32GB card only recording 5 days in SD

Hi all

I have two v2 Wyzecams that do not get the quoted 7-8 days of playback/video storage. I was wondering if something has changed, I did something wrong at setup, or whats going on? It would be nice to get a full 7 days instead of 5.

This is the card in question: Amazon.com

 

Thank you

The amount of video that will fit on the card is dependent on how much compression can be done on the stream. The amount of compression is dependent on things like the uniformity of the image and how much change there is in the image over time. So you will have more video stored for a night scene with a lot of black areas and little motion, for example. On the other hand, a busy street with lots of variation would result in larger files and hence stored video.

Some things you can do to increase the amount stored:

  1. Change from HD to SD mode. You may not notice very much degradation in quality (it is still 1080p).
  2. Change from continuous to motion-only recording. Unlike the cloud alert videos, motion recording to the card records every minute in which motion occurs.
  3. Try a larger card. While larger than 32GB is not officially supported, many users have reported success with 64GB cards.
 

BTW, love your avatar!

The FAQ probably needs to be updated. v1 was 10 fps, v2 15 fps. (frames per second). And the same duration video will take more space on the SD card.

Consider using “record on event”, it saves space and makes reviewing the video less boring.

I am reasonably sure that using record on event does not “extend the life” of the SD card. I think it is always recording, and then deletes the video when it determines that there were no significant events during the last minute. The reason I think this, is that I don’t think there is enough RAM to store 1 minutes worth of video. This may actually be worse for the SD card, since it is more likely to reuse the same cells over and over again. And most SD manufacturers don’t specify if the microcontrollers on the SD card are doing “wear leveling”. My guess is that they don’t or use a simple algorithm. “High Endurance” cards probably have better wear leveling implemented.

The v1 camera alerts videos start a bit before the triggering event, the v2 are delayed until a bit after. So if you want to see what happened right before, the v1 is better, but the v2 gives you a better chance of including significant parts before the 12 seconds runs out.

When the card is full does recording stop or overwrite what is on the card?

If stop on full do we get a notification to format card?

It will overwrite the oldest video.

Great this is the behavior I was expected.

If you don’t need sound, I believe setting -Don’t record sound- will give you some extra storage room as well.

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My two cents on this important topic mascarades a feature request…

Improve the WyzeCam OS to support NAS (at a minimum), and support a web-based mgmt interface that controls the data stream from discrete camera sources to a dedicated network share.

I’m certain I’m not the only WyzeCam owner who has proposed this needed feature.