Can no longer record to device

I have 2 Wyze cam V4s, and when I first git them, they worked exactly like they were supposed to. I have them monitoring an enclosure for a nocturnal animal that I want to get video of, so the most important thing to me is that I’m able to access the video on my phone and download or pull it off of the SD cards. I would go to events, click on the one that I wanted to see, then use Record to save it to my phone. It worked great! Then there was an update. Since then, when I click Record, it looks fine until I click Stop, when I get an error message that says Recording failed with error: 'Recorded empty file. Deleted '. I’ve been in touch with Wyze help, who came to the conclusion that it was a problem with the app, and sent it to Engineering, who said that it would be fixed in the next update. Well, several updates later I’m still having the same problem, and since I let them know that it was still happening a couple of weeks ago, I haven’t heard back. So, I’m posting here to see if there’s a solution before I jump ship to a different brand. I know that I can pull the SD card to access the video, but for reasons that many of you probably know, that isn’t a good option. So, here is my information.

I’m using Wyze cam V4 currently running firmware version 4.52.8.0648, plug in 3.2.0.14. I’m on a Samsung Galaxy S24+

Has been reported a few times, especially with Samsung phones but seems to impact others also. Not sure what the ETA is for a fix. Seems to affect the v4 specifically.

On other cameras, the app has been saving both a still photo and video with the same name causing the phone to get confused, I’m wondering if the two bugs are related. As far as I know the only workaround right now is to take out the SD card and copy the files off that. You could also try going back to the 2.5 app but it isn’t clear if it is an app issue or firmware issue, or some combination.

Continuing the discussion from Can no longer record to device:

I’ve had corded wyze cams v3 with no major issues for a while. Now, when I record video footage from cam (SanDisk microSd 128gb) to my phone’s gallery, it saves as picture (jpg) not as video (mp4). If I restart my phone (new Samsung), then picture changes to video in gallery, BUT I end up with 2 videos and 1 picture for what should be a single video. If I delete one picture and 1 video and then empty trash, I lose everything; what’s in trash AND the 1 video I left in the Gallery.
I contacted Samsung, lots of back & forth, to no avail. “Next update should fix issue”. Still ongoing.

I need to know how this can be corrected urgently.

Thanks.

It’s a weird bug, but I don’t know if it is an issue due to Samsung’s Android system update or Wyze app update. It only happens on Android too as iOS works fine.

I only have Cam V3 so I don’t know if it applies to other cameras. The current workaround I found for Samsung Gallery:

  1. Press recent app and swipe up to close Samsung Gallery
  2. Open Samsung Gallery again and scroll up. If you don’t scroll up then video won’t appear for some reason.

Unfortunately, an image will still be saved in the Samsung Gallery (of when it stopped recording based on timestamp).

Thank you for replying. Unfortunately it does not work for me. Only thing that will enable me to have a video saved is by restarting my phone. Then I have triplicates which take up lots of memory on sd card. If I delete 2 and empty trash, the one I’d left in Gallery is deleted too. I’ve lost so much video footage already and I desperately need it for an ongoing, serious matter. So frustrating! Samsung does not help.

Thank you for trying.

It happens on my Pixel with stock android also.

You can’t fix it through the photo gallery. You have to go into the file manager for the OS, and rename the photo file to something else, just add a digit to the start or end of the file name (leave the extension alone). Deleting the image or changing the extension won’t fix it, that just confuses the phone even further. From what I recall, renaming the video doesn’t fix it either, you have to rename the image since that’s what it has indexed and it has to be prompted to re-check it. Renaming the image file forces the OS to re-index (just like rebooting does) and that solves it.

After renaming, at least in my stock android, both will now show in the gallery and I can delete the image.

Hopefully Wyze will fix this bug soon, no reason for it to save both a still frame and a video, especially not with the same name.

Thank you for replying. Not sure how to follow your instructions… Exactly how do I go to the “file manager for the OS”? I tried but no luck.

Also, would this solve the issue completely, or I would have to do this each time I recorded video footage to the gallery?

