Web App for Viewing TeslaCam Videos

[Incredulocious]

I cannot play any of the files on my Mac. Neither Quicktime, VLC, or FCPX will play them. They just show as grey screen with some motion that is impossible to determine what is going on.

That sounds like file corruption when recorded. Presumably you can’t play them on any device (Mac, Windows, phone, etc)? (If you don’t have access to other devices, you could share the files somewhere and see whether anyone else can play them.) Perhaps you need a better or faster USB storage device?

 

[Imaginet]

That sounds like file corruption when recorded. Presumably you can’t play them on any device (Mac, Windows, phone, etc)? (If you don’t have access to other devices, you could share the files somewhere and see whether anyone else can play them.) Perhaps you need a better or faster USB storage device?

My USB drive is USB 3.1. Blackmagic Speed Test shows a write speed of 25 MB/s. Here is a sample file if anyone wants to see if they can read it.
Dropbox - 2019-08-03_09-57-16-front.mp4

 

[Daisame]

FYI. The USB jacks are only USB2, just as long as you have a fast enough USB stick to handle the write speeds. Write speeds can very greatly on USB sticks. I don't know if that video is indicative of a slow write speed. I have seen slow speed and it is usually stuttering and compression artifacts in the file. This looks like something else.

Do you have another Tesla or friend's you can check that USB stick in to see if you get the same results? Otherwise, it literally may be a problem with the car's computer trying to write the data. Hopefully it is not an actual camera or issue with the computer viewing the feed form the camera, since that would likely cause issues with autopilot.

Do you get the problem on all 3 cameras, or just the forward one? All cameras having the same issue would eliminate one bad camera, and only leave the computer reading the stream from the cameras, the computer writing the stream, or the USB. if it is only happening on one camera, then there is a good chance the camera may be at fault, or the computer has trouble reading from that camera.

I use Micro SD cards that are suitable for 4K camera recording, which has ample write speeds for the three lower rez Tesla Cameras. I have not looked at USB sticks to see what they are rated for, but I would have to imagine the general use case is not super high speeds, since they are not typically used for high speed systems like cameras.

Here is a quick primmer on USB sticks for Tesla Cams USB Flash Drives for Tesla Dashcam | TeslaTap

The sticks they list are 50Mbs and up. The minimum that the page stipulates is 20, but I don't know how they arrived at that figure.

 

[Incredulocious]

My USB drive is USB 3.1. Blackmagic Speed Test shows a write speed of 25 MB/s. Here is a sample file if anyone wants to see if they can read it.
Dropbox - 2019-08-03_09-57-16-front.mp4

Yeah, I can read it / play it (and on my Mac). That's bad video encoding. The problem is not with your Mac being able to read it – it is reading/playing it. The problem is with what was encoded into the file. You're seeing what was recorded. Now, is there something with your USB drive causing this or something with your car? As Daisame has asked, is it just with that one camera or is there a similar problem with the other two cameras? Do you have another USB drive can you try?

I should add that I still see corrupt video recordings from one or more of the Model 3's cameras from time to time and others have reported this as well in other threads in this forum. Presumably this more widespread issue is something Tesla will eventually address. If what you've shared is just happening occasionally then you're seeing what most of us also experience. If this is happening with every recording, then it's back to being either your car or your USB drive.

 

[Daisame]

Make sure you have the proper codec on your system.
Get HEVC Video Extensions from Device Manufacturer - Microsoft Store
This is for Windows 10.

I downloaded your file and could not play it until I installed this codec. Now I can play it. It still has some compression artifacts and other skips that are consistent with slow write speeds, but no longer just mostly gray.

 

[Incredulocious]

Make sure you have the proper codec on your system.
Get HEVC Video Extensions from Device Manufacturer - Microsoft Store
This is for Windows 10.

I downloaded your file and could not play it until I installed this codec. Now I can play it. It still has some compression artifacts and other skips that are consistent with slow write speeds, but no longer just mostly gray.

As you say, that’s for Windows. On the Mac, iPhones, iPads, HEVC is supported in iOS 11 and macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) and newer: Using HEIF or HEVC media on Apple devices I still see mostly a mess of gray and artifacts and only momentary flashes of recognizable scenes so that’s interesting if your decoder pulls something more out of that file.

 

[Imaginet]

I have tried multiple USB drives and all have the same result. Also, all three cameras produce the same result.

