Dash Cam recommendations, cost, other considerations

[brianreynolds]

I am considering the purchase of a video recorder and dash-cam mount, but have 101 questions.  This post constitutes the beginning of my research.  Which features are crucially important for the camera?  Is there an ideal balance between cost and quality?  Any recommendations for the camera mount?  I would guess that 99+% of collected data is not worth retaining.  How do you edit?  How do you store/catalog what you keep?

Is this question re-redundant?  Has all of this already been covered? 

[1995hoo]

I have a dashcam and will post some comments later today when I'm typing on my PC rather than my iPad, but in the meantime, I suggest you also check out the Project Road Rush forum (link below) because it's a dashcammers' forum and thus has commentary on various cameras and the like.

There are about as many ways to store and keep track of saved video clips as there are people using dashcams, but basically, you download all the video to your PC, then review the downloaded video (I tend to do it at high-speed) and then either just delete the file or use video-editing software to edit it down to just the part you want to keep, save that as a new file, and delete the original.

Edited because I forgot the link. Here it is. Sorry about that! 
http://projectroadrush.freeforums.net/forum

[1995hoo]

I am considering the purchase of a video recorder and dash-cam mount, but have 101 questions.  This post constitutes the beginning of my research.  Which features are crucially important for the camera?  Is there an ideal balance between cost and quality?  Any recommendations for the camera mount?  I would guess that 99+% of collected data is not worth retaining.  How do you edit?  How do you store/catalog what you keep?

Is this question re-redundant?  Has all of this already been covered? 

OK, following up now that I'm at a PC and have a break in what I'm doing....

I guess the first thing to ask yourself is what you plan to do with the dashcam. If your goal is to use it to get pictures of road signs and the like because you have trouble taking a photo while driving, you should know that the dashcam video quality usually won't match a regular still camera's photo quality. If that's your goal, you could consider using your mobile phone in a windshield or dashboard mount with the video camera running, as long as you download regularly (so as to avoid filling up the phone's memory too much) and as long as you recognize that, depending on your phone model, if you get a call it may cut off the recording.

If instead your goal is to have something that will film what's going on around you so you have evidence if you're ever in a crash and so that you can edit videos as a hobby (such as the various dashcam channels on YouTube), I'd suggest three important features:

(1) Ability to select the length of the video clip (I set mine to five-minute clips because having the camera reset every two minutes results in clips that are too short and in too many gaps in the recording when the clip resets).

(2) A camera that can reset quickly when it comes time to start a new clip–that is, you know how sometimes on a concert bootleg you get that annoying moment of silence when the taper inserted a track break? The same thing happens with most dashcams when one clip ends and the next one begins. You'll usually miss five to seven seconds of video. Not a big deal most of the time, but sooner or later you will miss something you wanted to record. The faster the reset, the better.

(3) If you drive at night a lot, get one whose night performance is highly rated. Most dashcams have motion sensors that cause them to start recording when the camera detects motion. These don't always work very well at night. It's not necessarily desirable or safe for you to be driving with one eye on the camera so you can hit the "record" button every five minutes if the motion detection is unreliable at night.

Almost every camera will allow you to include a date stamp on your videos. Some have the option of a GPS logger to store your coordinates. Mine doesn't offer that.

Consider how you will power the camera and whether you plan to move it between cars. Some people hard-wire them. I haven't done that because I move mine between three cars and I can't be bothered to wire it in all three of them. I just use the lighter plug. If I ever get a rear camera this would be a much bigger problem because of where the rear lighter plugs are located in two of the cars (the third is a two-seater, but since it's a convertible I wouldn't be using a rear camera anyway). Regarding rear cameras, I don't have one and I would be overwhelmed if I tried to deal with that much video, but some dashcammers have them. I can give you the YouTube handles for some of them if you want to see rear-camera samples.

Regarding your other questions:

–Camera mount is usually included with the purchase. Most will have a suction cup. Consider both the camera size and form factor AND the places where you usually park when you consider a camera. Taking the camera down and putting it back up every time you park is a bit of a nuisance, especially if you don't have room in the glovebox for it. I tend to leave mine mounted because it's relatively inconspicuous. I have it mounted as high up by the rear-view as possible while still allowing me to access the buttons (since mine sometimes is unreliable about automatically recording at night), but about the only time I park in a bad area is when we go to Nationals Park. If you regularly park on the street in a city, you might want to remove yours more often.

