Street Guardian, Viofo, APEMAN, Rexing, Which Company Came First?

[SawMaster]

IMO parking guard are just a novelty in dashcams, i would like to see advances elsewhere.

While it doesn't often work well, it can be of great value to the many of us who use it in some form or another. It needs to be retained and enhanced as much or moreso than other features.

Phil

 

[SawMaster]

The 4th channel completes the picture, people won't be satisfied without it! It is only a little extra.

I think it's more than "a little" extra but yes, the people will demand it.

Phil

 

[HonestReview]

From a power drain perspective i am personally good as i would never use parking guard for hours on end, but it do seem like most people interested in that are also going to use it as much as possible.
IMO parking guard are just a novelty in dashcams, i would like to see advances elsewhere.

Low bitrate recording during parking mode is exceptionally useful. While the video quality might be inferior, it's still useful if someone backs into your car or damages it in any way. The captured video may not be remarkably clear, but it still may be enough to identify the individual at fault.

 

[SawMaster]

Low bitrate is exceptionally reliable- no sensing of an event needed- and does well enough for close-in slow-speed work like parking lots which is where you're most likely to experience such damage.

Phil

 

[kamkar]

Low bitrate are just fine and crisp, if what you capture dont have any significant speed to it, so if you park curbside to a road where traffic do 50 - 60 km/h it might not be good enough.
But for capturing a vandal or slower speeds on a mall parkinglot it should be just fine.

This question are one i am going to attack as soon as i get a parking mode enabled camera and hard wire kit.
Personally i lean towards using low bitrate always record,,,,, i just hope it can be paired with G-sensor to sort of create event beacons ( a photo will be fine ) in all that footage where things actually happened.

 

[SawMaster]

In normal recording there's not a lot of hope for plate capture with a speed differential of 50-60 km/h unless you've got a really good cam, which most of us don't have.

Parking modes are a far better thing than they were when I got into the game. Back then only Blackvue did it reasonably well, and since that was far beyond my budget I was pushed into recording continuously as the only means I had available. It has proven to work much better than I was told to expect but it's still not without issues. Low bitrate offers similar results with far less stress on cam and card along with lower power consumption, so for now I think it's the way to go if your cam will do it.

Phil

 

[HonestReview]

Low bitrate are just fine and crisp, if what you capture dont have any significant speed to it, so if you park curbside to a road where traffic do 50 - 60 km/h it might not be good enough.
But for capturing a vandal or slower speeds on a mall parkinglot it should be just fine.

This question are one i am going to attack as soon as i get a parking mode enabled camera and hard wire kit.
Personally i lean towards using low bitrate always record,,,,, i just hope it can be paired with G-sensor to sort of create event beacons ( a photo will be fine ) in all that footage where things actually happened.

There's no perfect solution so to speak. Low Bitrate Parking Mode is definitely meant for the twat backing into your car, or someone vandalizing your vehicle, and not 50 KM/H traffic. I'm personally unsure why "Normal Recording" cannot take place. Maybe it uses less amps in parking mode? Or the idea is that you don't want your SD card to fill if sitting there for hours at a time? Either way, low bitrate parking mode is the most useful setting available.

G-Sensor and Motion may not capture an incident what so ever. End of day, if someone keys your vehicle or plows into your car (like the video posted where I helped identify plates), it's better to have record than no record at all. Even if you can't identify the vehicle or person, you can turn proof over to police and insurance. Let them handle the rest. And depending on State or Country, accidents involving hit and runs or vandals may not affect your rates.

 

[kamkar]

I think the low bitrate came about for 2 reasons, less power use and less heat generation while parked.
A solution if traditional sensors could be made to work better could be to put in more memory in the camera so it could support a larger prebuffer, it would be very nice if a dashcam had 1 - 3 minutes of prebuffer.
And i don't think 500 MB memory chip cost that much, but its probably not as easy as putting more RAM on the PCB.

 

[Nigel]

I think the low bitrate came about for 2 reasons, less power use and less heat generation while parked.
A solution if traditional sensors could be made to work better could be to put in more memory in the camera so it could support a larger prebuffer, it would be very nice if a dashcam had 1 - 3 minutes of prebuffer.
And i don't think 500 MB memory chip cost that much, but its probably not as easy as putting more RAM on the PCB.

Low bitrate was first introduced by Viofo as an improvement to timelapse parking mode. Timelapse uses less power and produces less heat, so you are wrong about the 2 reasons. The real 2 reasons were to avoid missing things between the frames of the low frame rate while still having a long record time before looping, and to allow audio recording during parking mode which was not available in timelapse mode.

I think the bigger buffer would be feasible, however the current cameras don't have any memory chips, they use memory built into the processor, so adding significantly more would significantly increase costs and would require more PCB space, and presumably produce more heat.

