Dashcam cuts video short!

[theclutch]

Please someone try this:
1) Set your dashcam to record "on honk" or when you press-hold the left scroll wheel on the steering wheel
2) Take a drive, make note of a landmark and honk the horn or press the left scroll wheel to save the dashcam footage. Make the landmark a restaurant, interesting car, stop light, people, whatever will make you remember that you honked the horn AT THAT TIME.
3) Review the footage. Did it capture the landmark?

Or did it seem like someone PAUSED the recording and started it back up - but basically "missed" the entire thing that you're trying to capture? This appears to be exactly what happens to me all the time for the front camera. It appears that the rear and left/right cameras keep rolling and capture their video as intended. So when I take the Tesla USB and view the files on my computer, the Front camera has 38 sec of video, but the Rear, Left and Right cameras have 55 seconds of video!!!

Obviously, this makes the dashcam mostly useless if it doesn't capture the front camera action as intended!

Can someone else kindly try the steps above and see if you get the same results please? Thanks in advance!

My car is a MYP 2023 June build.

 

[Goobers]

It basically "hiccups" when you honk to save. Look up "Wham Baam Teslacam" youtube channel and in plenty of videos, the narrator will mention that it does exactly that.


I had it set to save on honk, but honking AFTER something happens is kinda weird to avoid having the even missing in the video. Later decided to change it because they included the ability to long press the right scroll wheel (so people around don't think I'm honking for no apparent reason). Then I just wait until an event is over or I've gone beyond being able to see it, then long press to save.

 

[stopcrazypp]

Please someone try this:
1) Set your dashcam to record "on honk" or when you press-hold the left scroll wheel on the steering wheel
2) Take a drive, make note of a landmark and honk the horn or press the left scroll wheel to save the dashcam footage. Make the landmark a restaurant, interesting car, stop light, people, whatever will make you remember that you honked the horn AT THAT TIME.
3) Review the footage. Did it capture the landmark?

Or did it seem like someone PAUSED the recording and started it back up - but basically "missed" the entire thing that you're trying to capture? This appears to be exactly what happens to me all the time for the front camera. It appears that the rear and left/right cameras keep rolling and capture their video as intended. So when I take the Tesla USB and view the files on my computer, the Front camera has 38 sec of video, but the Rear, Left and Right cameras have 55 seconds of video!!!

Obviously, this makes the dashcam mostly useless if it doesn't capture the front camera action as intended!

Can someone else kindly try the steps above and see if you get the same results please? Thanks in advance!

My car is a MYP 2023 June build.

I didn't try it myself, but this is a very frequent complaint over the years. The same thing can happen if you press the icon to save. The most important part ends up not saving because there is a hiccup during the saving process. As mentioned, people developed a habit to honk after it has a been a while past the event. Even not doing anything may be safer (given there is a 1 hour loop).

Note all saving does is move footage (broken up into 59 second clips) from the 1 hour loop in the Recent Clips folder to the Saved Clips folder. However the most recent clip being recorded may get corrupted during the process.

The other safer thing to do is to safely remove the drive and keep a spare drive in the car to plug back in. This ensures the whole hour loop doesn't get deleted. Note even if the loop gets deleted, as long as you pull the drive before the whole drive is overwritten, it's possible to recover deleted footage:
Dashcam in Auto

 

[ALBTROSS]

Please someone try this:
1) Set your dashcam to record "on honk" or when you press-hold the left scroll wheel on the steering wheel
2) Take a drive, make note of a landmark and honk the horn or press the left scroll wheel to save the dashcam footage. Make the landmark a restaurant, interesting car, stop light, people, whatever will make you remember that you honked the horn AT THAT TIME.
3) Review the footage. Did it capture the landmark?

Or did it seem like someone PAUSED the recording and started it back up - but basically "missed" the entire thing that you're trying to capture? This appears to be exactly what happens to me all the time for the front camera. It appears that the rear and left/right cameras keep rolling and capture their video as intended. So when I take the Tesla USB and view the files on my computer, the Front camera has 38 sec of video, but the Rear, Left and Right cameras have 55 seconds of video!!!

Obviously, this makes the dashcam mostly useless if it doesn't capture the front camera action as intended!

Can someone else kindly try the steps above and see if you get the same results please? Thanks in advance!

My car is a MYP 2023 June build.

I have the same issue, but it occurs every time my vehicle is moving. Parked, I get 55-56 seconds. Moving, I get 37 seconds. This is for all front camera videos, irrespective of the folder where it is saved.

Saving on Honk or by other methods makes no difference.

I'm starting to think it is a file-size limitation.

 

[stopcrazypp]

I have the same issue, but it occurs every time my vehicle is moving. Parked, I get 55-56 seconds. Moving, I get 37 seconds. This is for all front camera videos, irrespective of the folder where it is saved.

Saving on Honk or by other methods makes no difference.

I'm starting to think it is a file-size limitation.

Are you saying it is 37 seconds even for the 1 hour loop (when you do no actions to save) that is saved in "Recent Clips"? Like every single front camera video is a 37 second video clip, so there are a bunch of them? Or are you saying only the most recent clip?

That is a bit different than the other accounts above, where only the last clip is 37-38-ish seconds when in the "Saved Clips" folder and a save action is done (by any method).

 

[ALBTROSS]

Are you saying it is 37 seconds even for the 1 hour loop (when you do no actions to save) that is saved in "Recent Clips"? Like every single front camera video is a 37 second video clip, so there are a bunch of them? Or are you saying only the most recent clip?

That is a bit different than the other accounts above, where only the last clip is 37-38-ish seconds when in the "Saved Clips" folder and a save action is done (by any method).

YES! ALL of the videos in the Recent Clips folder are 37 seconds if the vehicle was in motion when the video was taken.

 

[ALBTROSS]

BTW this is in a 2023 MYP purchased new June 29th in Texas.

 

[theclutch]

I guess what I don't understand is, why does the front camera have 38 secs of video while the rest of the cameras (rear and 2 sides) have 55 secs? If it's going to glitch / hiccup, it should at least do it uniformly for all cameras.

You'd think that with all the high tech this car has, they'd have this all figured out. <sigh> AND NO AUDIO! My cheap dashcam in the other car has better features.

 

[stopcrazypp]

I guess what I don't understand is, why does the front camera have 38 secs of video while the rest of the cameras (rear and 2 sides) have 55 secs? If it's going to glitch / hiccup, it should at least do it uniformly for all cameras.

There is some bug where it trips up when you try to "save" the clip, but it's weird that there the issue of multiple 38 second videos. That's the first case I've heard like this. Typically it is the last clip.

You'd think that with all the high tech this car has, they'd have this all figured out. <sigh> AND NO AUDIO! My cheap dashcam in the other car has better features.

The dashcam feature was basically just shoehorned in as a bonus feature that's better than nothing. It's not really a full replacement for a cheap dashcam.

 

[ALBTROSS]

What is weird to me is that in my case, the front camera videos are 55 secs when the car is parked, and they are cut short when the car is in motion.

 

[ALBTROSS]

Update 9/20/23
Tesla was able to remotely connect to the vehicle and corrected whatever was causing the issue. Now all of my front video clips are 59 seconds long.

 

[Sai Ko]

Should I complain in Tesla app or use service to remotely diagnose the issue? I experienced the same thing recently

 

[ALBTROSS]

I setup a service appointment for 09/25, and they contacted me today 09/20 to diagnose the issue. They recommended that I format my USB drive in FAT32 format (all 3 of mine were exFAT) to see if that fixed it. I reformatted one of them, but left the other two as-is. Then I tested each USB drive and for whatever reason, the videos were now recording full length on ALL of them. The technician said they had logged in remotely and that everything seemed fine. (I have no idea what they did though.)

 

[theclutch]

Update 9/20/23
Tesla was able to remotely connect to the vehicle and corrected whatever was causing the issue. Now all of my front video clips are 59 seconds long.

Hmmm.... now I'm going to have to check it tomorrow morning!