–Hard to comment on price. I paid less than $100 for mine. There's a wide variety on the market. I don't think spending $400 is necessary by any means. There's also something to be said for the idea of having a type of camera that isn't instantly recognizable. That is, the Go Pro is well-known and may attract thieves who recognize it, whereas a cheaper and less conspicuous model might not.

–Storing video: I have three 32 GB micro-SD cards for my camera but usually use only one of them unless we're on a longer trip. (For our Christmas trip to Florida I used all three: One for the first day of the drive down, the second for the second day, and the third for local driving around our destination all week.) I pull the video card from the camera and stick it in the card reader on the front of my PC and I use Windows's built-in downloader to retrieve the files. I store them in a directory for the specific month, e.g., "Dashcam videos February 2015." When I have spare time I go through the downloads using Windows Media Player to see which ones have anything worth saving. I then use Windows Movie Maker to extract the stuff I want to save; I put those files in a different subdirectory under the "Videos" directory and I give them descriptive names telling me what happened and where (example from earlier this week: "Box-blocking bus 15th and Pennsylvania.mp4"). Then I usually delete the original clips so my C: drive doesn't get overrun. A full five-minute clip from my camera is around 250 MB. In a typical month's driving I might have between 400 and 500 five-minute clips, which works out to around 100 GB. It's not a huge issue for me because I have a 1 TB C: drive, a 2 TB E: drive I added later, a NAS running two 3 TB drives in a RAID configuration with room to expand, and a few external drives I use for separate backup (one of them is in our off-site storage unit). But I still don't want my C: drive totally filling up with useless video clips I'll never use again. The one idiosyncrasy I have is that when I review clips, I never delete the final one in a batch so that Windows will continue keeping the filenames accurate. (Example: Right now the final clip in the "Dashcam videos February 2015" directory is "Dashcam videos February 2015 371.AVI." When I download again today or tomorrow to finish off the month, the next clip will be number 372 and on up.) I do that simply because I'm curious as to how many clips I get from month to month.

–When I want to compile edited clips into a longer video, I originally used Windows Movie Maker because it was free and I didn't know much about video editing. But the version provided with Windows 7 is clunky. The old Windows Vista version was a lot better and easier to use. Movie Maker's biggest downside is that it's slow. It randomly stops responding or takes forever to finish an operation, and in the meantime playback can be choppy. It also slows down OTHER applications by hogging the CPU. So I picked up a copy of Corel VideoStudio Pro X6 when it was on sale cheap. It's much better than Movie Maker. Probably more powerful than I need, and it has a lot of features I do not know how to use, but it's more better than Movie Maker. I'm sure there are plenty of other good video editors out there and other people can recommend whatever they use, but this one was inexpensive and has worked well for me.

[hbelkins]

It sounds as if 1995hoo has a dedicated dashcam instead of using a more traditional video camera. Most of the videographers I know or know of (Jim Georges, Kristophere Owens, John Verrier) use a standard video camera.

As for a mount, I use a Sunpak ClampPod Pro that clamps on the overhang of my instrument panel. There are a bunch of suction cup windshield mounts available. Jim Georges (FreewayJim) has his camera mounted on a tripod on the passenger's side and his son Erik usually sets the camera up and does the filming.

I dump my camera off onto an external hard drive and save all my footage. I haven't produced a video in forever, but when I do, I just go to that external hard drive archive and import it into my editing software (Apple's iMovie) and go from there.

The FreewayJim group on Facebook is an excellent source of information, advice and recommendations. I'd suggest joining that group, reading the posted tutorials, and then asking questions of the experts there. You'll get conflicting advice, most likely, but you'll get good guidance.

One regret I have is that my camera (a Panasonic with a built-in internal hard drive and also an SD card slot) isn't HD. Of course my roadtripping days are probably over so it doesn't really matter anymore...

[1995hoo]

It sounds as if 1995hoo has a dedicated dashcam instead of using a more traditional video camera. ....

Correct. I have a handheld digital video camera as well (a Christmas present back in 2007), but it's not really suitable for use in the car due to its design and it has some reliability issues in that the power randomly cuts off due to a poor battery design. Since all three cars are manual-shift, it's important for me to have something that need not be held in my hand at any time.

I have some pictures of mine mounted on the windshield, though they're outdated because I replaced the mount last fall due to the suction cup no longer sticking reliably. It really stinks when you're driving and your dashcam suddenly smashes down off the window when you're going around a corner and downshifting! (Plus I don't want it damaging the car.) I got a replacement suction-cup mount of a slightly different design and it's been much more reliable.

