Missing Sentry Footage?

[Pivvles]

I’m fairly new to Tesla, I’ve only had my M3P for around 2 months now. Recently I had something stolen near my car while parked. Thankfully when reviewing my clips I was able to scroll through the past hour and find the little red dot that tells me exactly when sentry started recording. Now when I got home I plug my usb into my computer and it’s nowhere to be found. As I mentioned I’m fairly new to Tesla so I could very well be wrong but does sentry mode not automatically save clips? Does the little red dot mean nothing? I do know that when driving you have to automatically save clips via dash cam however is sentry mode not automatic? If not, how do I make sure sentry mode clips get saved?

 

[ATPMSD]

Make sure you are looking in the correct folder:

The TeslaCam folder contains sub-folders:

• Saved Clips: Contains all recordings that are saved using Dashcam.
• Sentry Clips: Contains recordings from all Sentry Mode security events. If storage space on the USB drive becomes limited, the oldest Sentry Clips are deleted to provide space for new ones.

 

[Pivvles]

Make sure you are looking in the correct folder:

The TeslaCam folder contains sub-folders:

• Saved Clips: Contains all recordings that are saved using Dashcam.
• Sentry Clips: Contains recordings from all Sentry Mode security events. If storage space on the USB drive becomes limited, the oldest Sentry Clips are deleted to provide space for new ones.

Already tried that. I’ve looked both on the car and on my computer and it’s nowhere to be found. Is it possible that it “unmarked” the footage as sentry footage? Therefor deleting the clip? This just really sucks as it’s the first time I’ve really needed to use my sentry mode and it seems to have let me down.

 

[Pivvles]

I should also mention that I’ve had sentry mode activate a few other times today and those clips are showing up just fine.

 

[ATPMSD]

Thankfully when reviewing my clips I was able to scroll through the past hour and find the little red dot that tells me exactly when sentry started recording

Very odd. “Scroll through the past hour” is not how Sentry is supposed to work. If activated it shows I think 5- 10-minutes (?) before the event that caused it to start, the red dot is the trigger event, and then continues for several minutes after before it stops.

 

[Pivvles]

Very odd. “Scroll through the past hour” is not how Sentry is supposed to work. If activated it shows I think 5- 10-minutes (?) before the event that caused it to start, the red dot is the trigger event, and then continues for several minutes after before it stops.

That is odd, it might’ve been under the “dashcam” section as that’s why it allowed me to scroll over the last hour however that doesn’t explain how sentry mode captured it in the first place.

 

[jjrandorin]

Dashcam is a 1 hour loop, so unless its an actual sentry incident and the car moves it to the other folder, its possible it got overwritten.

Dashcam / Sentry: How they work and what they do (and dont) do

(moderator note) Special thanks to @Knightshade , for taking the time to write up a description of how Sentry and Dashcam interact together. There is a lot of confusion about these two features, and how they interact together. I asked @Knightshade who has a good understanding of how these...

teslamotorsclub.com

 

[Pivvles]

Dashcam is a 1 hour loop, so unless its an actual sentry incident and the car moves it to the other folder, its possible it got overwritten.

Dashcam / Sentry: How they work and what they do (and dont) do

(moderator note) Special thanks to @Knightshade , for taking the time to write up a description of how Sentry and Dashcam interact together. There is a lot of confusion about these two features, and how they interact together. I asked @Knightshade who has a good understanding of how these...

teslamotorsclub.com

That makes sense, is there a reason why it only recorded under dashcam and didn’t make a separate clip for sentry mode?

 

[jjrandorin]

That makes sense, is there a reason why it only recorded under dashcam and didn’t make a separate clip for sentry mode?

Im not an expert on this topic (I asked another member to write that sticky post on the topic for us). Its possible that it wasnt a sentry mode action so it didnt move it.

 

[stopcrazypp]

That makes sense, is there a reason why it only recorded under dashcam and didn’t make a separate clip for sentry mode?

Read the whole post. Everything is recorded under the Dashcam 1 hour loop. All Sentry does is move clips to the Sentry Clips folder. Same thing with Saved Clips.

All is not lost however, safely remove the drive pressing and holding the icon to pause dashcam (the red dot turns gray) and unplugging the drive.
Model 3 Owner's Manual | Tesla

Then try recovering the deleted files. I document how do it here (and generally how to determine the dates of the files and quickly filter through without fully recovering the whole drive).
Dashcam in Auto

Given you saw the event in your car, at least you know it was recorded. Now it just depends on if the files were overwritten yet.

 

[BitJam]

I should also mention that I’ve had sentry mode activate a few other times today and those clips are showing up just fine.

Earlier clips in the SentryClips and SavedClips directories can disappear if you record successive events. But they will still be in the RecentClips directory. If you need to go back more than an hour of recording time then use an undelete or file recovery program to get the earlier clips.

TIP: I make sure to have one or two extra usb drives formatted and ready to go in my glovebox. The idea is that if there is an event that I want to save then I disable sentry/dashcam mode to safely remove the current usb drive and plug in one of the spares. This is mostly for convenience.

Another tip is to jot down the time of the clip you want to save. Then it will be much easier to find what you want when looking through the RecentClips directory.

I explained what these directories are for and the filename format in a previous post:

I recently made a copy of the contents of my 500 Gig TeslaCam device. Here is a summary:

6.8G    RecentClips
1.6G    SavedClips
4.8G    SentryClips
 14G    total

SentryClips and SavedClips contain folders with names that are date/time codes corresponding to sentry events and "save" events. The RecentClips folder contains video files directly that are named with date/time codes and camera locations. The folders under SentryClips contain the same type of files. These folders also contain event.json files that have information about the event.

Even if nothing has been saved and no sentry events have occurred, there should be plenty of video under RecentClips. Mine contained 188 files corresponding to 4 camera positions and roughly 45 minutes of video for each camera.