 

[kamkar]

yeah don't think the SOCs support external memory.

 

[Nigel]

yeah don't think the SOCs support external memory.

I believe the Novetek ones do, but adding extra chips does make a difference to cost, not sure if you can just add a RAM chip or if you also need a memory controller, then you have to worry about EMI from the extra chips, the SoC comes well shielded. So I don't expect to see big increases in buffer size, especially if people can be convinced to use the superior low bitrate mode instead of buffered parking mode, since then you don't need a big buffer!

 

[HonestReview]

I believe the Novetek ones do, but adding extra chips does make a difference to cost, not sure if you can just add a RAM chip or if you also need a memory controller, then you have to worry about EMI from the extra chips, the SoC comes well shielded. So I don't expect to see big increases in buffer size, especially if people can be convinced to use the superior low bitrate mode instead of buffered parking mode, since then you don't need a big buffer!

So what's the current argument about against having a camera record in normal mode while parked instead of low bitrate?

1. Camera might generate too much heat while sitting in the sun for hours?
2. Power Drainage on Battery?

I mean the ultimate camera would record in regular bitrate when running on battery while parked or off the engine while driving. Having a lower bitrate is better than "motion capture" but still will generate less clear video than regular recording.

 

[jokiin]

So what's the current argument about against having a camera record in normal mode while parked instead of low bitrate?

heat and storage, power consumption is the same either way

 

[jokiin]

yeah don't think the SOCs support external memory.

most brands do

 

[Nigel]

Heat is not much different either.

The big difference is the amount of time it can keep the recordings for before looping, about 4x longer for the A129 Duo and 20x longer for the A129 Pro Duo.

There is no real disadvantage to low bitrate over normal when parked, you do not need 76Mb/s to record zero movement!

 

[jokiin]

Heat is not much different either.

heat difference is more significant at the memory card than the processor

 

[HonestReview]

heat and storage, power consumption is the same either way

The storage issue Storage holds less water I believe. 5 minutes uses 600MB per channel on a 1080P camera. Meaning front + rear utilize 1.2GB ever 5 minutes. That's still 213 Front + Rear Captures or about 1065 total minutes. I would think 21 hours of video on a 256GB card would be more than sufficient to handle full bitrate recording. There are now 1TB microsd cards available, too.

The heat issue I can see a problem. It was mentioned that AU can get 50C outside. Meaning the camera is going to bake in a hot, enclosed car. So if it's using the full 4 Watts vs 2 Watts, more power means more heat. Or if i is recording at full bitrate, the processor working at full capacity generates more heat than one clocking in at 50%/

Are there any ways to overcome the heat factor in extreme climates? For Most of the world, this isn't an issue. But those living near the equator might have problems.

 

[Nigel]

Many people would like to keep a whole week of video on the card! What if you leave your car parked all weekend, parked on Friday afternoon and next checked Monday morning, if it was damaged on Friday night then your 21 hours is not enough, and 48 wouldn't be either.

If you extend the loop time by 20x then you also extend the lifetime of the card by 20x, at least for the bit that it is in parking mode, but for many people that is most of the time, big endurance cards are still fairly expensive to keep replacing.

Given that there is no disadvantage to low bitrate it is silly not to use it.

 

[Nigel]

For Most of the world, this isn't an issue. But those living near the equator might have problems.

It is an issue in places where the sun gets hottest, and that is anywhere that the sun can be directly overhead, in other words the tropics, which covers 36% of the earths surface, if you remove Antarctica at 10% where you are unlikely to find many dashcams and an equivalent amount in the north then you have less than "most of the world" left!

I think actually the equator is not so bad as the tropic of Cancer/Capricorn since the equator has 50% more atmosphere above it and also dirtier air with more moisture content, which is partly why Australia gets so hot in mid summer.

 

[HonestReview]

Many people would like to keep a whole week of video on the card! What if you leave your car parked all weekend, parked on Friday afternoon and next checked Monday morning, if it was damaged on Friday night then your 21 hours is not enough, and 48 wouldn't be either.

If you extend the loop time by 20x then you also extend the lifetime of the card by 20x, at least for the bit that it is in parking mode, but for many people that is most of the time, big endurance cards are still fairly expensive to keep replacing.

Given that there is no disadvantage to low bitrate it is silly not to use it.

A 1TB MicroSD card could hold ~105 hours of video. So 4 Days. Enough for a Friday to Monday park over. Storage isn't the issue, so long as the camera supports the size.

Low Bitrate does has one major disadvantage. It's meant for slow moving cars. There was a video on here where the person street parked, and a truck flying by ripped off his mirror and hit the car. Unfortunately, due to the speed and low bitrate recording, it was hard to read plates. Some Sleuthing managed to probably uncover the actual plate, but it was super difficult to read from the video.