[brianreynolds]

Thanks to both of you for the advice.  I have a lot to digest before I will make a decision on a purchase.

[US81]

I recently bought a dashcam integrated into a rearview mirror. Video quality is great during the day, acceptable at night. I like the fact that, as structured, the camera is not overt and I can leave it in the vehicle ready to go without feeling like too much of a potential theft target. I have two microSD's; when one fills up, I exchange them and then transfer onto my PC. I've only done this for a few months, so I still have a lot to learn, but so far, I like this set-up.

[TEG24601]

I just have a cheap, $25, camera with suction mounts I picked up on Yugster about 8 months ago.  It works well enough, and uses a MicroSD card for storage.  I'm not sure about the video quality, because it doesn't pull the details, but gets the broad strokes.  I can see what the car or light are doing, but can barely read the license plate.  It purports to shoot in 480, 720, and 1080, but I have it set for 720.  I have one of the videos posted on YouTube if you want to check it out.

[jakeroot]

I use a GoPro Hero 3+ Black Edition. I considered the 4, but the additional cost was not justifiable to me.

I use the camera to record funny things I see. I use a 64gb MicroSD to record. Generally I get about 3.5 hours of 1080p footage.

My setup is the standard GoPro stickie mount (included in the package from Costco) attached to the center of my windscreen, with constant power supplied by an extra-long USB cable running from just behind my rearview mirror, around the right side of my windscreen, down below the glovebox, and to my center console where I have the power cord plugged in.

For footage importing, I use VLC player to open the video files directly from the SD card, and use the "record" feature of VLC (which basically duplicates a select amount of footage to a separate file). This allows me to not have to import all my footage (which could take an hour) but import only the clips I want. This prevents me from archiving any footage, but that wasn't the intent from the beginning so I don't worry about it.

As for the camera, it isn't perfect. The sound quality is acceptable (though my car is a little louder and that sometimes drains out the sound of everything else), and the night-time footage is, frankly, not very good. Lucky for me, most of my driving occurs during the day so this works well for me.

I used to use an iPhone, and it was a very good dashcam. The only problem I had was the small-ish storage space and the setup difficulty (opening the phone, keeping it charged, keeping it from falling down, etc). The footage was excellent, as was the sound quality, but I felt it wasn't really built for the job (but it still performed it well).

Brian Reynolds, what is the purpose of your dashcam?

[tradephoric]

These are some of the best quality dash cam footage i've seen posted on youtube.  They were all recorded with DSLR cameras.

Panasonic GH4 Shot in 4k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOst_yOuSCk

Canon T3i
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLGhhTOye0I

Canon T4i / 15-85mm lens
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDmdfZziqrk

You won't get this type of quality from a dedicated dash cam.  I use an SJ4000 as a dedicated dash cam (~$80) and a Panasonic GF3 w/ 35mm Fujian lens (~$120) when road geeking.  The video quality of the Panasonic is far superior to the SJ4000.

[Takumi]

http://jalopnik.com/the-best-budget-dash-cams-1688880273

[Thing 342]

http://jalopnik.com/the-best-budget-dash-cams-1688880273

Sorry to revive an old thread, but I was wondering if any here have had experience with the Doustech camera (the $40 one mentioned in the article as having the best value). I've been looking into dashcams recently, and found this to be the best fit for my budget. It seems to have decent recording quality and a decent-looking mount.

[cpzilliacus]

http://jalopnik.com/the-best-budget-dash-cams-1688880273

Sorry to revive an old thread, but I was wondering if any here have had experience with the Doustech camera (the $40 one mentioned in the article as having the best value). I've been looking into dashcams recently, and found this to be the best fit for my budget. It seems to have decent recording quality and a decent-looking mount.

Suggest you get on Facebook and join the FreewayJim group.  That's where the expert crowd hangs out.

[Sykotyk]

My primary concern would be crash/possible crash documentation. I've had several close calls, that if I did get hit, I want some more proof than an officer reconstructing the scene, the words of those involved, or inattentive witnesses.

So, quality doesn't have to be spectacular. One thing I want would be 'quick reset' or 'quick memory card replacement'. Do you have to stop it, or do you just eject the card and put in the new one and it starts recording again automatically? Does it overwrite old segments once your card runs out of space (if you let it) or will it stop once full?