Time-lapse parking, DON'T USE IT!!!!!!!!!!

[Wonder White]

Just thought I'd pop on and vent. The time-lapse parking mode is useless on these cameras. We just had an incident outside our house, I had the car pointed at the road with the dashcam on timelapse. The incident was recorded at high speed and with no sound, which means it is USELESS footage. I can't see what happened, I can't slow it down (I just called Blackvue, they confirmed you can't slow it down) and it is absolutely pointless.

Here's a good tip, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER use parking time lapse for ANYTHING. The footage you get from it won't be of use to you or anyone else.

 

[Wonder White]

I have managed to get some still shots from the video, but with no sounds I can't prove what the person in the shot is doing. So yeah, stay away from timelapse park mode.

 

[chris-s]

You should have tested the parking recording feature before using it...

 

[M8TJT]

Having well and truly ranted about the Time Lapse mode, I wonder just what mode OP would recommend.
Movement is the only option, and that is likely to produce MANY, MANY, MANY false alarms, and no doubt OP would then sound off about a SD card full of events. (But at least they would have the sound that is within the car recorded).
Talking about sound, I can't really understand how the OP actually expects sound to be recorded in what is a series of still pics taken 1 second apart.
Having ranted all that, I think that is a serious shortcoming of the BV software if the time lapse pics cannot be advanced one at a time.

Post #3 sums it up.

 

[jokiin]

I think that is a serious shortcoming of the BV software if the time lapse pics cannot be advanced one at a time.

use VLC and you can playback 1fps timelapse files at slower than real time rate

 

[M8TJT]

Yes. Good advice. Most third party video programs are the answer to this particular problem that is caused by the appalling shortcomings of the BV software. Any work around does not fix that.

 

[Nigel]

Talking about sound, I can't really understand how the OP actually expects sound to be recorded in what is a series of still pics taken 1 second apart.

All video is a series of still pics! Why should you not have sound at 1fps when you do at 30fps?
Personally I use 30fps and sound for parking mode so I don't miss anything even when contact with the car is out of view, but I have a Viofo rather than a Blackvue!

 

[TonyM]

It doesn't matter what brand of camera you have. As suggested in post #3, users should always check their camera settings to be confident that whenever a recording is needed it will be in the format they want.

Time lapse recording does have its merits in some situations, notably to increase the duration of video that can be stored on a memory card. Users should be aware that in most (all?) cases a dashcam timelapse video contains no sound.

If it is supported by the dashcam, low bitrate video is sometimes a better option when parked since it also records sound.

 

[Whoops]

All video is a series of still pics! Why should you not have sound at 1fps when you do at 30fps?
Personally I use 30fps and sound for parking mode so I don't miss anything even when contact with the car is out of view, but I have a Viofo rather than a Blackvue!

So you are saying the an audio sample rate of 1 sample per second is no different than a video frame rate of 1 frame per second? Do you have any idea what a 1 sample per second audio clip would sound like? I already know that you don't because what you said about video frames per second has absolutely nothing to do with audio sample rates. Even if somehow your comparison of audio sample rates being analogous to video frames per second, the ability to distinguish conversation at one sample per second would simply not be possible.

Look at the sample rate of an audio CD. Audio on a CD is recorded at over 22 thousand samples per second on each of two channels for a combined total of 44,100 samples per second. Now if you move down the quality scale to the lowest typical phone call (mono channel, very low sample rate), that is still being sampled more than 8,000 times per second and the audio difference is very noticeable. drop that to 30 samples per second (let alone 1) and you wouldn't even understand if the sound is human speech.

 

[Nigel]

I already know that you don't because what you said about video frames per second has absolutely nothing to do with audio sample rates.

Exactly, the audio data is stored in a totally separate data stream to the video, so you can have 1 video frame per second while also having CD quality audio at 44,100 samples per second; there is no conflict.

However I don't recommend 1 video frame per second, you can miss far too much in the 1 second gaps, much better to have 30fps and simply reduce the bitrate when parked, since when parked very little bitrate is required.

 

[devil84]

Does anyone know if there is a way of doing audio recording whilst parked but turn it off during normal driving for the BB dashcam ? I know you can turn it off by the promixity sensor but was looking for something automatic in the settings

 

[kamkar]

I always use low bitrate always record when parked, not least as this also give me audio.
I assume ( have never tried this ) that if i have microphone muted for regular driving, it would be on when i am in parking mode,,,,,,, but i am guessing here as i always have the microphone on, even if this then mean that i often have to mute the sound track on video i share on youtube due to copyright issues to the music on my radio.

This is of course on other brand cameras, i have no experience with the Blackvue brand.

Someone like @Vortex Radar might be able to fill in on this, he have plenty of experience with Blackvue,,,,, though this MIC off he might have to experiment with as i would assume he too have MIC on all the time.