Which kind of parking mode is more useful?

[hadowfox]

I know of two kinds of real parking modes that are potentially practical. One is motion detection with pre-buffer, and the other is recording with reduced FPS like 1 or 5 FPS. Are there other ones?

Which one of these has lower power consumption? Which one uses less storage space? Which one is more reliable when it comes to capturing events? Driving Press

 

[jokiin]

low fps recording is a little more power efficient, really depends which cameras you're looking at though as there are multiple methods used and some work better than others

 

[Nigel]

I know of two kinds of real parking modes that are potentially practical. One is motion detection with pre-buffer, and the other is recording with reduced FPS like 1 or 5 FPS. Are there other ones?

Which one of these has lower power consumption? Which one uses less storage space? Which one is more reliable when it comes to capturing events?

If you use event detection then there is always a chance the event will be missed, or that there will be far too many events and the important one will be overwritten. You want the event detection better than 99%!

Low frame rate doesn't save enough memory card space unless you make the FPS too slow to catch all the number plates, even 10FPS is too slow for some people.

Low bitrate parking mode can save enough memory without missing things, doesn't work well if there is a lot of movement in the image, but when you are parked there normally isn't much movement so it can work very well giving 24 hours recording at 30fps in full detail.

As for power consumption, if you are using the image sensor, even just for motion detection, then the only real power saving comes from not writing too much to the memory card, there is not much difference between the options.

 

[BlackboxMyCar]

Motion and impact detection with memory partitioning! More ideally, pair the dash cam with a dash cam battery pack.

 

[SawMaster]

Out of 7 different cams. only one has a useful g-sensor; the rest are either too sensitive or would take a bomb to activate. Of the 3 I've tried motion detect with, one was not sensitive enough, one didn't function at all (cam problem a it worked for other owners). and one was do inconsitent as to be unreliable. These do seem to work with certain cams reasonably well according to owner's reports but all have exceptions. So IMHO, standard M/D and G-sensor isn't good enough.

@Nigel has been using one with a radar-based M/D; perhaps he can comment on that directly but from what he's said so far I think it might just be the best way to go. In my own usage I simply let the cam record continuously, the advantage is 100% recording with nothing ever missed. Disadvantages are that it's hard on the cams, hard on the cards, voids warranties, and does not inform you of an event so you have to check your vehicle visibly before the card overwrites your first moment of parking. And if there's damage now you have to go through all the footage to find the incident which could take many hours.

Low bitrate and timelapse will reduce cam heat and extend recording time for a given card size. I think I could be happy with 3-5FPS; 1FPS might miss a fast-moving event. I'm not for anything which might reduce vid quality as that seems counter-productive. So those are my thoughts FWIW and may none of us ever find ourselves being damaged while parked!

Phil