 

[mrplt]

I'm having a similar problem with my dashcam. I have mine set to save on honk, but it does it for clips that I manually save as well.

I wanted to save the video of a driver indicating left and turning right. I saved the clip, and it seemed like a 10 minute snippet. The problem is that this event happened at 9:55, leaving me only 5 seconds of footage. Here is how it ends:

Is this expected behaviour? It doesn't seem too reliable. I would assume it saves at least 30 seconds before/after the button press.

 

[stopcrazypp]

I'm having a similar problem with my dashcam. I have mine set to save on honk, but it does it for clips that I manually save as well.

I wanted to save the video of a driver indicating left and turning right. I saved the clip, and it seemed like a 10 minute snippet. The problem is that this event happened at 9:55, leaving me only 5 seconds of footage. Here is how it ends:

Is this expected behaviour? It doesn't seem too reliable. I would assume it saves at least 30 seconds before/after the button press.

The "save clip" function (no matter if you use the horn, it auto detects an accident, or you manually press the icon) moves 10 minutes of footage from the recentclips folder to the savedclips folder. If your event happened only 5 seconds before end of the last clip, then you would only have 5 seconds of the event.
https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/model3/en_us/GUID-3BCC07CE-5EA2-4F40-99D1-27690898FF3C.html

It's factors like this why it's best to wait a least a minute before saving a clip (sometimes the action of "saving" actually glitches things and cause the last clip to fail to save). Or even better, just wait until later to safely remove the drive and swap in a spare drive. As long as you do that before an hour has past since the event, the clip will be in the recentclips folder in the drive.

The recentclips folder is basically a 1 hour loop of 59 second clips. Basically the car continuously records to that folder and deletes clips that are older than 1 hour. Note that means even if you unplugged the drive (and drive had a full hour of clips) and you plug it back in more than an hour later, the car will automatically delete all the footage in that folder since before you unplugged.

That said not all is lost. As I mentioned upthread, there is a way to use a file recovery tool to recover deleted footage, as long as it has not been overwritten and it was recorded with no glitches.
Dashcam in Auto

 

[mrplt]

The "save clip" function (no matter if you use the horn, it auto detects an accident, or you manually press the icon) moves 10 minutes of footage from the recentclips folder to the savedclips folder. If your event happened only 5 seconds before the last clip, then you would only have 5 seconds of the event.
https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/model3/en_us/GUID-3BCC07CE-5EA2-4F40-99D1-27690898FF3C.html

It's factors like this why it's best to wait a least a minute before saving a clip (sometimes the action of "saving" actually glitches things and cause the last clip to fail to save). Or even better, just wait until later to safely remove the drive and swap in a spare drive. As long as you do that before an hour has past since the event, the clip will be in the recentclips folder.

The recentclips folder is basically a 1 hour loop of 59 second clips. Basically the car continuously records to that folder and deletes clips that are older than 1 hour. Note that means, even if you unplugged the drive (and drive had a full hour of clips) and you plug it back in, the car will automatically delete footage since before you unplugged.

That said not all is lost. As I mentioned upthread, there is a way to use a file recovery tool to recover deleted footage, as long as it has not been overwritten and it was recorded with no glitches.
Dashcam in Auto

Thank you! I should have looked at the user manual before posting here, my bad. I would also expect the car to use all the available space for the dashcam, like a dashcam would. Anyway, maybe they'll fix it in a future update.

 

[stopcrazypp]

Thank you! I should have looked at the user manual before posting here, my bad. I would also expect the car to use all the available space for the dashcam, like a dashcam would. Anyway, maybe they'll fix it in a future update.

Unfortunately probably not. It has been this way for years. The 1 hour loop was basically a carry over from the old days when 4GB/8GB flash drives were more common. They kept it around probably because it makes file management easier (leaves plenty of space for sentry clips).

Currently the closest thing to "all available space" is to use the deleted file recovery as I mentioned in that thread. Basically you can recover the full capacity of the drive, given Tesla uses standard MP4s, which are easy to recover.