Appreciate your help.

Unfortunately until the bug is fixed, you have to do it each time you save a video.

On my Pixel it is just called “files”. On my really old Samsung it is called “My Files”. It is in with all your other programs, you can just search for “file” and should find it. Once in there you navigate to the directory, typically something like Internal Storage - > DCIM → Wyze → Cam something.

But if that is too much of a pain (it kind of is) you also have the option of opening the phone on your computer (either via hardwired connection or with something like phone link or nearby share). Or the easiest solution for now, if it suits your needs, just use the share feature in the Wyze gallery within their app. From there you can upload it to google, email it, send it via text message, etc. Heck you can even send it to yourself in Facebook messenger (a trick I use for a lot of photo transfers from my phone to PC when I’m too lazy to plug it in).

Though I’m curious if anyone in this thread has cloud synch enabled for photos and videos, and if so, if both files show up in the cloud drive, may be another possible workaround.

Thank you so much again for replying and explaining further. I did find ‘my files’ and can see all my videos and pics. Unfortunately, at this point, I have at least over 300 videos and pictures in triplicate and am afraid to start changing names and saving, then deleting what I would think would be duplicates, and losing everything. I’m dealing with a very serious matter and cannot afford to lose anymore "proof’.

Wish Wyze would fix bug on an urgent basis. Is this is not fixed very soon, I’ll have to replace all my cams.

As far as cloud sync I’m not sure, but I’ve tried Google Photos sync and what a big mess: If we have single, duplicates or triplicates on phone gallery, everything backs up. Then, if we delete pic or video from phone, it is automatically removed from Google and vice versa. Google wants us to fill free storage offered asap, so we have to buy and pay for additional storage. If not, we lose the capability to send or receive emails, save further pics and or videos, etc.
Thanks again Dave27.

You should be able to go into a folder for just the wyze stuff (or do you have 300 of those)?

If you have that many, your best bet may be to connect your phone to a computer. You can either view the files directly on the phone from the computer, or transfer the whole folder to the computer. Then either way, you can sort by file name and delete the duplicate file names that are image files (.png or .jpg I forget which). Then you’ll be left with just the videos of the same name in .mp4 format. You can transfer them back to the phone or keep them on the PC at that point. Or if you don’t care about any still photos, sort by file type and delete all the image files from the wyze folders, leaving just the .mp4 videos.

If you need to trim down the videos (sounds like you have doubles and triples) you can do that more easily on the PC also, sort by date, view thumbnails, play videos more easily, etc.

If you don’t want to delete anything, simply changing the name of the video files will at least make them show up in your phone’s gallery, alongside the images. Changing the file name shouldn’t hurt anything, just add a “1” or whatever to the beginning and even if you have to change it back for some reason, it will be obvious which ones you changed.

Thanks Dave27, once more.

I have already tried many of your suggestions and there’s a big mess going on, both on the phone as well as on the computer.

Due to the serious matter going on, and having lost a lot of footage from gallery, I’ve had to work continuously till the wee hours of morning trying to find and recapture footage from wyze cam’s microSd card. It has been so intensive that I’m exhausted. Anything duplicate or triplicate, including videos I had to make short versions of, that were deleted, are now in various folders labeled ‘trash do not delete’, as trash empties in 30 days and I cannot afford to lose any.

I do have over 300+ wyze videos and pics due to the matter I’m dealing.

Not an easy fix, untill Wyze does the right thing. I’ve made them aware; I’m not only one having this issue.
For a while, everything was working the way it should have on ny new phone; then, it started acting up.

Thank you.

Just keep in mind when Wyze fixes it, it will only be for recordings going forward, very unlikely the fix will go back and find and rename previous files. The limitation right now is an Android one (combined with the fact that Wyze is saving two files with the same file name, but different extension) and that won’t change.

