New Dashcam Viewer Question

[davyjohns]

I too was surprised to find that regular dashcam footage wasn't viewable. I was hoping to watch a mundane trip to the supermarket, but according to the viewer it's not there.

Just sat in the car without touching anything still in 'Park'. The dashcam starts recording in seconds so anything older than 60 mins is immediately deleted so viewing or saving older footage is not possible. It is possible to save current footage but who wants to view a brick wall. Saving as you drive seems the only solution.
I assume that its only through comments like these that Tesla coders are able to understand better what the general owners want from their dashcams and may do something about it.
'Baby Steps'

 

[VanillaAir_UK]

If the brief several seconds gaps between recording sequences is still present, I would think that is a higher priority thing to fix that has in the past scuppered several moment in time incidents from being captured. And no, speed of device seems to have no bearing on this gap within reason.

Nothing has regressed, there is still the option to use it just as it worked as of old and pull the stick and review elsewhere. Still loads of features and reliability to resolve before I would tick the 'dashcam' box on my car insurance to get a discount.

 

[bogeybuster]

Have to say I'm a little underwhelmed by the dashcam viewer. On a very basic level the resolution isn't brilliant. I don't know what spec the cameras are but it can be very difficult to make out a number plate unless it's very close. Lack of audio is a major omission, though I'm sure this could be added with a software update.

I find the on screen playback to be a little jerky. Also, it keeps missing out segments of my journey. The timer might be at, say, 2min 50 secs then it suddenly jumps to 4 min 20 secs.

I really don't see why clips are automatically deleted if there's space on the storage device. Why not just keep everything and overwrite the oldest when space is needed? And anything that can be viewed on a PC should also be available in the car.

I won't be getting rid of my Nextbase 612GW anytime soon. The 4k resolution is vastly superior to the M3, and the accompanying app means it's very easy to view clips on a tablet and share them with others in seconds.

To me the dashcam viewer seem typical of Tesla - a half baked product with plenty of room for improvement. It's only unique feature is the ability to view from four angles.

I agree with what is said here and just to add salt to the wound in my opinion I think the true colour renditions of other vehicles are very poor.
For example my neighbours car is a bright metallic red and it showed on my dash cam viewer as orange/brown.
Not helpful at all in a potential accident.
Now I have been spoiled as I have a Blackview 4k in my other car and when viewing the footage in that it is night and day.
It can easily recognise number plates front and rear from a reasonable distance even in poor weather and the colours are spot on.
However I love my Tesla and in most other cars you would have to pay extra to get a half decent dash cam fitted and as was stated previously on another comment I see the Sentry mode camera as a bonus and it is good to have. Thanks Tesla but if like me with this latest update you were expecting to see vibrant colours with good quality footage then you will be a little disappointed.
It is still one of the best cars I have ever owned (so far !!) so there is a lot to be cheerful about.

 

[Exscite]

Has anyone encountered issues with the USB drive speed of images played back in the car? (I have)
Is it different from the USB playback on an offline computer? (I think there is)
Any recommendation for USB stick speed response for both recording and playback?

 

[Exscite]

Tesla- please note
these are some of the future improvement suggestions for the in-car dashcam viewer, taken from this thread:
(# denotes post number)

#10 save each drive as you completed it and keep, say, the last 10 or so. Would cover most bases.

#10 Adding rolling time and speed would be good too

#11 definitely needs a high speed scrubbing feature

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

#66 saving till memory is full then deleting the oldest to make room for the newest.

#73 One thing I'd like to see is some sort of 'flag' around the sentry mode event trigger, so you can jump to that part.

 

[bogeybuster]

Has anyone encountered issues with the USB drive speed of images played back in the car? (I have)
Is it different from the USB playback on an offline computer? (I think there is)
Any recommendation for USB stick speed response for both recording and playback?

I have not encountered any issues with usb drive speed either on the my Tesla screen or my home computer.
I use Samsung micro SDXC Pro Endurance memory cards or Delkin micro SD card in my Tesla Dash Cam which has a read of 100MB/s and write speed of 75MB/s
I also use these cards in my Blackvue dash camera which demands fast read and write speeds to work and give great play back images. They are robust and reliable and can cope with the high heat generated when constantly recording.
To use these micro SD cards in your Tesla you will need a Micro/SD to USB adapter these can be got in Amazon from £6 to £10 depending on make.
You then place the Micro SD card in the USB adapter and plug it into your home computer or laptop and Format it using MS-DOS FAT 32. Then you can name it Tesla or whatever you want but make sure you double click and add a new Folder called TeslaCam inside your formatted folder.
It is a requirement that you name this folder exactly as it is written above i.e capital T and Capital C with no space between Tesla and Cam or it will not work.
You could just as easily just go along with a normal USB scan disk or I sometimes use a Data traveler 64GB which also works in my Tesla but personally if you want reliability and results I would go with the slightly more expensive SD cards that I mentioned as they are used for recording and playback of 4K video
which demands a good solid card.
Remember these cards in the dash cam are working really hard constantly reading and writing at fast speeds so they need to be up to the job.
Hope this helps.

 

[Artiste]

Tesla- please note
these are some of the future improvement suggestions for the in-car dashcam viewer, taken from this thread:
(# denotes post number)

#10 save each drive as you completed it and keep, say, the last 10 or so. Would cover most bases.

#10 Adding rolling time and speed would be good too

#11 definitely needs a high speed scrubbing feature

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

#66 saving till memory is full then deleting the oldest to make room for the newest.

#73 One thing I'd like to see is some sort of 'flag' around the sentry mode event trigger, so you can jump to that part.

The resolution is very poor, but that will presumably be a hardware rather than a software issue. I also think it needs to include audio.

 

[VanillaAir_UK]

The resolution is very poor, but that will presumably be a hardware rather than a software issue. I also think it needs to include audio.

The camera data is highly processed and compressed - what AP sees is apparently a much better image so hardware capable of much more.

As far as I am aware, the only microphone is inside the car used for voice commands and hands free.

 

[Exscite]

Has anyone encountered issues with the USB drive speed of images played back in the car? (I have)
Is it different from the USB playback on an offline computer? (I think there is)
Any recommendation for USB stick speed response for both recording and playback?

Another note on the subject of the USB playback speed:
I've just bumped into this post TeslaCam: Don’t use USB flash drive that covers this issue in great details.
The bottom line:
1. The two Tesla's front USB ports are USB 2, so using USB 3 stick will not help in getting better speed
2. In general, regular USB's wear out after the continues quick write/overwrite cycles. For better longevity he recommends "Endurance" type Mic.SD.

 

[Rich135]

Hi All, My car (M3LR) updated it's software a couple of weeks ago, so I believe I should have the ability to review footage, but if I click on the camera icon it just shows a "download" type icon and doesn't give me an option to launcher viewer - am I doing something wrong?

Thanks
Rich

 

[VanillaAir_UK]

you need to be in park - I suspect what you are seeing is the save clip process

 

[Rich135]

Thanks Vanilla. I was in park, just sat in my drive. I will give it another try after trying to activate it with a horn beep as well.

 

[VanillaAir_UK]

Have you definitely got 2020.12.x ?

We got 2020.8.3 beginning of April and its not a feature in that version so maybe, like us, you are still running that.

 

[Rich135]

Ah you are right, I have 2020.8.3. I assume I have to just wait patiently for my car to decide it wants an update?