[SOLVED] Dash cam help

[ssilviu250]

Hello there. I plan on buying a dash cam for my car and i was thinking is there any dashcam that has the feature like nvidia's shadowplay (instant replay)? Record in the background a temporary file and when i press a button or something it saves only the past x minutes (1,2,5 whatever). I wouldn't like a dashcam that keeps recording continuously over and over and writes and overwrites the files, i think it would take longer to find whatever you want to see in a 30 min video rather than a 5 min video. Please help and thank you for your time.

 

[USAFRet]

Hello there. I plan on buying a dash cam for my car and i was thinking is there any dashcam that has the feature like nvidia's shadowplay (instant replay)? Record in the background a temporary file and when i press a button or something it saves only the past x minutes (1,2,5 whatever). I wouldn't like a dashcam that keeps recording continuously over and over and writes and overwrites the files, i think it would take longer to find whatever you want to see in a 30 min video rather than a 5 min video. Please help and thank you for your time.

A LOT of dashcams do a series of rolling videos. 1-3-5 minutes per file.
Once it gets to the full size of the drive, it deletes the eldest and continues on.
Unless you hit the button to lock that particular segment, or it detects a particular G-load. Then that particular 3 minute file is locked and will not be overwritten.

My cheapo $40 dashcam records front and rear, about 3 hours total on a 32GB microSD card.

 

[10tacle]

If you just want to drive around and record video of it to watch back, your best bet is to buy a GoPro.

 

[ssilviu250]

I want to a dashcam in case of an accident or something, so i don't really need like hours of footage as you mentioned gopro just to watch it back like those people showing on youtube the beauty of roads/landscape as they drive, i just need the 5 mins prior to the event, so that's why i was curious about this function

 

[USAFRet]

I want to a dashcam in case of an accident or something, so i don't really need like hours of footage as you mentioned gopro just to watch it back like those people showing on youtube the beauty of roads/landscape as they drive, i just need the 5 mins prior to the event, so that's why i was curious about this function

Right.
As noted, my dashcam does rolling 3 minute segments. Delete the oldest as it goes along.
And g-sensor, to lock that particular segment in case of a crash.
Or manually invoking the lock by the user.

Most of them do this.

On mine: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B071KC51PY
"Sensitive G-sensor☆Specific files will be automatically locked when required(such as car was been hit), even though the car does not start, the recorder will automatically turn on and record the emergency after shaking. So it can provide the evidence when emergency happened and supports the parking monitor. "

So if you have this function turned ON, even if the camera is OFF, it wakes up and starts recording upon impact, and locks that particular segment.
Or, if the camera is currently ON, it locks that segment upon impact.

On mine, a filename for a regular 3 minute segment is thus:
REC01423.AVI
A locked segment would be SOS01424.AVI.
Easy to tell what is what.

 

[racksmith101]

It's worthwhile getting one with a parking sensor, if you're away from the car and it gets hit it automatically records and saves the incident, get one with front and rear cams that records both at the same time at 1080p and 30fps, it's worth paying a bit more for a decent cam, not knocking anyone who buys the cheap ones but the low light recording and general resolution on them just isn't great and most only do 15fps at 1080p so the video definition if you're travelling at any speed is pretty poor.

 

[USAFRet]

it's worth paying a bit more for a decent cam, not knocking anyone who buys the cheap ones but the low light recording and general resolution on them just isn't great and most only do 15fps at 1080p so the video definition if you're travelling at any speed is pretty poor.

Absolutely.
This $40 one I have was just an experiment. Eventually a better one will appear.

Video:
https://i.imgur.com/JSjbe72.mp4