Does anyone know of a dash cam that is actually a dash cam?

[AliOnHols]

I can't confirm this any way other than my personal experience but I think that there is a problem with 64gb cards. Some cards work, others don't, those that do may have glitches from time to time. Not all devices work with 64gb cards and I believe that those that do would prefer not to.
However, I've never had a problem with any 32gb card.
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Garmin Nuvi 2599
Android with CamerAlert, OsmAnd+, Waze & TT Europe.
TomTom GO 730, GO 930, GO 940 & Rider2.
SatMap Active 10 & 20.

[Oldboy]

Yesterday I used SD Formatter on the 64GB card, and have now installed it in the car.

Trouble is, I now keep glancing at the unit to see if the red indicator is still lit.
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Richard

TT 910 V7.903: Europe Map v1045
TT Via 135 App 12.075: Europe Map v1120

[allan125]

Thanks for the further information about RH - and also for the pieces about memory cards, most interesting.

cheers

Allan

[Privateer]

[Privateer]

Following on, here's some tips and thoughts, mainly for RoadHawk HD units but may also be useful for other dash cams as well:

Ensure that your dash cam is running the latest version of firmware.

Always use the recommended SD/SDHC/SDXC cards that the manufacturer recommends.

If your video doesn't run smoothly, don't immediately think that it's your dash cam that's to blame, that was a mistake that I initially made ! Try using a different viewing software (i.e. other than the dash cam's own software) and if possible try viewing on a different computer!

If you have a large enough card, then you might as well go for 1080p (1920 wide x 1080 high) instead of 720p (1280 wide x 720 high) resolution.

30 fps (frames per second) is almost as good as 60 fps.

Again, if you have a large enough card then you might as well go for the highest bit rate, which is 12 Mb/s for the RoadHawk.

Whilst the RoadHawk HD is very good, the software that comes with it does not have too many features - although the software is useful for changing the settings on the unit and finding files that are marked as "event files".

The Registrator Viewer software, by Vadim Andreevich Kozlov, is useful and there are both Windows and MacOS platform versions - although I've only tried the Windows version. It can group the one minute files into individual journeys and play them without interruption. It also shows the route of the journey with start and finish locations on the map (Google, OSM, etc). You can click anywhere on the route to see the video play from that point. You can also pause, fast forward, slow backwards, zoom, the video. Registrator Viewer is free, however you can make a donation if you wish.


After I bought a 64GB Kingston SDXC card, I bought a Integral ultima pro 64GB 45MB/s class 10 SDXC card, which I've run in the RoadHawk HD for over a fortnight now.

Here are some calculations for determining recording times when using a 64GB card, NB the calculation are approximate ones:

A one minute file at 1080p resolution, 30fps, and a bit rate of 12mbs is 102,400 KB which is 100.0 MB in size.

A 64GB SDXC card when formatted has approximately 59GB available.

A RoadHawk HD on one minute loop mode, allocates 60% for normal and 40% for events on the card, i.e. for a 64GB SDXC after formatting that's approximately 35.4GB for normal and 23.6GB for events. If the RoadHawk HD is set for 1080p resolution, 30 fps, 12 MB/s Bit rate then that's approximately 360 files or 6 hours of recording for normal and an addition 240 files or 4 hours of recording for events.

So, using the highest setting (1080p, 30 fps, 12 MB/s Bit rate) you should get approximately 6 hours of recording before the unit starts to overwrite the oldest files.

However on the RoadHawk HD unit, the 60/40 split is dynamic. If you haven't got many event files, the unit will continue to fill the storage until it's nearly full, so you may get more than the 60% for recording normal files. A small buffer zone of approximately 1.4 GB is kept free. At which point the unit will start to overwrite the oldest files.

This dynamic 60/40 split confused me for a while until Martyn from RoadHawk explained it to me.

The Integral 64GB SDXC card is still working well after a fortnight and is overwriting the oldest files first.

It'll be interesting to see how others are finding how well 64GB SDXC cards work in their RoadHawk HD units.
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Robert.
iPhone 6s Plus, iOS 14.0.1: iOS CamerAlert v2.0.7
TomTom GO Mobile iOS 2.3.1; TomTom (UK & ROI and Europe) iOS apps v1.29
Garmin Camper 770 LMT-D

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