I’ve been away from the forum for a few months due to other pressures.
What is the current status of being able to download video clips to my computer from the SD cards in my cameras? Currently if I want video clips on my computer I have to dig my ladder out of my garage, climb it to the camera, dismount the SD card, cliimb down, copy the SD card contents into my computer, climb the ladder again to put the card back in the camera, telescope the ladder down, then do all of that again for 4 more cameras.
I’m getting way too old for that nonsense.
When can we expect to see that basic function of being able to download our cameras’ SD cards over the network?
Since you stated SD cards in Cam-Outdoor you could avoid the ladder and just download them to your phone then send them to your computer. Since I have a strong dislike for ladders that is what I do.
Well, I was forced to add two topic tags. None of the available ones were really on-topic so I just picked two that were fairly close. But the issue applies to any camera that will take an SD card. Even indoor cams, that don’t require ladders for access, you shouldn’t have to take them offline and remove the SD card just to be able to copy what’s on there.
Understood. @Antonius can provide details about how the Battery Operated (DC) Outdoor Cams utilize the SD Card. Those are significantly different from the Plug In Cams (AC). I don’t own any of those and have never used one.
For all the other AC Powered cams with an SD Card though, it isn’t an option and probably won’t be. I would imagine it may have something to do with the file structure that is being used to save all the individual one minute files, but that is just a guess. It is probably much more complicated than that.
The video clips are stored as industry-standard video clips, MP4 if I recall correctly. There is absolutely no technical reason why they can’t be made available to download. None whatsoever.
I wasn’t referring to the File Format but the File Structure of how they are organized and indexed on the SD Card but not displayed as individual video files in the SD Player or Timeline. It would require the SD Playback UI to be able to discriminate which one minute MP4 to individually download in a timeline that has multiple videos stitched together with no individual file markers.
Even if they did decide to implement something like this, which they have already said is “Probably Not”, it wouldn’t be implemented in anything V3 and prior under the old UX. Since new cams are all using the new UX, that would be the only place I would expect any enhancements.
They are stored in a directory hierarchy organized by date and time. Dismount the SD card and plug it into your friendly Windoze machine and you can see the directory structure, it’s pretty straightforward.
I’d be happy if I could just download the raw data formatted as it is, and take care of the post-processing later. That would be MUCH better than nothing.
And yes, I’m aware they have categorized this as “probably not”. There is no excuse for that other than “we’re going to do what we’re going to do and not worry too much about what the customers want”.
It would be straightforward if the Cam CPU Chip actually has the physical capacity to hold the logic necessary and capability to facilitate this feature. We don’t know the hardware or the software limitations to make this happen. These cams do not have Mobile Phone or Computer level processors in them. Yet we continue to question Wyze’s dedication to customer satisfaction rather than to ask the more specific questions as to the limiting factors that are prohibiting progress in this area.
But, since this is a Wishlist issue, any feedback for Wyze with regard to this request would need to be posted within that Wishlist topic if they are expected to read it. It likely will not be read by Wyze out here in the general Forum.
They must have at least rudimentary filesystem capability otherwise they wouldn’t be able to write the video clips to the SD card in a standard directory tree. Since they can write, I’m assuming they can read and send.
This has been asked for in this and the wishlist forum since long before I ever got involved with Wyze products. Their answer has been to mark it “Probably not” and then pretty much ignore it after that.
I’m hoping maybe Matt will see this and carry it forward, since he seems to really care about what customers want (thanks, Matt).
Yeah, although I don’t like the idea of having to climb the ladders either, but I don’t do it more than once, just have extra SD cards and swap them out when you’re up on the ladder anyways, then the next time you want to copy the contents just take the old SD card and swap it back since you already have the data off of it.
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Just to put this out there (don’t know for sure) but… wouldn’t adding a way to see the “File Structure” through ‘online’ (via internet) open up a vulnerabilty situation within the security?
I can’t say for sure since I’m not versed in the specifics of how the proprietary Wyze security logic works on the Cam Firmware or the Wyze Web Portal.
But, my limited understanding would lead me to assume that it wouldn’t require any more security to secure that access as it would to secure the Web View access to the cam Live Stream.
While there may be some security issues, I would think that the main limitation would be in the capacity of the processor in the cam and in the firmware logic to act as a NAS WiFi File Server with Remote Access capability, either thru the Web Portal or thru the App on a secure P2P local network or remote mobile\WiFi connection.
If you’ve saved something to your album, you can also share it (send via email text, etc) or on an iOS, one of the options is to “Save to Files” or “Save Video”. Of course, you would have to save each video and accomplish the save individually.
+1 request for “download file” ability instead of the current crappy record while watching crap.
When you do the record wile recording, the recording is subject to freezing and jumpy of the internet connection - whereas a file download will not have any connection related issues in it.
I didn’t realize the cam specific topic tag. My reply was only pertaining to AC cams.