1974]

So you had your root of the USB / Hard drive showing as per my screenshot? Then all the video files put into the 'cont_rec' folder?

Confused why it worked for me yesterday when i tried it?

 

[sandiego69]

I did do as you suggested but 25 odd files is only about 2gb. This is hardly a days trip out, however it did work.

It therefore remains that somewhere in the program there is a limitation on either the media, the quantity or both.

One days trip, on average, was over 400 files (front and rear) and about 34gb. Can you see where I am going with this? How do I cope with 30 days worth of trips, over 200 files and about 160 Gb in total?

 

[WA3PNT]

@sandiego69 I think the root of the problem is that you are basically trying to use the Thinkware F770 as an Action Cam, as opposed to a Dashcam.
While it would be nice to be able to "save and view an entire trip", Dashcams and their viewers are designed to permit viewing specific events.

You really need to pursue an Action Cam to satisfy the usage you desire.

RodeoGeorge

 

[sandiego69]

I appreciate your view and will give it careful consideration.

The problem would still be the existing files and how to view them, however the long term answer may be as you have suggested.

 

[Maddog1974]

I will see if Thinkware have any more ideas. I loaded 194 files on to a Hard drive and did have the same problem as you. However just playing and i tried dragging files across from explorer, they took a while to load but they did and it plays them fine. As below:

 

[bursco]

I did a journey of around two hours - used windows movie maker to "fasten" them together also for editing.
Made one video and can scroll through as I wish with Windows own viewer.
I know there is software that you can buy to do this but not really necessary for me to buy.
All the best
Denis B