Suggestions & advice for an in-car cameras

fivetide

Strider590 wrote: »

or brake tester with soon leave you alone

Just as an aside (good review btw)... if they are feelign the need to brake test you, doesn't that mean you are driving far too close in the first place?

Remember, these things show up your own bad driving as well as those around you!

Strider590

fivetide wrote: »

Just as an aside (good review btw)... if they are feelign the need to brake test you, doesn't that mean you are driving far too close in the first place?

Remember, these things show up your own bad driving as well as those around you!

I was actually talking about nutters, driving too close isn't the only reason they do it. I've seen it where i've overtaken someone only for them to overtake me and slam on the anchors, i've had people who miss a green light and then take offense to being honked.

One nutter outside a school last month, stopped to let his daughter out of car, I overtook slowly as you would any parked car, next thing I know this guy is up my a55, he overtakes like a lunatic on a narrow 30 road with kids everywhere, pulls in front and slams on several times.

There are also people driving around in cars with mirrors which make everything look much bigger/closer than it is or if it's a 4x4 with poor rear visibility. I had a great example of this last week, it took me a while to realise she was brake testing me (it was something like a Ford Kuga or Nissan Qashqai).

Having driven the vast majority of the UK, I can safely say that the West-mids and Worcestershire seem to have a very large percentage of angry drivers. I won't speculate as to why, but road design probably plays a big part.

Henzo

I'm not a middle lane hogger never have been . I do a hell of lot of motorway driving in my company car . Im not buying it for this reason only for the locals, lol . With the police now told to enforce middle lane hoggers at their own discretion how each officer will interpret this , only god knows . Numerous times , I've been forced by others to get stuck in middle lane , example lorries just pulling out , traffic in third overtake lane unable to give way , you see sometimes you can get stuck in this horrible lane . Would my camera evidence help me in a situation like this ? If a policeman thinks I'm guilty of not properly using the lane . Will they except camera evidence for appeals ??? Even more reason to get one .

roddydogs

Strider590 wrote: »

In my experience, that type of system works fine until the new file is larger than the oldest one.

File size depends on how dark/light it is, so your morning commute in the dark will have a smaller file size, then when it tries to overwrite that with a larger file later on, it just crashes the camera and you end up with a corrupt memory card (which then needs reformatting). Talking from experience of 3 different camera's with this "feature".

Well, ive never had this yet, surely 1hr in the dark uses just the same memory as 1 hr in the Light?

Strider590

roddydogs wrote: »

Well, ive never had this yet, surely 1hr in the dark uses just the same memory as 1 hr in the Light?

It's not the darkness that does it really, it's about the detail in the video (obviously in the dark it sees less) and the video compression used.

I'm sure we all understand that a digital video is just a load of image files stored one after the other, if you create a completely black image of 600x130 pixels (I know it's random) and save it as a jpg file, it'll be around 2kB in size, but if you create a colorful patterned image of 600x130 pixels and save it in the same way, it'll probably work out to around 20-60kB.

So a 30min video at 24 fps, will have around 43200 frames, if those frames are mostly black, the video will be MUCH smaller than a video taken during daylight with lots of colour and detail

The work around is to start overwriting the old video when there's enough space to compensate, but so far i've never seen this behaviour.

forgotmyname

The bitrate on most camera's are not a fixed item.

A lossless file with zero compression will be the same filesize for every picture.
Every pixel gets saved even if it fills the whole screen with the same colour and doesnt change.

But they dont do that, They save the image and use compression to save space. Large blocks of one colour that doesnt move results in a smaller file.

At night the grainy speckles you see can actually uses more card space than a bright image in daylight with some solid blocks of image or colours.

docmatt

Hi Henzo, take my advice, from someone who has used and tried and tested loads, save up your pennies and buy Roadhawk HD.

http://www.dogcamsport.co.uk/roadhawk-hd-in-car-camera.html

It's the only camera that will read a number plate clearly at night, most of the others are pretty useless, even my old Roadhawk can't read numberplates as in this (boring) video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BM9Y7MzOyT4

You see even when I'm close to her at the roundabout you can't read the reg, my new HD cam can see a bug on the number plate! I've got it hard wired into the car and it's hidden behind the rear view mirror, no wires and it's very discreet, well worth the extra dough. good luck :cool:

forgotmyname

The newer ones that cost under £60 can read numberplates at night. Seen a couple of reviews on youtube this week.

That video is poor quality compares to my £40 camera.

Henzo

Wow , the quality is fantastic and so clear . It's obviously in the high end of camera market regarding its cost . After viewing your clip its shows why that is . Very nice piece of equipment to have . Thanks Docmatt.

Ps , that driver you recorded needs an eye test / or Highway Code book ?

scotsbob

I use "Autoboy Blackbox" phone app to record all my journeys.

No problem with reading number plates at night, all the features of the cameras described above. Served me well for over a year now.