I recently purchased a v4 camera and would like to understand the video recording capacities of the different larger sizes of micro SD cards (128GB, 256GB, 512GB) if I set it to “Continuous Recording”.
On the Wyze product page for microSD cards, Wyze lists out the capacities, but:
a) it shows the same capacity for the 128 GB and 256 GB cards, which must be a typo since I would expect the 256 GB card to have double the capacity of the 128 GB.
b) it only lists HD video capacity. Since the v4 (and v3 Pro) can record in 2.5K QHD, I’d like to know the card storage capacity for 2.5K QHD video.
Good catch! I think that’s a reasonable expectation, and this seems like something Wyze should correct. In the past, I’ve submitted correction requests via e-mail to Support (I’ve had to open a ticket to do this), and sometimes they update things like that, but it can take time.
I don’t know if this helps or not, but I went back to the earliest place I could find in the timeline on a Cam v4 that’s doing continuous recording to a 256 GB microSD card, and then because I’m lazy I asked WolframAlpha to calculate the time difference between then and now, and it said that it’s 18 days, 6 hours, and 45 minutes.
I did not look through the entire timeline nor pull the card and check the file list/hierarchy to ensure that every minute of that has actually been recorded, and I will note that we had a brief (momentary) power outage here during a recent thunderstorm. I’m also a little puzzled by this figure, because when I did a similar check with a Cam OG a while back, I was seeing 17 days of continuous recording. Now I’m a little curious about the compression issues that I read about sometimes, but for my uses I don’t know that it’s worth the trouble to do a lot of digging.
Just my 2 cents. The 128GB card has 119.36 usable space and the 256GB card has 238.71 usable space in my cams. The V4 and V3 Pro record a little over 9 GB per day when on continuous recording.
FYI, for anyone who cares about the confusing way this works, this is because:
SD cards advertise in the decimal system which is called “Gigabytes” (GB) and makes it look like the card holds more data than it really does. 1 GB is equal to 1,000,000,000 bytes
While computers (including phones, smart cameras, etc) generally work in and report in in the binary system which is more accurately called “Gibibytes” (GiB). 1 GiB is equal to 1,024 * 1,024 * 1,024 bytes (approximately 1,073,741,824 bytes.
So the SD card is telling you the decimal system capacity and the Wyze app is telling you the more accurate Binary system capacity… Probably minus other factors like formatting and file system overhead, which makes the actual usable space on the card slightly less than advertised by the SD card manufacturer. Wyze just says “G” instead of GiB, probably because non-tech people would be confused, and it is accurate enough for most purposes.
The amount of space taken can also depend on a few factors like whether you’re using night vision ever, which uses fewer frames per second, and how much traffic and changing details are in view which can affect the amount of compression is able to be effective. So it does vary a little bit for each person. But a general good rule is to assume you need roughly nine GB per 24hrs of recording. You can get away with less if your camera rarely has any action, or a lot of different detail, or if you use night vision a lot.
Oh, yeah. That’s a good point about frame rate that I didn’t consider. I have Night Vision Mode set to Off on the Cam v4 and Auto on the Cam OG (which currently shows 18 days, 17 hours, 15 minutes of recordings). They’re in different locations and obviously not recording under the same conditions, so this isn’t a true head-to-head comparison.
“Good enough for government work!”
It’s also imprecise enough to put in attorneys’ pockets with lawsuits that make the distinction.
So much G! It makes me think of a recent discussion where I think at least part of confusion was the result of the loose use of “G”, so some participants seemed to be conflating something like 5G cellular (“G” as in “generation”) networks with 5 GHz Wi-Fi (“G” as in “giga”, the metric billion prefix preceding “hertz” to quantify a frequency) networks. Your words matter, people! Use them carefully!
Also, I’m pretty sure this is why @carverofchoice gave the to my previous post:
Great, thank you all for your input! Using the estimate of 9GB per day for 2.5K video, it looks like:
a 128GB card should hold around 13 days of footage
a 256GB card should hold around 26 days of footage, and
a 512GB card should hold around 52 days of footage.
Thanks for this data point! It appears you are not getting the max video duration, especially if video duration is similar to the Cam OG, which is FHD instead of QHD. But as you mentioned, maybe other factors are affecting the used storage.
As far as the difference/similarity between Cam v4 and Cam OG recordings is concerned, I’m not really sure how to account for it. Like I said, it’s not a true head-to-head comparison, but I’m curious about what that might demonstrate. I also don’t know of any way as a user to control the quality of the actual recordings. (I read about people setting their streams to different resolutions, and I see the “2K” box in the upper left corner of the live viewer that I can tap to select a different resolution, but I assume that’s just for the live stream itself and doesn’t affect recordings at all.) Really, the main reason I have some Cam v4s is because they were only slightly more expensive than the Cam OGs during a recent sale, but given the quality I get from both I’d be pleased with either for my applications.
Long time ago I was told by a Wyze employee that no matter what resolution you select the SD card recordings are in 1920 x 1080, the only difference is the bit rate. Mind you this was for the V3. If you select HD than the bit rate is higher than SD, hence larger file. Also, I was told that if you select 360p it will still record in SD quality. I’m guessing they would be using same logic for 2K cameras.
That’s interesting and puzzling. I’m seeing the resolution I would’ve expected, but I don’t knowwhat to say about the frame rate. I haven’t tried pulling microSD cards from different cameras and seeing what other software tells me about the video details.
This would be my expectation, but I haven’t pulled a card and looked at that, either.
That makes sense in the context where I’ve read of others selecting a lower resolution stream, because it seems like they’re just trying to make the streams load faster in the app and/or save data because they’re just looking at live views on smaller (phone) screens, anyway.
Frame rate on the cloud video was 14.60 frames/second.
The 10 frames per second may be off because I recorded the video from the SD to my phone. I don’t feel like getting the ladder out to check the video on the card itself.
Oh, gotcha. That makes a lot more sense. I was thinking you were looking at details of a file you opened from a microSD card directly on your PC. Thanks for clarifying!
in attorneys’ pockets with lawsuits that make the distinction.
to my previous post:
