Typical video storage before overwrite?

[willbchap]

Forgive me if this is already posted somewhere, but my head is still spinning looking through all the cams available these days. When I bought my A118, I don't think there were this many on the market.

Anyway, what kind of typical video storage should I see on the 64/128/256 cards and this cam? In other words, how long before overwrite begins, under typical settings?

 

[DT MI]

A 'DC' with both front and rear cams and default settings should get you about 17 hours on a 256GB card before looping.

 

[Deleted member 46308]

Welcome to DCT @willbchap

 

[willbchap]

A 'DC' with both front and rear cams and default settings should get you about 17 hours on a 256GB card before looping.

Hmmmm. I might need to rethink this. I might be better off with two individual cameras. Thanks for the info.

 

[kamkar]

Welcome to the forum.
For a dual channel camera i would not go below 128 Gb, and as luck would have it they are also the best "price/space" memory cards.
And single cameras are also fine, just a pain to retrieve several little memory cards, the SG9663DC should have footage on par with the best single channel cameras, this was not the case with dual channel cameras in the past years.
I have +4 single cameras in my car, and i can not wait to get a dual channel camera or two.

 

[DT MI]

Hmmmm. I might need to rethink this. I might be better off with two individual cameras. Thanks for the info.

What are you looking for in terms of recording time?... and why? With that information folks here can probably help with a solution.

 

[willbchap]

Welcome to the forum.
For a dual channel camera i would not go below 128 Gb, and as luck would have it they are also the best "price/space" memory cards.
And single cameras are also fine, just a pain to retrieve several little memory cards, the SG9663DC should have footage on par with the best single channel cameras, this was not the case with dual channel cameras in the past years.
I have +4 single cameras in my car, and i can not wait to get a dual channel camera or two.

You are exactly onto my thought process. I have been rear-ended twice in two years, and really want to add that rear camera. It seems like the quality of this setup is great, and the company is well respected. For me, it's justifying the cost in my own mind. I can save money by buying two single cameras, memory, and only deal with handling two cards as the drawback.

This setup might have more "features" than I need. I am looking for dual cameras, good optics/resolution, and a 10+ hour cycle (the typical length of my route). GPS for recording the location of an incident would be great. I do not want it to record (or, display on the video footage) the vehicle speed. Wifi is not really necessary, though, I see the advantage for sure. Parking mode isn't needed. Small form-factor/ somewhat concealable is important, as is reliability. The A118 made it through 2 vehicles, 3 years, and about 165K miles trouble free, but the lens has developed the focus problem (from heat).

Thank you all for the help.

 

[willbchap]

To further answer @DT MI , I have had issues where I would hit a pothole or something along my 10 hour route, and not notice the damage until I park at the end of the day. I at least need a 10 hour window before recycling. I sometimes also need the proof of my route, so this would keep me from having to awkwardly saving the route mid-day for work purposes.

 

[jokiin]

To further answer @DT MI , I have had issues where I would hit a pothole or something along my 10 hour route, and not notice the damage until I park at the end of the day. I at least need a 10 hour window before recycling. I sometimes also need the proof of my route, so this would keep me from having to awkwardly saving the route mid-day for work purposes.

how much recording time you will get will vary depending on the bitrate of the recording, a lower bitrate will give you longer recording time but at the expense of detail, not all cameras can support large memory cards which is also something you should look into

 

[kamkar]

Well i have always argued that one front camera should be enough to prove most things / disprove claims against you.
So if you get rear ended while stopped ( like i was at a crosswalk ) then the front camera will prove that you was stopped for a reason ( stop line or red light / crosswalk or whatever ) so you did nothing wrong.
It will also prove if the other guy claim you reversed into him, then your camera will prove you was stopped and not moving until he hit you.
the single front camera can also prove if some one behind you claim you was brake checking, or slamming brakes on for no reason.

But if you like me like to expose the dumbass drivers out there on youtube, then you cant really have too many cameras.
Many of us in here swear to cameras on each side of the car, but truth be told front and maybe a rear camera will be plenty in most situations i can think off.

 

[willbchap]

I

how much recording time you will get will vary depending on the bitrate of the recording, a lower bitrate will give you longer recording time but at the expense of detail, not all cameras can support large memory cards which is also something you should look into

Thank you for that advice. I am also keeping upgrading in mind when (if?) memory becomes cheaper.

What is the math for determining how fast a camera will saturate the memory, assuming I have enough variables?

 

[jokiin]

there's a bitrate calculator on the site here https://dashcamtalk.com/recording-time-calculator/ there are some overheads that take a bit of space but it will get you fairly close, I'd consider anything under 12mbit to be insufficient for decent video, in round numbers decent video is going to use around 8GB of memory per hour per channel

 

[kamkar]

you dont really have to save your whole trip, the part you need to save are just the seconds / minutes where it go wrong and maybe leading up to it.
All the other footage on your memory card are just waste footage so to say, nothing happen so nothing worth saving.

A camera like the DC i will guesstimate generate about 600 MB of video for each 3 minutes of driving.

Many newcommers often enter this with the notion to save all their footage ( for some strange reason ) buy if you drive like you say 10 hours a day that will be something like 150 Gb of data every day, this translate to 750 Gb for 5 days of driving that's almost 1 Tb every week, so you will need a lot of harddrive space to store all that footage.
But you dont need that cuz most of it are just ueventfull video of driving, and so not worth saving.

I dont dive mych myself maybe 5 hours every week and i maybe pick 15 minutes of video from my cameras of idiots i put on youtube, the rest are just "garbage" so to say.

If you think about going for a nice long scenic drive and want to save that on video, well then a dashcam can be used for sure, but its not the optimal for saving senic drives as our member hanstj prove with his awsome videos of the American roads.

As you can see no dashbord or A pillars in the footage.

 

[willbchap]

Well i have always argued that one front camera should be enough to prove most things / disprove claims against you.
So if you get rear ended while stopped ( like i was at a crosswalk ) then the front camera will prove that you was stopped for a reason ( stop line or red light / crosswalk or whatever ) so you did nothing wrong.
It will also prove if the other guy claim you reversed into him, then your camera will prove you was stopped and not moving until he hit you.
the single front camera can also prove if some one behind you claim you was brake checking, or slamming brakes on for no reason.

But if you like me like to expose the dumbass drivers out there on youtube, then you cant really have too many cameras.
Many of us in here swear to cameras on each side of the car, but truth be told front and maybe a rear camera will be plenty in most situations i can think off.

Isn't that the point of having a dashcam? Exposing dumbass drivers?

I had a case where I tried to point out that the car behind me was driving recklessly, on top of actually rear-ending me at a stoplight in the rain. I could not convince the officer that arrived, and no ticket was issued (in Virginia, US, they don't write tickets if they believe the damage is below a certain threshold). The officer filled out a form for obtaining information, but in the city of the accident, their forms don't indicate who was at fault. Without the ticket, the other person's insurance company rejected the claim because the driver denied the accident (yes, I know, but if you are already breaking the law...) I could file the claim with my own insurance, but rather not for obvious reasons. So now, I drive around with a jacked up rear bumper. Maybe the next person who rear-ends me won't have a dashcam.

 

[kamkar]

I should maybe also mention that many of us kep a spare memory card in the car in case we get a failure, or maybe a event on the start of a longer drive which you proceed with after the event.

But then i would just transfer the event file or files to your phone maybe ( SG cameras come with a OTG card reader ) and then proceed your drive on the same memory card knowing you have the evidence on the phone now.

I am not sure if you can preview footage on the camera and then tag a regular file as a event file manually than, that would actually be a cool feature cuz then you could just tag the 1 or 2 files with your event, and then they are fafe from getting overwritten when your card fill up 10 hours down the road and start to delete old footage to get room for new stuff.

@jokiin should know if thats possible to tag regular files as events during preview on the camera, it would be a cool option i think.

 

[willbchap]

there's a bitrate calculator on the site here https://dashcamtalk.com/recording-time-calculator/ there are some overheads that take a bit of space but it will get you fairly close, I'd consider anything under 12mbit to be insufficient for decent video, in round numbers decent video is going to use around 8GB of memory per hour per channel

Again, thank you for your advice. I keep audio recording off, unless an incident occurs and I want to record conversation at my window. Not sure how much that saves, but I see what you mean about recording the extra data.

I'm considering purchasing the SG9663DC with a 128GB card and upgrade when memory costs drop. That should keep close enough to an entire day's worth of footage so I can playback if I need to find something (like a pothole claim).

 

[willbchap]

I should maybe also mention that many of us kep a spare memory card in the car in case we get a failure, or maybe a event on the start of a longer drive which you proceed with after the event.

But then i would just transfer the event file or files to your phone maybe ( SG cameras come with a OTG card reader ) and then proceed your drive on the same memory card knowing you have the evidence on the phone now.

I am not sure if you can preview footage on the camera and then tag a regular file as a event file manually than, that would actually be a cool feature cuz then you could just tag the 1 or 2 files with your event, and then they are fafe from getting overwritten when your card fill up 10 hours down the road and start to delete old footage to get room for new stuff.

@jokiin should know if thats possible to tag regular files as events during preview on the camera, it would be a cool option i think.

There's an idea, I suppose I can take the 32GB out of the A118 as an extra bit of storage for a full route. In my line of work, I sometimes have to show an continuious video of my drive, to show that I didn't make detours, unlogged/unjustified stops, etc.

I never need more than a day. It's the ability to look back at the entire day at the end of that day that I want. I don't store much long term. Only for accidents and anything interesting. I enable protection on the clips related to events while on the roadside (on the camera), and retrieve at home later. For the times I need to record a whole route, I pull the card and download to my laptop computer mid-day. What get's submitted is lower resolution and bit rate, but I keep the camera at max setting for the protecting in the event of an accident. It's an awkward process, but works when I need it.

I just assumed this model (SG9663DC) has a feature to tag/enable write protection to certain clips. Is this not a standard feature on dashcams?

I like your drive video. Mine isn't as high quality (EDIT: nor as interesting), but here you go:

 

[kamkar]

Yes the DC have a manual event button like most dashcams have, i need to start using those cuz my mental notes system are flaky with my painters brain ( and other things not good for brains )
Maybe for your drive documenting need a cheap GPS logger will be better, that one i assume you can just "throw" on the dashbord and let it do its thing, many of those also have a build in battery.

Using video are a storage intensive way of doing it, a GPS logger will probably be able to log your whole day and the output file will just be a few MB large.

 

[willbchap]

GPS logger would be great, and has been suggested. I'm at the mercy of the clients I work for, sometimes.

I really appreciate your help.

 

[kamkar]

My pleasure.

If you contemplate a GPS logger you can probably find a lot of tests and reviews of those on youtube.
I know a guy that have a little online store with this and that and he have some nice little GPS loggers for installment on RC planes and quadcopters to better be able to find them if the crash out of sight.
There are probably a lot of options i dont know off as it is not a need i have myself.