If you still have all the footage on microSD, you may want to take everything you have, both PC and phone, put it in a folder called like “just in case” on your PC, and start from scratch. Record the events you want, then drop them in a brand new folder on the PC (and delete the still images if you want). This may be easier than sorting through all the files you’ve saved to date and weeding out the duplicates, triplicates, etc. In fact, if you take the micro SD out of the camera and put in your PC, you can more easily go through the clips and they will be higher quality and smaller file size than recording using the Wyze app. Using the video player on your PC you can more easily fast forward, rewind, etc. Just keep in mine each 1 minute segment will be a separate file but most media players have a forward and back button so you can skip between files, and a delete icon so you can easily move the ones you don’t want to the recycle bin.

If you don’t still have everything on SD, then you’ll probably just have to get all files into a single folder on the PC, from both the phone and PC, hopefully some will overwrite based on having the same file name (which should be perfectly safe to do) which will eliminate some of the duplicates, then just go through them and delete (or move to a spare folder) the ones that are not relevant.

Wow! Thank you for really trying to help. Yes, I understand that if ‘they’ come up with a fix, it’s from such a date. We’ll see how this all ends. For now, what I know is that I cannot lose anymore footage, etc.

Again, thanks.

As long as you have all the files on a computer, you should be able to view all the videos (Windows and Mac don’t have the limitation where the same file name with different extensions confuses it, it will show both just fine). So you should be “safe”, if not just a bit of a mess to sort through.

Not sure if all the footage is still on SD or not. If it is, my recommendation would be to take the SD out of the cam (go into the wyze app and do “eject” first to ensure you don’t corrupt anything), hook it up to a computer, and copy the entire contents to the computer. Assuming you have 128GB free on the computer (or can use an external drive or a good brand reliable thumb drive if you need to).

Then just get rid of everything else on both the phone and PC. Now you know you have an exact duplicate of the SD card, in the highest video quality possible, in a safe place, and have eliminated all the confusion from the duplicate/triplicate files.

Then if you know the date(s) of the footage you need, it is very easy to remove all the irrelevant stuff, since the folders and files are all named by date and time. Or you could even just copy those folders only to the PC and save a lot of space (not sure how narrowed down you can get). But I guess if you want to be 100% sure and have 128G free on the computer, just copy the whole thing.

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Thanks Dave27.

Thank you. I will eventually try all this.

I’m definitely on board with grabbing everything directly from a camera’s microSD card for archiving the highest-quality videos. I also like the idea of connecting the phone to your PC and using your PC to browse the files.

As far as the duplicates on the phone are concerned, there are freely-available utilities (for PC) that can identify and offer to delete unnecessary duplicates (I’ve used the tool within CCleaner to do things like this) by doing file-by-file comparisons based on things like file size and checksum to identify true duplicates. I don’t know if any of these would act directly on a connected phone’s storage (i.e., see the phone’s storage exactly as if it was another drive), and it’s probably safer to run these sorts of things against a copy, so in a case like this I’d consider…

  1. Connecting the phone to the PC using a USB cable.
  2. Copying the folder(s) with the desired/duplicate videos from the phone’s storage to a “work” area on the PC’s hard drive.
  3. Run a duplicate file finder utility against the “work” area and delete unwanted/unneeded files.
  4. Once satisfied that you have the “save” file set you want to keep, delete the unwanted files (essentially the folder(s) you copied in step #2) from the phone and copy the “save” files/folders back to the phone (in case you want/need to be able to view/share them on/from the phone at some point).

That’s how I might go about freeing up phone storage space, since that seems to be one of the concerns here.

Thanks for your reply, Crease.

When I have an opportunity, I’m going to review all the steps you’ve mentioned. My new phone has a microSd card inserted, so I can just safely remove it and insert on my pc. Presently, I do not have storage capacity issues as my phone is new, however, at this rate (duplicates/triplicates auto saved), it will not take too long.

Thank you for your input again.

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Oh, yeah, that’s even better. :+1:

I thought I picked up on something about that in the earlier discussion, and I thought you also mentioned concern about storage space on the phone.

You’re welcome! :upside_down_face: