Viofo A329T - 3 Channel - Telephoto - Retail - Unboxed & Sample Images and Review

Briseide said:
What Blackvue battery do you have? Do you need a special cable to connect it to the Viofo?
Click to expand...
I have the BlackVue B130-X battery pack.
You need the BlackVue DCH-124/DCH-130 cable for the battery back. That is a 3 wire cable that plugs into the battery pack and allows you to hardwire it to any other dashcam (including other brands).
Only the cigarette lighter port (female) comes as standard, so you need to buy separately.
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You can then use the Viofo HK4 (or upcoming HK6) to connect those two wire bundles together.
Black -> Black
Red -> Yellow
Yellow -> Red

I used solder sticks to join together (a pre-soldered sleep that goes over the joined wires, which you need heat up a bit with a hair dryer, heat gun or naked flame (not too much with flame or it starts to melt too much/burn).
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9 hours 41 minutes later (time between screenshots) the battery pack only dropped 3%
That's excellent low power modes from @viofo

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@VIOFO-Support
I had a possible bug with the camera last night/this morning.

I have the camera set to hybrid parking (HK4 hardwire to battery pack), with 2 hour timer and time lapse 1fps.
I also have a 90 second delay for parking (kids take ages getting out of the car).

I checked my footage today and the vehicle was recording parking mode yesterday evening, then the last footage it recorded was a locked footage of a very loud car going past (silly exhaust) - not in time lapse because the camera woke up thinking it was an impact (good).
However that is the last footage that it recorded last night.
I would have assumed it would have reverted back to the time lapse then going into the low power state.

The strangeness continued today because when the camera woke up this morning when I used the vehicle, the camera woke up when using ignition, saying "three channel recording".
I went for a drive and whilst in a car park I tried to turn the WiFi on, but every time I turned it on or off, it would say it was on and show the WiFi details on the screen, but it wasn't actually broadcasting an SSID, so nothing showed up on my phone.
I tried multiple times turning it off and on again (WiFi) using both the camera buttons and the Bluetooth remote - but still nothing showed on my phone.
Each time I got in or out of the car, it said "parking mode" or "3 channel recording" as it would normally, so I thought all was running well.

I then continued on my journey for another couple of hours and when back home the WiFi worked again and I was able to check the footage.

The footage showed the majority of the driving had recorded as though it was parking - but not time lapse as I have my parking set, but normal realtime footage - but no longer 1 minute loops.

So it's all very strange.
I've not had it do that so far - it's been sleeping and waking normally.

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**UPDATE
I've been checking the camera periodically today and it's functioning normally so far (normal recording when driving, locking footage when I simulate an impact, and parking mode 90 seconds after ignition off).
So hopefully it was just a random unexplained overnight hiccup.
But I'll keep an eye on it tomorrow.
 
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Dan-UK1415 said:
@viofo @VIOFO-Support
Is there any way to adjust the colour balance of the front camera?

Please see these two examples;

FRONT CAMERA;
View attachment 82365

TELEPHOTO CAMERA;
View attachment 82366

The colours on the telephoto are excellent - they are very true to life.
The colours on the main front camera appear over saturated which makes the oranges/reds too vibrant and unnatural.

The car to the right is an orange/red in real life - which is perfectly depicted in the telephoto, but in the main camera image it appears bright red.

You can also tell the 'over redness' in other areas of the image, such as the road on the right has a red tint in the main camera image, as well as the grey car in front has a red tint too.


If you can get the main camera image to have the exact same colours as the telephoto lens that would be perfect


(HDR set to auto, so was turned on at 5pm, so is on in the footage which was at 5:49pm)
The colour issue isn't HDR related, as the same colour imbalance is also there with HDR off.


Another example is on a vehicle's rear red lights which are 'overblown' in the footage compared to real life;

FRONT CAMERA;
View attachment 82369

REAL LIFE;
View attachment 82371
Click to expand...
Just to update people on this issue.

After discussing with Viofo - it turns out the camera footage is perfectly fine and colour balance is correct.
The issue was with my media players.

I had been using both VLC and MX Player on Android (Xperia 1 VI).
When played on my iPad Pro, the colours were perfectly fine.

It turns out it was the hardware decoding setting on Android device that threw up the colour issue (settings in the media players themselves, not in Android general settings).
You get 3 options; software decoding, hardware decoding or hardware decoding plus.
Having set to software decoding - the videos played with correct colour balance.
Having them set to hardware or hardware+ decoding caused the issue.
The joys of Android....

Thanks @VIOFO-Support for showing is was my issue, not yours 😊


MEDIA PLAYER DECODING SETTINGS;
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Hardware Decoding;
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Software Decoding;
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I thought it best to flag this on the forum, in case any other Android users unwittingly come across this issue and don't realise.
 
Although I'm waiting for my opportunity to order an A329s I have been following your posts, especially these
concerning the red issue.
I am running VLC for Andoid ver 3.6.5 and I can not find any decoding options within the settings menu.
Maybe I should already have a Viofo file saved before I can make these changes? I've looked all throughout
the Settings menus and found nothing yet in the Android VLC player.
 
The setting screenshot was from MX Player.
I got the same red tint issue on the video footage in both MX Player and VLC.
MX Player you can change decoding to software when playing a video (on screen button in top right corner - shows as either SW, HW or HW+).
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In VLC player (Android), you go into settings, then Hardware Acceleration and turn it off (disabled).

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Thank you very much @Dan-UK1415 - found it and corrected.
That red blooming would have made me a bit crazy as well and I thought I would
set up my phone now while I'm thinking about it.
 
Another thing I've found with Viofo on Android - whenever you download any footage from the dashcam, it stores it on the phone internal memory in DCIM > Viofo.

If you have Google photos backup enabled (or Samsung's version), then it automatically backs up anything in the DCIM folder - which would include you dashcam downloads.

Something to be aware of if you have a paid limit on your Google backups.

I immediately moved my Viofo footage out of that folder and into one elsewhere on the photo so they all don't automatically upload to Google's Cloud.


(Don't have that on BlackVue for example - they download the 'Movies > BlackVue', so they're not in the DCIM folder. Same with Reolink CCTV cameras downloads - Movies > Reolink, rather than DCIM - so no issues with Google Cloud pinching them).

@VIOFO-Support Is there any way to change the default download file location on Android, so it doesn't download footage to the phone's DCIM folder? There are no app settings, only camera settings.
 
i just buy dr970 plus2.....
should i cancel it?
 
indigo said:
i just buy dr970 plus2.....
should i cancel it?
Click to expand...
The DR970X Plus 2 is a good camera, but different to the A329S/T.
It's 2 channel instead of the Viofo 3 channel.
There is no low power parking mode (currently only the BlackVue Elite 8 has) on the DR970X Plus 2 which the Viofo has.
But is does have remote access/cloud function and live tracking which Viofo doesn't have.

So it depends on what your needs are.
 
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indigo said:
what different for this firmware
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WiFi is enabled after a power cycle and doesn't need re-enabling.
It remembers if you had it turned off previously, it keeps it off - but if you had it on previously, it keeps it on.

Prior models you had to enable WiFi each time the dashcam was turned on, so you can download the footage.
This also helps with Service Mode to have it enabled all the time and when camera turns off/back on - so you can automate downloading of footage to a local WiFi hotspot.
 
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