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Tesla Cams
- Thread starter Canadianhere
- Start date
srs5694
Active Member
Both the dash cam and Sentry Mode recordings get stored in the same directory, which is called TeslaCam. There's a "working" recording subdirectory that hold's about an hour's worth of recordings, IIRC; and another one with saved recordings (I don't recall the exact filenames used, offhand). The saved-recordings subdirectory holds both Sentry Mode alert and alarm recordings and anything from the dash cam that you manually save by touching the recording icon on the center console screen. At the moment, there's no way to manage or view recordings from the Tesla UI; you have to plug the USB drive into a computer, or at least a cell phone, to manage the recordings. If you don't see dash cam recordings, it's possible that you've not enabled this feature. When it's active, the dash cam icon on the screen should include a red dot. If the dot is grey, you can activate the dash cam by touching the icon. If the icon includes a grey "X", that indicates that the feature is unavailable for some reason (no media, damaged media, no TeslaCam directory, etc.).
Many people have reported problems with the cameras recording corrupted videos (typically with the bottom 1/2 or 1/3 of the video missing or damaged) and with occasional 0-length recordings. Nobody on this forum knows the cause, AFAIK, but it seems to be a problem with the video processing in the Tesla, not with the media. Some people have observed that the problem is more common when the car is stopped (and hence with Sentry Mode recordings) than when the car is moving. At this point, I'd suggest that you simply not worry about the problem, since AFAIK there's nothing you can do about it. With any luck Tesla will fix it with a future software update.
Many people have reported problems with the cameras recording corrupted videos (typically with the bottom 1/2 or 1/3 of the video missing or damaged) and with occasional 0-length recordings. Nobody on this forum knows the cause, AFAIK, but it seems to be a problem with the video processing in the Tesla, not with the media. Some people have observed that the problem is more common when the car is stopped (and hence with Sentry Mode recordings) than when the car is moving. At this point, I'd suggest that you simply not worry about the problem, since AFAIK there's nothing you can do about it. With any luck Tesla will fix it with a future software update.
Most average 64gb due to the price, yes you need to remove the card and view it elsewhere, I use a laptop, from there I clear files. My 64gb card did fill up and stop recording. Had to pull it and delete all files.
Fred
Im using a 128gb samsung slim fit drive, with no music on it (dedicated to dashcam / sentry recordings). From reading here, it varies from 16-32gb to people using large SSDs.
Leafdriver333
Somewhat Active Member
Leafdriver333
Somewhat Active Member
Is it not supposed to deal with the recording space as a circular file? I.e., when it "fills up." isn't it supposed to just start recording over the oldest file in the folder?
Mine seems to fill up and then quit recording (still showing a red dot, though).
The whole dashcam thing seems buggy to me.
Dash cam footage does that, but sentry mode footage does NOT do that.. thus if you ever use sentry mode, it will eventually fill up.
srs5694
Active Member
It depends on what you mean by "recordings." As per my earlier reply in this thread, both the dash cam and Sentry Mode record about an hour's worth of video in an ongoing recordings subdirectory. (I don't recall the name of the subdirectory, but it's pretty obvious.) When in Sentry Mode, if an alert or alarm event occurs, the system moves the most recent ten minutes' worth of recordings into its own subdirectory of the saved recordings subdirectory (again, I don't recall the precise directory names), then keeps recording. Much the same thing happens when the dash cam is active, but in this case, it's your pressing the recording icon on the center console screen that causes ten minutes' worth of recordings to be saved. If an hour passes without any alert, alarm, or manual saving of recordings happening, the system should delete the oldest of the ongoing recordings, and keep doing so once a minute, recording one new minute's worth of video. The result is a ~1-hour buffer of recordings that you can review if you pull the drive, plus whatever recordings were saved by you (manually when driving from the dash cam) or by Sentry Mode alert or alarm events. The Tesla will never, AFAIK, delete a saved recording, just items from its ~1-hour recording buffer.
