The ONE time I needed my cam to work... it failed.

[icer22x]

I have an A129 Duo. I had a pretty serious traffic accident occur directly behind my vehicle a couple months ago. It potentially could have been blamed on me... if the driver was desperate enough to do so. Immediately after it occurred, I pressed the middle button on my cam to lock the file from being overwritten. When I got home to investigate the files and watch the footage, I was shocked to realize that the file had not been locked, but deleted! I searched for about an hour through all the files. Every file before and after the event was there, but not the one in question. I contacted Viofo and they played the typical blame diversion game.

Has anyone else experienced this? I am not running the latest firmware... I believe I am on 1.9... or whatever the consensus stable version that is constantly recommended by this forum. I think it's obvious to say that I will never buy another Viofo camera. Out of any failure this camera could have performed short of a power failure, this was the worst.

 

[kamkar]

Welcome to the forum icer22x.

I have never experienced something like that, and i use the event button often to lock / save little things in traffic.
Granted it is often a while before i retrieve the footage, so i assume it could be that i pressed button to save something, but then weeks later i forgotten all about that, and as the footage would not be there i be happily unaware.

It sound very strange that that particular file just evaporated like that

 

[kamkar]

O i forgot, have you tried to see if you can replicate the issue ? that would be even more freaky if you was able to do that.

 

[icer22x]

O i forgot, have you tried to see if you can replicate the issue ? that would be even more freaky if you was able to do that.

I have not. I have updated to the 2.4 firmware and hoped that this fixes the problem.

 

[kamkar]

Its a damn thing when something like this happen.
But things happen in just about any brand, at least i will be hard pressed to come up with a brand name that have a all clear status.
If it is not the camera then the memory card that throw you a curve ball.
But yours do not sound like a memory card issue

There for sure is no set and forget dashcam, but something like you experienced here, well that would probably fall thru my testing / checking methodology and daily use.

I have not tested your partikulær model, but i have run the A 229 duo for over a year as my main camera, so it also seeing a little parking guard load, but i never really had any problems with that camera other than when i tried to run memory cards in it that it did not like..

Once in the way back old days i did experience weirdness too, so back then i had several similar memory cards, but one of them just would not work in one of my cameras, but a similar card would, and the " broken " one it also worked fine in any other of my cameras.
And i have also tried 2 times in 6 monthe or so, having two 64 GB memory cards die on me, almost before i got to fill them just 1 time, and these back then was high price fancy and fast C3 cards that cost more than a 512 GB card cost today.
Did get both replaced under warranty, and the one of them it still work to this day, the other one did die a bit later on but after what i would call a reasonable service life.

 

[Kremmen]

Over the years there have been many similar reports here of trying to save an incident with keypresses to save a file, resulting in failure whilst surrounding files are visible.

As kamkar posted, this involves many brands.

I think the best strategy may be to have a large enough card to capture at least your daily mileage and just let it record as normal. Attempting keypresses whilst on the move sounds risky to me and maybe prone to a wrong sequence causing the problems we read about.

Just my 2p

 

[Nigel]

I think the best strategy may be to have a large enough card to capture at least your daily mileage and just let it record as normal. Attempting keypresses whilst on the move sounds risky to me and maybe prone to a wrong sequence causing the problems we read about.

I prefer to carry a spare card, and swop cards when there is something I definitely want to keep.
I quite often press the lock button and haven't noticed any issue, but I don't use it for critical stuff.

Over the years there have been many similar reports

I think it is quite a small number, but of course they get quite a lot of attention every time! I get the impression that newer models and maybe newer firmware has sorted the problem, anybody noticed any trends? Would be nice to know if it is solved...

 

[DT MI]

I think the best strategy may be to have a large enough card to capture at least your daily mileage and just let it record as normal.

That's the strategy I follow and have for years. Get the largest memory card your camera (and wallet) can support and don't worry about trying to lock the file. With a large enough card you'll be able to go days, if not weeks, before a given file will be overwritten giving you ample time to save it elsewhere. I also keep a 'spare' card so if it's an extremely critical event I at least have the option of removing the recording from the camera to keep it safe.

 

[icer22x]

Over the years there have been many similar reports here of trying to save an incident with keypresses to save a file, resulting in failure whilst surrounding files are visible.

As kamkar posted, this involves many brands.

I think the best strategy may be to have a large enough card to capture at least your daily mileage and just let it record as normal. Attempting keypresses whilst on the move sounds risky to me and maybe prone to a wrong sequence causing the problems we read about.

Just my 2p

This has been my strategy going forward. I will no longer be pressing the button, but just waiting to download the files when I get home. Carrying a spare is a great idea too.

 

[VIOFO-Support]

I have an A129 Duo. I had a pretty serious traffic accident occur directly behind my vehicle a couple months ago. It potentially could have been blamed on me... if the driver was desperate enough to do so. Immediately after it occurred, I pressed the middle button on my cam to lock the file from being overwritten. When I got home to investigate the files and watch the footage, I was shocked to realize that the file had not been locked, but deleted! I searched for about an hour through all the files. Every file before and after the event was there, but not the one in question. I contacted Viofo and they played the typical blame diversion game.

Has anyone else experienced this? I am not running the latest firmware... I believe I am on 1.9... or whatever the consensus stable version that is constantly recommended by this forum. I think it's obvious to say that I will never buy another Viofo camera. Out of any failure this camera could have performed short of a power failure, this was the worst.

Deeply apologize for such a disappointing experience our DC brought. Have you heard of beep sounds and seen an exclamation point on the screen after pressing the emergency button?
What card do you use? Some unrecommended cards will cause such kind of problem. Its write speed is too slow which causes it to cannot record continuously, especially in an accident.
Besides, when the camera suffers from a hard impact or collision, like an accident, which sometimes may cause the SD card in the camera to lose power for a few seconds. So the camera doesn't record the moment. This is the worst situation that any camera can't avoid. It is better to press the button manually to lock the videos in daily life to confirm if it can lock videos normally.

 

[DT MI]

Besides, when the camera suffers from a hard impact or collision, like an accident, which sometimes may cause the SD card in the camera to lose power for a few seconds. So the camera doesn't record the moment.

If true, IMO, that would fall into the category of a major design/engineering fail. That scenario is one of the two primary reasons for having a dash cam.

 

[kamkar]

Yes of general operative features, the ability to save the actual event is right at the top of things that just must work every time.
While most of us generally use dashcams for lighter things like sharing idiots / dangerous drivers in traffic, then i think we all expect a dashcam to have our back in a extreme event we might get into.

So pressing the event button the system should save / lock the file in question.
If we talk G-sensor being on and relying on it to do the same job, then it must also work, or if G-sensor are off like i prefer then the normal file being written as the event happen must be finalized and saved too.

I think i will test a little on the A 229 duo ( now single ) i have in the car, i am thinking like pressing the event button every time i pass by the same place, this way i can see if the camera did not save on a given day.
Maybe make this a regular thing in my test routine of dashcams. CUZ otherwise well while i do press the event button, these days i dont do it as much as i use to ( i dont think Danes have become better drivers )
So the random event button pressing i have now, and me not getting the footage to my PC at once, wall as i said i might very easy forget i had done that and so if there is a save / lock error i would not know.

I am not sure about the actual SD card in the socket loosing power, though there probably are a G force limit on these, i would assume it to be pretty big as the little cards are very light.

That question now that i think of it, might bet even worse if / when dashcams transition to what i feel are better storage solutions like M2 drives, CUZ these for sure are not made for impact resistance, well at least not in PC, i an not sure if the brackets for storage like that in laptops are different.
For sure something to be mindful about if / when you make such a system.

So that would be something like. Is the drive secure enough, would the potential cooling solution that cover the M2 storage able to exert movement / force onto the M2 drive in the case of a impact ( leverage / mass in movement )

while i value image quality very high in dashcams, i can not forget these important other things that make up a dashcam system.

I am wondering is there a RAM buffer in the dashcams, so a file do not have to be written right away, but could be delayed a few 1/10 seconds for one or the other reason, maybe if there is a RAM buffer it need to be a little larger to accommodate a slight delay in write performance.
Something like that though, you probably only want to use for events and not general flow of file creation in a system, CUZ if a memory card hang a little, then i assume a RAM buffer could still clog up / overflow.

 

[Kremmen]

I thought the possible sudden power loss in an incident is where the capacitor does its job to save and close the file

 

[Dashmellow]

I thought the possible sudden power loss in an incident is where the capacitor does its job to save and close the file

Over the years I've known of stories where an SD card has briefly lost its electrical connection with the camera on sudden impact or even popped right out of the camera. On one camera I owned 10 years ago, the DR32 there was a latch over the SD card slot that secured the card in place in case of an accident. If I recall correctly, the camera would not operate until you closed the latch after inserting the card.

 

[Mark7]

Good advice to test this operation from time to time. My heavy truck rides rough so many times on any given trip a pot hole or RR crossing will activate the G sensor triggering an event. I hear the 3 beeps… I should actually look and see if the event was saved.

OP’s misfortune may save others the same results.

 

[hallm]

As a digital photographer one of the things I learned early on was how to recover files that I had accidentally deleted. There are some very good recovery programs that will assist in the recovery of files and some of them are free. Attempting a recovery would help to determine if the file was really deleted or not captured at all.

 

[kamkar]

Some cameras also have a fix corruption build in, it go into action when you try to playback a file on the camera.
Mind you ! i would make a copy of the corrupted file before i try that, but its qworth a try in the case of a corrupted and not vanished file,,,,, i am not sure if corruption could make a file vanish, i am inclined to guess no.

 

[dashcams]

Did Viofo ever fix the LOCK button? I remember when I complained and they said they might change it with an update. Basically the Lock button is not a save button. If you press it, the video will actually be written over after a while. Super stupid of Viofo to make that type of design. Other brands actually permanently lock it until YOU delete it. Never overwrite.
So since Viofo staff are in this thread. Has it been changed?
The lock button puts the video in a special folder just temporary until the memory card has started overwriting and then it's gone. This sounds exactly what happened to you and me.

 

[kamkar]

It is my understanding that these days even the memory space assigned for events, recordings in there will be overwritten if that memory space if full.
And this space is often a dynamic one it can actually be quite large, so no problem if your setup do not generate a lot of false events. like G-sensor and potholes would do for instance.

I use the event button to lock / save things i want to share, and only go for those once a month, and even then i have old footage in there going back even more months.
Now i do not press the button very often anymore, the bad Danish drivers are a lost cause so barely worth it exposing them, and for sure not worth turning the worst ones into the police CUZ they couldent care less.
But of course the only events i generate are me pressing the button, CUZ i do not use G-sensor when i drive, and my car are never dinged when i use parking guard.

My approach to using the event button worked just fine on the old A229 system, also work fine on the Vantrue that is currently my main system in the car.

 

[Mark7]

I have the 129 Due and thankfully have never had to hit the save button, but I installed the highest capacity card it will support.

Question I have is, do you have your g-force sensor set to lock event files? If you were in an accident you would not have to worry about pressing a button. My camera chirps at me (event detected) every time I go over rough railroad tracks or hit a pothole. I do drive a 3/4 ton truck so the suspension is pretty stiff. It used to bug be, but I seldom notice it anymore and when I do I know the camera is doing it's job!

Guess I should erase the card from time to time so the locked files don't use up space.