vehicles according to The Association of British Insurers is valued at £376 million per year. This has surged by an average of 21% across the UK over the last 3 years, likely due to the increasing prices of new technology vehicles, and the heavy status symbols that are given to them.
Not only are criminals stealing vehicles in their entirety, but car parts have also become a target of theft. This is likely because reselling whole cars can be easily tracked. Not only this, but many manufacturing production lines have closed as a result of the coronavirus outbreak, increasing the value of parts such as catalytic converters, with 1000 of them being stolen in London every month.
Unsuspecting to most people, motorbikes are the most likely vehicle to be stolen, with statistics suggesting that 1 in every 46 bikes are stolen annually.
Roads can be highly unpredictable places, with 1460 fatal casualties on Britain’s roads in 2020, with 22,014 people seriously injured – despite the lack of traffic during the coronavirus period.
In order to combat both road accidents and road theft, drivers have begun to adopt dash cams as a means of improving their levels of security and safety. Here at Viofo, your security and safety are the key drivers for our company’s existence. A common difficulty users have with dash cams, is that recording for long periods of time can exhaust the battery and memory of your device, with most lasting 1-2 hours. We have therefore created this blog in order to clarify what a dashcam is, and how users can improve their functionality of theirs in order to maximise the time they can record for.
How many hours can a dashcam record for?
There is contrasting information out there with regards to how many hours a dash cam can record for. The factors affecting the longevity of your dashcam’s recording time includes: the type and storage capacity of your SD card, and the battery life of your action camera.
By setting your dash cam perimeters to record 1080p HD at 30 FPS, then you ensure you are able to capture incidents with enough room. With the aforementioned settings, a 16GB Micro SD card can record 2 hours’ worth of footage before it begins to overwrite the oldest recordings. A 32 GB Micro SD card can hold up to 4 hours’ worth of footage.
How can dashcam recording hours be improved?
Optimizing the amount of footage captured on your devices is of the upmost importance, as it is the main purpose of your device. Without maximizing your storage capabilities, you could be missing out on being able to record footage that may mean the difference between being found guilty or innocent at a court hearing.
As mentioned previously, the main determinant for increasing footage longevity is to upgrade your Micro SD card, as this is what stores all of your footage. SD cards can differentiate in three ways: the size of SD card, codec type, and quality of SD card.
Size
The size of SD cards has a huge impact. The larger the SD card, the more recording is stored, until the card is full and starts to write over itself. The cheaper end of dashcam suitable SD cards have a maximum of 32 GB, with the top end ranging up to 256GB.
Codec type
A codec is the software that compresses your video so that it can be stored and played back. Codec can digitize and compress an audio or video signal for transmission and alternative use. There are 2 commonly used Codecs: 264 and 265.
The main difference between the two codec types, is that H.265 codec compresses information more efficiently than H.264. As a result, files recorded on a H.265 codec have comparable video quality to that of the H.264 but are about half the size. The main benefits of using a H.265 therefore, are that the files don’t take up as much storage space and require less bandwidth to stream.
Quality
The quality of an SD card can differ greatly among suppliers. Cheap cards wear a lot quicker, which can result in lost memory capacity. As a result of this, Viofo only offers the highest quality of SD cards, in order to ensure the highest level of user satisfaction and dash cam functionality.
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As highlighted above, there is a huge demand for dash cams in 2022, in order to combat the huge levels of vehicle theft and road accidents. Dash cams are not as powerful if their recording capacity is limited. Despite the lack of consistency online, the average answers suggested that a 16GB Micro SD card if used on the right settings can be used for 2 hours straight, compared to a 32 GB Micro SD card, which has 4 hours straight recording capacity.
The longevity of your camera’s recording performance is heavily dependent on the SD you use. Prioritizing the size, codec type, and quality of your SD card will ensure that you maximize your capabilities.
Here at Viofo we supply SD cards that encumber all of the aforementioned values. To see which dashcams we provide, or the SD cards that would maximize your experience, then check out our website. If you would like to find out more information, feel free to contact us directly, and we’d be happy to help!
View our helpful buying guide before purchasing your Viofo Dashcam.