On a side note, I had had the car exactly two days and got a notice of a software update (this was a month ago). I ran the update and it failed. Called support and they tried to push it again and it failed. They sent a service guy out and he tried and failed. He declared it "Off Road" or something like that, which is a high priority. They sent for a flat deck and towed my brand new car to the Vancouver service centre. They had it two days without once contacting me and I had no way to contact them. Finally, I went over to the SC to see what was going on, just as my car pulls into the compound. Tech jumps out and says it is all good, I had a bad B-Pillar camera which caused the update to fail, which they had just replaced. The car did not even have 100 Km on yet. So, perhaps I have more issues than just a bad camera, or two, or three.

 

[Daisame]

As you say, that’s for Windows. On the Mac, iPhones, iPads, HEVC is supported in iOS 11 and macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) and newer: Using HEIF or HEVC media on Apple devices I still see mostly a mess of gray and artifacts and only momentary flashes of recognizable scenes so that’s interesting if your decoder pulls something more out of that file.

You say it is supported, but it clearly is acting if it is not. Maybe the codec for MAC is out of date, or not functioning properly?

I could see the video just fine after loading the Codec on Win10. There were some stutters and compression artifacts consistent with a slow write speed, but otherwise usable. I would suspect it is an issue with the playback on your Mac. May need to look at or reset those drivers.

 

[Incredulocious]

You say it is supported, but it clearly is acting if it is not. Maybe the codec for MAC is out of date, or not functioning properly?

I could see the video just fine after loading the Codec on Win10. There were some stutters and compression artifacts consistent with a slow write speed, but otherwise usable. I would suspect it is an issue with the playback on your Mac. May need to look at or reset those drivers.

Yeah, I just checked this out in more detail. I installed the HEVC code in my Parallels Windows 10 environment and I see that it does handle the file much better, just as you describe. Whatever the corruption in this file is, the Microsoft-provided HEVC codec handles it much better than the HEVC support in the latest macOS release (10.14.6) and iOS release (12.3.1). (I can't speak to the beta release of iOS 13.) This difference is kind of amusing given that some folks were upset when their new iPhones starting taking pictures/video in HEIC/HEVC format and they couldn't view them on their Windows-based PC's or much older Mac's. (You can configure your iPhone to use the old or new formats but it defaulted to the new.)

Anyway, I tried converting that HEVC (h.265) video file to the older h.264 format on the Mac but, not surprisingly, it came out with the same results as trying to play it back. Hopefully some future macOS or iOS update will include a more robust HEVC codec.

So... to Imaginet: it's the same situation as before, either the USB storage devices you're using all have the same write speed limitation or your Tesla has some issue with how it is encoding or writing these files.

[We've essentially derailed the original topic of this thread though. Would be nice to get these off topic comments to a new thread.]

 

[Daisame]

I doubt heavily it is some issue with the car's encoding. It is working as advertised. Playback is a result if some codec in Mac not handling the stream properly.

The various stutters and compression artifacts are likely due to a a slow USB drive. I would try to find one that is proven to be faster. If it is still having compression artifacts and stutters, it could be a problem with the USB port or hub in the MCU not having the bandwidth available. It also COULD be a slow or poorly operating encoder in the computer's OS. That could improve with the next software update. But I would focus on the memory medium speed. If you can put a higher end SD or MicroSD card designed for heat and speed, (cars get hot and that is not good for some memory), and it is still having issues, it may be something with the USB on the car's computer or, the software, or the computer itself.

Since this is h.265 format, you obliviously have the newest AP hardware. So it should have more than enough power to process some relatively low resolution streams from 3 cameras.

On a side note, I use microSD cards (as stated before, hardened for hot environments), but have tried a few different USB adapters for them. I use ones that have dual SD card slots, so I can have TeslaCam on it's own SD card and .mp3s on their own card. This way, the video is not trying to write to a file system that is also being read from at the same time. It could probably handle it, but wanted to maximize per channel bandwidth for the video. The card readers I used were not all created equal. I found a cheap dual micro SD reader stick with USB3 on one end, and USB-C on the other, that allowed both cards to be addressable at the same time. Thought it would be perfect for my use case, but the cheap USB dual micro SD reader was not fast enough. TeslaCam footage had a lot of stutters and artifacts. Changed back to my previous USB 3 cabled SD/MicroSD card reader and it was fine again. Not all hardware is created equal.

