I’m trying to calculate recording times for continuous recording to a 256G SD card for a Floodlight V2. I read: A 256GB Wyze microSD card can store approximately 16 days of HD video and 56 days of SD video. How does one select the video quality to use for recording? I figure 16 days is a long time, so I’ll probably use HD, but if I wanted to record longer, where would I select the different quality settings? Thanks.
I don’t have any flood cams but on my V3Pro and V4 cams if you tap on the screen while in live view the resolution will show in the upper left corner. If you tap the number while it is showing you can change the resolution.
1 Like
Thank you! I just looked and it was set to 360p. Weird. I think I’ll use 2K which should give me 16 days of continuous recording. That should be enough to go back and check is something happens in the driveway/ally. There are 3 values: 360p, SD, and 2K.
There’s some prior discussion here about the recorded resolution. It’s my understanding that the camera’s native resolution is still recorded, irrespective of what the setting is on the live view. And even that setting isn’t fixed, it can change depending on the connection quality.
The issue of recording to the SD has been discussed here forever. I think you are correct that changing the resolution on the camera only changes the bitrate. I think @habib discussed this with a WYZE employee a long time ago.
Yes, that is correct. I was told that the camera will record at its native resolution and SD will just drop the bit rate. Also I was told that it will never record in 360p.
1 Like
You can only change the viewing quality of the video, the recording quality is fixed. On all my cams, it varies between 8 and 12 megabytes per minute depending on the complexity of the view and how much motion there is. They use higher compression on the higher resolution cams to keep it to approximately 1 megabit (0.125 megabytes) per second average (so about the same for both the 1080P cams and the 2.5K ones).
Honestly, you don’t want any less than that, personally I’d rather they record to the SD card at like 2x or 4x less compression than they use for the video stream so that higher quality video is available when needed. I’d happily sacrifice some recording time or buy bigger cards for that.
1 Like
I have to agree with you there. I want the clearest picture recorded. I have a 256G SD so I’m hoping I can get at least 2 weeks of footage. In my garage, I only record when motion is detected, but in the driveway/alley, I want to record all the time. I may change my mind, but what is the downside of always recording?
256G should easily give you more than 2 weeks. My 128G cards, the busiest cam (motion results is more data/less compression) I think the worst I saw was 8 or 9 days. My less busy ones can do 12 or 13. So you’ll get double that.
As long as the card is up to the task (preferably endurance rated cards), there isn’t really any downside to continuous recording. The Samsung Pro Endurance cards I have, according to their specs, should do 16 years of continuous recording at the rate the Wyze cams record at, and 5 years of that is warrantied.
The only cams i don’t record continuously on are the ones facing my front and back doors from the inside, since 99% of the time there is nothing to record and the other 1% it would be nearly impossible for them to not trigger based on motion. Someone would also have to walk by at least 2 other cams that are continuously recording to get to that point.
1 Like
On the subject of video recording, why am I getting this notification in my recent events? I’ve specified contious recording to the SD card. Is this just a WYZE ad?
Probably trying to get you to purchase Cam Plus to get “Continuous” event recordings.
Hmm. It does appear that even though I’m continuously recording to the SD card, I’m limited to how many “motion events” I can see? That sucks. Do you know the number of free events per day? Thanks.
There are no limits per day.You get whatever events you get except there is a five minute cooldown between events. So if an event occurs let say at 5:00 PM and another at 5:03 PM and another one at 5:06 PM you will only get notification as well as tagging on SD card for the 5:00 and 5:06 PM events. No notification or tag for the 5:03 PM.
1 Like
Motion events are events record to the WYZE servers. If you don’t have Cam Plus you will just get a photo/no video on the events page, There is probably 5 min period of no between “event recordings” to the server?. To view the recordings on the SD card you have to tap the SD icon.
My V4 on continuous recording looks like this.
You are limited to one “event” or “notification” every 5 minutes without a subscription. That’s the “cool down” period that non subscribers have. However the SD card has continuous recording, it just won’t have events logged or icons on the timeline for additional events within 5 minutes. But the actual video will be there.
Yes the thing you’re seeing is just an advertisement for cam plus, it can be ignored, it has nothing to do with the SD card recording. Actually it is a bit misleading since cam plus is never actually “continuous” unless you have someone dance in front of the camera nonstop all day, even then it would probably hit some sort of time limit.
1 Like
I don’t think any of my cams record event videos any longer than 5 min. each before it starts another video.
Well you could get one of those arm waving things from the used car dealer and you’d have continuous cloud recording, just with a blip every 5 mins.
1 Like
