Why One-Minute File Length?

P

pmillen

New Member
Joined
Nov 29, 2015
Messages
1
Reaction score
0
Country
United States
I have decided to buy a dash camera for my SIL's Christmas gift. The one I will probably buy has a default file size of one minute. It has options for lengthening the setting but nothing for continuous recording. I envisioned the camera recording as long as the vehicle's engine is running. It is possibly set to this default to avoid filling the memory card and writing over older files but I don't follow the logic.

Will a reader please explain why this manufacturer limits file length. My hunting partners' GoPro cameras seem to run constantly.
 
It will record constantly just that it will save files every minute (or longer if that's what you set). It will label the files 1,2,3,4 etc (or some variant like file 0001, file 0002 etc).
Once the card is full, it will then write over the earliest file. IF, for example, the SD card is large enough to hold 1000 files of 1 minute, you might see the first file starting at 0109 and the last file being 1109.
If you set the filesize to 3mins, then your card might only hold enough for 333 files - it all depends on the size of SD card & things like the bitrate, image size etc.
As an example, my mobius, set to 3 minute files, 1080p and maximum bitrate will hold around 22hours' footage on a 128GB card. If I lower the bitrate, I could record more footage but I like the highest settings.
 
Is there any benefit to setting one size file over another? Having the camera save a file every minute over every 3?
Are you asking the camera to 'work' harder by asking it to be saving data more often?
 
sludgeguts said:
Is there any benefit to setting one size file over another? Having the camera save a file every minute over every 3?
Are you asking the camera to 'work' harder by asking it to be saving data more often?
Click to expand...

shorter file lengths are more work for the processor but not a significant difference on any of the current decent spec cameras, it's more about convenience really
 
Small files are quicker to search by viewing if you have protected them after an incident.
In theory they might also be more secure - once they are written to the card and finalised the data is (fairly) safe. If you are writing a 5 minute file and the camera fails after 4m55s then you could lose all that footage.
On the downside, small files are a pain if you need to include more than one when editing a video.
 
Chances of joining two files when they are 3mins long is far lower than if they are 1min. Also, the mobius records an extra second each time - that'd be a PITA to have to keep editing that out.
I did wonder how the modern processors handled it though.
Still not over keen on asking the processor to handle writing gps and g-sensor data as well as a lock file (some cams don't simply lock the file in sequence, they save it in an additional folder so the same file is being saved twice! My DR32 did this for up to 10 lock files.
 
sludgeguts said:
Chances of joining two files when they are 3mins long is far lower than if they are 1min. Also, the mobius records an extra second each time - that'd be a PITA to have to keep editing that out.
I did wonder how the modern processors handled it though.
.
Click to expand...

it's actually quite simple to edit out with Registrator Viewer and you can export segments joined without the overlap with just a few clicks
 
I use 3 minute file size, and that seem so good to me i have not tried any other size of files.
And registrator viewer is perfect for stitching files together, it more or less do that by itself by date/time on files, at the same time you can get it to remove any overlap there may be on files.
And it can do simple cut and splice editing, and you can slow things if you feel like that.
And other things i have not explored myself.
If the camera have no overlap you can make do with movie maker in windows to splice several clips together to one large file, but i found registrator viewer is even faster for operations like that, with or without a overlap on file segments.
 
It's not difficult to chop a section out in Cyberlink's PowerDirector - it's just that I can't be bothered so stick to 3 minute file sizes. If the 'action' happens on the change between clips, I just leave the overlap
 
Yeah the overlaps are not that long anyway, 1 second at max i think.
When registrator viewer is set up once with the overlap times you have on your dashcam it will be ready for next time, my SG9665GC need a 1000 ms overlap time.

"RV" is pretty cool, i do hope it will stick around now that its cretor sadly died in a MC accident.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top