I am currently on a quest for the best USB dual SD/microSD option. I think I will use a stick with low profile SD to Micro SD adapter with USB-C interface. and then just use a short USB-C to USB3 cable. This way I can quickly unplug and view files on my Android phone if I need to.

I also ordered a Raspberry Pi. Planning to try to make a wifi system that I can pull data from my home network when I get home each day without having to unplug anything. Or... Elon could release an update to the OS to allow you to access those attached USB storage slots from your wifi.

 

[b0n3z]

Just curious if it's just my browser. Previously this was working perfectly fine with Chrome. Now after it prompts me to "Upload files XXX to the site?" and I select Upload - it just doesn't do anything afterwards. Is anyone else using Chrome with this?

 

[ken830]

Just curious if it's just my browser. Previously this was working perfectly fine with Chrome. Now after it prompts me to "Upload files XXX to the site?" and I select Upload - it just doesn't do anything afterwards. Is anyone else using Chrome with this?

Also stopped working on my Chrome. Firefox works just fine.

 

[jdeskins]

Just curious if it's just my browser. Previously this was working perfectly fine with Chrome. Now after it prompts me to "Upload files XXX to the site?" and I select Upload - it just doesn't do anything afterwards. Is anyone else using Chrome with this?

Yes, Chrome has been picky about playing some of the videos lately. Chrome doesn't support the newer H.265 videos and after recent Tesla updates, even some H.264 videos were seeing a similar issue. They do work in other browsers - such as Safari, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge.

I'm going to add some code to the site to detect if videos aren't playing within a given time and display a message. That may help inform users to try another browser if they are in Chrome and the videos aren't playing.

 

[DhalPuri]

Thank you VERY much for this app. PayPal donation sent

 

[alaindealain]

This app is pretty good as well: Focus Dashcam Organizer for macOS - Boundary Labs

 

[3Victoria]

Hey --
I have a Samsung Portable SSD T5 500Gb. Its partitioned into 400Gb for TeslaCam and 100Mb for music with MSDOS on a MacBook Pro.
Seems to record video fine. I have a 2.5 3. The clips play time as files.

TeslaCam Video WebApp Player can see the files, and will 'load' them, and shows them as file names, but does not play them.

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks.

 

[jdeskins]

TeslaCam Video WebApp Player can see the files, and will 'load' them, and shows them as file names, but does not play them.

Try in another browser, such as Safari, Firefox, or Microsoft Edge and see if that works. Some of the video formats have been changing recently and some browsers can't play them.

 

[pcons]

Hey --
I have a Samsung Portable SSD T5 500Gb. Its partitioned into 400Gb for TeslaCam and 100Mb for music with MSDOS on a MacBook Pro.
Seems to record video fine. I have a 2.5 3. The clips play time as files.

TeslaCam Video WebApp Player can see the files, and will 'load' them, and shows them as file names, but does not play them.

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks.

Try in another browser, such as Safari, Firefox, or Microsoft Edge and see if that works. Some of the video formats have been changing recently and some browsers can't play them.

I'm having a similar issue what was reported above. In chrome (which worked fine in the past) I can load directories or individual files, but they play back 'black', yet playing individual files through VLC works fine. Tried IE just now, and for some reason I can't select directories just individual files, but still it only plays black. I'm on 2.5 HW, so these are h264 videos.

 

[pgolden]

Hello -

Just started using your browser app and find it very useful.
I have a question about the speed option on it. (Forgive me if it's answered in the thread, I haven't gone through each reply.)
It seems to work fine on my MacBook Air 2017 running the latest Mojave version, except when I select 10x where it just shows the first couple of frames and then the images freeze while the progress slider continues advancing. I'm running files from a SanDisk 128 GB thumbdrive.
Thanks for any help you can provide.

 

[pgolden]

Hello -

Just started using your browser app and find it very useful.
I have a question about the speed option on it. (Forgive me if it's answered in the thread, I haven't gone through each reply.)
It seems to work fine on my MacBook Air 2017 running the latest Mojave version, except when I select 10x where it just shows the first couple of frames and then the images freeze while the progress slider continues advancing. I'm running files from a SanDisk 128 GB thumbdrive.
Thanks for any help you can provide.

Forgot to add I'm viewing it in Firefox 69.0