Teslacam

[rharrack]

welp... I got into a fender bender... which was not my fault and was hit in the rear passenger corner... the driver of the other car speed off.... I did have a witness and saw the whole accident unfold and got the license plate of the other drivers rear plates. However I was going through my video TESLAcam video footage and could not find the incident??? I have footage from the previous days and nothing for the date and time the incident took place???.... really frustrating we have these cameras and we have these cameras and it is hit or miss when they are on recording.... and why is the rear camera not recording.... since most accidents seems to happen in their rear?

 

[Need]

welp... I got into a fender bender... which was not my fault and was hit in the rear passenger corner... the driver of the other car speed off.... I did have a witness and saw the whole accident unfold and got the license plate of the other drivers rear plates. However I was going through my video TESLAcam video footage and could not find the incident??? I have footage from the previous days and nothing for the date and time the incident took place???.... really frustrating we have these cameras and we have these cameras and it is hit or miss when they are on recording.... and why is the rear camera not recording.... since most accidents seems to happen in their rear?

Did you hit the camera icon to save the clips after the accident?

 

[C141medic]

From what I understand the dashcam recordings get overwritten every hour of driving with new footage. If you didn’t save or remove the usb drive after the accident and drove for more than hour afterwards most likely it’s overwritten. There’s some very informative threads regarding this in the forums.

 

[Gondi63]

If you pull the USB drive without ejecting it first, you may not save the last clip.

That said, there was a post around with someone recovering teslacam footage from USBs. It was either here or on reddit, but I can't find it right now. It was a particular user who had some methods. Maybe someone below knows.

 

[SMAlset]

Sentry Mode will save off triggered "events" (motion or sound activated) recordings during parking automatically to the SavedClips folder. However for anything that is encountered while you are driving that you want to Keep, you need to manually save it. Very important distinction if you haven't read the manual on this.

So while in driving mode and something happens (you get hit, you want to capture footage of bad driving, etc) you need to depress the camera icon (which should have the red light on it to indicate that it is actively recording). A press on the icon will show up as a download happening. The dashcam saved function will take the last 10 minutes of live footage while the car is on and transfer it from the 1-hour buffer, which records over itself btw, and saves it off in the TeslaCam folder to SavedClips folder. It's date and time stamped. BIG NOTE OF CAUTION when saving off a video, for safety's sake I'd say give the camera two minutes immediately after the incident has occurred to make sure the camera isn't midstream writing to the SavedClips folder or the video can be truncated and you could loose that incident. A number of us have had this happen to them including myself when there was a vehicle I wanted to go back and see. Didn't give it enough time to finish writing and sure enough the saved clip I thought I had, cut off prior to the moment I wanted. So best to not press to save immediately. The camera writes in 1-minute blocks and you can't be sure where in that one minute it is in recording time.

Since this could be an important video to have, I suggest everyone try ahead of time saving something and checking your SavedClips folder afterward to get acquainted with what to expect from the dashcam.

OP sorry but it sounds like you didn't save the 10-minutes off. There can be times where the material you want can still be available in the RecentClips folder (the 1-hour buffer) if it hasn't been written over yet, so always worth a look there too if it hasn't been that long. But if you've been driving longer than an hour after the moment has occurred TeslaCam will have overwritten the buffered video and you'll be out of luck. Always best to save the recording shortly after it happens, as SavedClips do not get written over until you manually delete them from your USB drive media.

If you forgot to manually save off to the SavedClips folder and realize this before the one hour of buffer time is up, you could Stop the dashcam from recording by pressing down on the TeslaCam icon until you see kind of a digital wave disperse across that small area of the screen by the icon. When I've turned off the camera I've been able to see the "wave" on the left side of the camera so I depress the icon with my finger slightly to the right side of it. When my finger has been directly over it sometimes it has covered up the "wave" action and I didn't see that it actually had stopped. In any event the camera icon should now show a camera but with no red dot indicating it has shut down. If you pulled your USB drive now, you'll want to look for that footage in the RecentClips folder and if need be transfer it to your computer. The one-minute files will be date and time stamped there as well.

 

[Need]

There is a chance that OP actually did save the clips. He could be looking at the timestamp of the files instead of the filename and thought that he only got saved files from "previous days". The timestamp of the files are in UTC time, so in the US, it will look like it was from "yesterday".

 

[SMAlset]

On a Mac the date/time file names are exactly what they are. There is another column for Date Modified and that's where the UTC date info will be displayed. No idea how this info appears on a PC however.

 

[Tha_Reaper]

No idea how this info appears on a PC however.

Pretty much the same way

 

[Bmeeks88]

If you pull the USB drive without ejecting it first, you may not save the last clip.

That said, there was a post around with someone recovering teslacam footage from USBs. It was either here or on reddit, but I can't find it right now. It was a particular user who had some methods. Maybe someone below knows.

How do you eject properly?

 

[PoitNarf]

How do you eject properly?

Hold your finger on the dash cam icon for about 5 seconds. The red dot on the icon will go away indicating that recording has stopped. Then you can remove the flash drive.

 

[rharrack]

I wish, there was a easier file format with separate driving folder with videos sub folder date and time stamps from the cameras and sentry mode sub folder with dates/times stamp....just my 2cents
I also noticed after accessing the folders that day time/date changes to the current time/date...which throws everything off...

C:\TESLACAM\SENTRY\
C:\TESLACAM\DRIVING\

 

[whatthe2]

I wish, there was a easier file format with separate driving folder with videos sub folder date and time stamps from the cameras and sentry mode sub folder with dates/times stamp....just my 2cents
I also noticed after accessing the folders that day time/date changes to the current time/date...which throws everything off...

C:\TESLACAM\SENTRY\
C:\TESLACAM\DRIVING\

That’s how they currently are saved. In a folder with date and time.

 

[SMAlset]

I wish, there was a easier file format with separate driving folder with videos sub folder date and time stamps from the cameras and sentry mode sub folder with dates/times stamp....just my 2cents
I also noticed after accessing the folders that day time/date changes to the current time/date...which throws everything off...

C:\TESLACAM\SENTRY\
C:\TESLACAM\DRIVING\

Beg to differ. The file names are the recorded Date/Time stamp. They’re fixed unless you were to rename them. I think you might be looking at the Date Modified column which will adjust in UTC time for the last time you saved, read or modifed the file.

 

[SMAlset]

There is no rear camera recording in case that wasn't answered above. Maybe one day we'll get the dashcam feature updated with video from the remaining cameras but given the amount of storage and processing that needs to happen now with what we have, it's probably pushing the equipment to the limits currrently and maybe some of the glitches are due to that. Hoping this will all get better over time. Don't think any other car manufacture has this available (sure it's popularity will push others to doing something similar however) and it has helped many Tesla owners already.

People need to fully understand how this free dashcam upgrade in your Telsa works before you get yourself in a situation where the footage could have helped you. Hope more people take the time to read the manual and the threads on this subject to get better informed.

 

[Glamisduner]

welp... I got into a fender bender... which was not my fault and was hit in the rear passenger corner... the driver of the other car speed off.... I did have a witness and saw the whole accident unfold and got the license plate of the other drivers rear plates. However I was going through my video TESLAcam video footage and could not find the incident??? I have footage from the previous days and nothing for the date and time the incident took place???.... really frustrating we have these cameras and we have these cameras and it is hit or miss when they are on recording.... and why is the rear camera not recording.... since most accidents seems to happen in their rear?

I just had something similar after the latest update to 2019.20.1.
Dashcam says it's recording but I can only find sentry mode video on my thumb drive.

Maybe I need to format the car again after the update, but the release notes did not mention anything.

It's not a matter of only having the last hour, it had 0 clips from when I was driving.

 

[SMAlset]

@rharrack so what ever happened with your hit and run situation? Did you still have the relevant video clips in your RecentClips folder at the time of the incident? Sorry about you car getting hit btw.

@Glamisduner just because the camera icon is lit red doesn't mean its actually recording if there's a problem with the drive. Just means a device is installed and the dashcam is On, and if the drive is okay would be recording. From what you said about having 0 driving clips (in RecentClips folder right?), makes me think your drive has crashed or free space is filled up so it can't process any more. So far we don't have any alerts available to us to indicate a problem with the drive so have to routinely check it manually. Sounds similar to when my husband's blackvue card finally went bad on his Blackvue dashcam recently. Looked like it was recording by all accounts, and he saw video files when he checked but then noticed they were all from days or a week before. Card gave out, and actually we got a lot of use out of it since it was on 24/7 for him so can't complain about it. Flash does have a limited lifetime of read and writes.

 

[Glamisduner]

@rharrack so what ever happened with your hit and run situation? Did you still have the relevant video clips in your RecentClips folder at the time of the incident? Sorry about you car getting hit btw.

@Glamisduner just because the camera icon is lit red doesn't mean its actually recording if there's a problem with the drive. Just means a device is installed and the dashcam is On, and if the drive is okay would be recording. From what you said about having 0 driving clips (in RecentClips folder right?), makes me think your drive has crashed or free space is filled up so it can't process any more. So far we don't have any alerts available to us to indicate a problem with the drive so have to routinely check it. Sounds similar to when my husband's blackvue card finally went bad. Looked like it was recording by all accounts, and he saw video files when he checked but then noticed they were all from days or a weeks before. Card gave out, and actually we got a lot of use out of it since it was on 24/7 for him.

The drive is still working fine when recording in sentry mode only and it was recently formatted (it's not full). It simply was not recording for the dashcam. Typically if the card stops working for dash camera you get a gray x on the camera icon instead of the red dot.

 

[SMAlset]

The drive is still working fine when recording in sentry mode only and it was recently formatted (it's not full). It simply was not recording for the dashcam. Typically if the card stops working for dash camera you get a gray x on the camera icon instead of the red dot.

Hmm that is strange then that it will save Sentry files but no buffer. Maybe a reboot is necessary. There have been people with problems where they think that dashcam might be involved in AP not working along with headlights on and wipers not functioning properly. BTW turning off Sentry Mode, pulling the drive out, letting the car shut down has reportedly cleared this for a number of people including my husband (although he didn't have a drive to pull out being on HW2 hardware).

As for the gray X, Tesla says this happens when there's not sufficient storage to add files, may not be the same thing if there's a problem with the dashcam.

 

[rharrack]

I'm thinking with the reliability of the TeslaCam not capturing all footage and the rear camera not activated...which seems to be 70% of accidents rear ended...you would think Tesla would turn on this feature. Possibly looking at a 4K dashcam like a blackvue dr900s....I believe the Teslacams are only 780P...so the footage is not clear and crisp...