A drive can fill up completely either if it's too small to hold an hour's worth of video or if enough videos are saved manually or by alert/alarm events. If you save recordings manually or use Sentry Mode, chances are even a big device will eventually run out of space if you don't manually clean them out. It's conceivable that a bug could cause ongoing recordings in the ~1-hour buffer to not be deleted and thus fill the drive, but I've not heard of such a bug.
Also, AFAIK there's no way to unmount (aka "safely remove," "eject," or other terms) the drive. The result can be filesystem damage, even if you turn off the dash cam before pulling the drive. I recommend performing a filesystem check on the drive whenever you access it on a computer. This will minimize the risk of it developing filesystem damage. A filesystem check can result in orphaned video data appearing in files in the root directory of the device. In theory these could eventually fill up the disk, although I'd expect this to take a long time on any but a very small device. It's safe to delete these files (although if you're looking for footage of a specific incident and can't find it, checking the recovered files is worthwhile).
I am using 128 gb Sandisk. My folder is exactly spelled TeslaCam. Again, I am aware about the two folders. However, all the recordings are from Sentry cam which when the car is parked. I don't have any video while the car was still driven. I have the camera icon with a red dot.
My question is why I don't have recording when the car was still on the move. All recordings are from sentry mode (car was parked).
My question is why I don't have recording when the car was still on the move. All recordings are from sentry mode (car was parked).
srs5694
Active Member
Are you saying you have no saved recordings from driving, no recordings in the running recording buffer from driving, or both? A lack of saved recordings simply means you haven't touched the recording icon while driving to save a recording. That's perfectly normal. (Note that the icon changes to show a different symbol when it's saving the recording, so you can verify from the screen that it's being saved.) If you drive, and verify that the camera icon has the red dot, and then as soon as you park you pull the drive out and see no recordings from your drive in the ongoing-recordings directory, then something is wrong. I'd contact Tesla about the problem; however, it might be worth reformatting the drive or partition and creating a fresh TeslaCam directory. The symptoms you report should not be the result of a filesystem problem, but it's a simple enough thing to try before requesting service. Trying a completely different USB drive might be worth doing, too.
The "RecentClips" folder has footage driven in the past hour while the "SavedClips" folder has videos saved manually or by Sentry Mode. The "RecentClips" folder only retains videos that were recorded in the past hour as of when the car that the car was on. So if you were driving from 2-3pm and later that evening you pull the drive out at 7pm, then there will be no footage in the RecentClips folder since there was nothing recorded from 6-7pm. The video from 2-3pm would have been purged already by 7pm.
Same issues here.
- sentry video records as usual, but no dash cam videos any more (they were working prior to the last few weeks?)
- running an USB SSD with plenty of space, folder named TeslaCam, no dash cam footage in RecentClips or SavedClips
- confirmed camera icon shows red dot, ejecting USB device safely each time
- reformatted the SSD to try to test the corruption issue and see if this would fix the situation, but no difference so far
- sentry video records as usual, but no dash cam videos any more (they were working prior to the last few weeks?)
- running an USB SSD with plenty of space, folder named TeslaCam, no dash cam footage in RecentClips or SavedClips
- confirmed camera icon shows red dot, ejecting USB device safely each time
- reformatted the SSD to try to test the corruption issue and see if this would fix the situation, but no difference so far
I can confirm that I see red dot each time. I don’t have to do this manually. It is always there each time I pull to drive.
The dash cam should record more than just the past one hour. It is weird if it just records the last one hour. So if someone drive for 3 hours straight, the first two hours are gone and only saved the last one hour?
The dash cam should record more than just the past one hour. It is weird if it just records the last one hour. So if someone drive for 3 hours straight, the first two hours are gone and only saved the last one hour?
Knightshade
Well-Known Member
dashcam by default doesn't "save" anything long term- it has a rolling 1 hour buffer it keeps overwriting with the most recent video.
If you want anything saved you hit the camera button and it saves the last 10 minutes to the saved folder.
So having said that, that means it should keep the last hour of my driving before I park the car for the night?
Meaning, if two hours later I go back to garage I should see the hour of driving recording from three hours ago?
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