New Dashcam Viewer Question

[Huggybear]

Hi

The new dashcam viewer is great but I think they have missed an important part. You can view sentry clips, and videos YOU have instructed it to save via tapping the camera icon or honking your horn, if you have that option chosen. However even though it always records while you drive you cannot view this footage via the viewer. So unless it a sentry event or you choose to save the last 10 minutes you cannot view it. I’m not sure why they do not give this option as the video is saved on the memory stick?

Often I may what to look at a part of a drive that I did not realise at the time but maybe a few days later which cannot be viewed on the internal viewer you would still need to remove the memory stick to view this footage. I know it will overwrite this footage when the memory is full but depending on you memory stick size is a good number of days or weeks.

Any ideas why they would not let you view this video, or am I missing something?

Thanks.

 

[pdk42]

Mine does the same. Seems an odd omission.

 

[NorfolkMustard]

I expect it’s because it can be deleted at any time, e.g. while you’re watching it.

 

[Alex987854]

The answer is that it overwrites the dashcam footage so that you don't run out of space on the drive. It only keeps it if you press the button or honk the horn.

 

[Mark_T]

Often I may what to look at a part of a drive that I did not realise at the time but maybe a few days later which cannot be viewed on the internal viewer you would still need to remove the memory stick to view this footage.

You would be too late by then anyway, the car times out and deletes all the unsaved footage regardless of how full it is...

 

[Huggybear]

The answer is that it overwrites the dashcam footage so that you don't run out of space on the drive. It only keeps it if you press the button or honk the horn.

Thanks. I believe it only overwrites when it starts to run out of memory. This will depend on the memory size. I have a numbers of weeks still on the memory stick which is viewable if the memory stick is removed.

 

[Huggybear]

You would be too late by then anyway, the car times out and deletes all the unsaved footage regardless of how full it is...

Thanks, I did not think it worked this way. I assumed it only deleted old footage when it got close to the memory’s capacity. I know some people habe 500g drives which seems pointless if it only keeps a few clips of video. Thanks for correcting me.

 

[Mark_T]

Thanks, I did not think it worked this way. I assumed it only deleted old footage when it got close to the memory’s capacity. I know some people habe 500g drives which seems pointless if it only keeps a few clips of video. Thanks for correcting me.

It is handy to have a larger drive if you leave Sentry on 24/7 as it can quickly fill a small drive.

 

[MrBadger]

Thanks, I did not think it worked this way. I assumed it only deleted old footage when it got close to the memory’s capacity. I know some people habe 500g drives which seems pointless if it only keeps a few clips of video. Thanks for correcting me.

Dashcam holds saved short clips and/or approx 60 minutes of the last drive that gets recycled on a regular basis. You can often easily 'salvage' that 60 minutes on a PC etc, but it can't be relied on.

Sentry, if turned on, does not get overwritten until stale/aged events are purged to avoid disc from slowing down as it fills to some capacity limit pre determined by Tesla, possibly around 70% full.

So a large drive has no bearing on how much dashcam footage is saved unless it is manually saved (press icon, honk horn if enabled). A larger drive will hold more sentry events, but unless you do not check your car for extended periods of time, a moderate sized drive is likely to be ample.

A larger drive will help reduce write cycles (increase lifespan) on the physical media if sentry/dashcam is used for a significant proportion of the time.

 

[pdk42]

A simple enhancement would be for Tesla to save each drive as you completed it and keep, say, the last 10 or so. Would cover most bases. Maybe 2020.xx ? Adding rolling time and speed would be good too.

 

[Mr H]

It definitely needs a high speed scrubbing feature

 

[davidmc]

It needs a "go to event trigger" so not to watch 10mins for each sentry capture.

The website version has this and is great

 

[pdk42]

It needs a "go to event trigger" so not to watch 10mins for each sentry capture.

The website version has this and is great

Website version?

 

[davidmc]

Website version?

most people have been using this as it's great

TeslaCam Video WebApp Player

 

[davyjohns]

From the Manual.

"Within the “TeslaCam” folder, there are three
sub-folders: Recent Clips, Saved Clips, and
Sentry Clips. The footage in Recent Clips
constantly loops in a 60-minute cycle when
the cameras are activated. Therefore, the
footage is constantly being overwritten every
hour unless the footage is saved."

So you cannot view old footage even on a PC. You need to 'Save' to be able to view later

 

[davyjohns]

When I say old footage I mean greater than 60 mins old.

 

[SDRick]

I noticed after the update my viewer was not showing any new drives or Sentry footage. I checked my 250 GB drive and it was full from drives as far back as last year. It seems to be working fine now.

Going forward, do I understand correctly that only 60 minutes worth of dash cam will be viewable in the car but the underlying video (up to 250 GB in my case) will be saved to the drive? Or is only 60 minutes saved to the drive irrespective of the size of the drive?

 

[Louis0w]

I noticed after the update my viewer was not showing any new drives or Sentry footage. I checked my 250 GB drive and it was full from drives as far back as last year. It seems to be working fine now.

Going forward, do I understand correctly that only 60 minutes worth of dash cam will be viewable in the car but the underlying video (up to 250 GB in my case) will be saved to the drive? Or is only 60 minutes saved to the drive irrespective of the size of the drive?

The in car dashcam viewer is intended to view ‘saved’ clips only. This covers all sentry mode events and also any dashcam events that are manually saved by the driver. The rolling 60min dashcam recording is constantly overwritten at one minute intervals. By necessity, that footage isn’t ‘saved’ so can only be viewed by removing your usb device and connecting to a PC or other device. Hope this helps.

 

[SDRick]

The in car dashcam viewer is intended to view ‘saved’ clips only. This covers all sentry mode events and also any dashcam events that are manually saved by the driver. The rolling 60min dashcam recording is constantly overwritten at one minute intervals. By necessity, that footage isn’t ‘saved’ so can only be viewed by removing your usb device and connecting to a PC or other device. Hope this helps.

Thank you for your response. You say footage isn't "saved" but can only be viewed by removing your USB device and connecting to a PC. To clarify, does that mean the footage is saved to the USB up to the capacity of the drive but only one hour is viewable in the car?

.

 

[brkaus]

@SDRick only 60 minutes of buffer is saved to the drive no matter how large the drive.