Do any dash cams take pictures along with taking video? Beállítások

[Guest_Micropyle_*]

Identifying a license plate is a critical requirement. Therefore, I'm curious if any dashcams focus on doing a good job of that by taking pictures every X seconds to match up with video. Considering that single image quality in a video is often really crappy (try pausing a video on your iPhone compared to taking a picture on your iPhone) I'm wondering if a few snaps would greatly enhance the ability to identify a car if the license is blurry in a video?

[Guest_charterpoison_*]

Not really.

The B1W do take a single picture at the start of every segment, but there are no cameras that take a picture every second or so ( though it has to be more of than that that for a car and the fast-paced environment they move thru )
you are right that if you pause a video or go thru a video footage frame by frame you will notice poor IQ you didn't really notice at playback, this is mostly to do with the way our eyes work, and out brain extrapolating on what it assumes things must be/look like.

But even if you are snapping individual photos and not video frames, the problem will be the same, and in general, this is down to the exposure timing the camera choose to use, and if there is little light then the camera drop / slow down exposure so the sensor has time to collect more light. and this is also fine IF! there is no movement ( which there always are in dashcam footage )

The best low light performing dashcams use the Sony MIX 291 sensor today, but that's still just a 2.1-megapixel sensor with just enough pixels to capture a 1920 x 1080 image, and the reason for that is the individual pixels on the sensor are large and so better at capturing light.
you can have another sensor with the same physical size but then have 20 megapixels, but to make room for all those pixels on the sensor they have to be much smaller and so worse than capturing light.

Now you can get sensors that can capture stunning low light footage too, but then we are talking about full frame sensors or larger where you have room for the large individual pixels and still have the large and light sensitive.
And then we are talking a whole other ballgame when it comes to price, you will probably have to put at least 2 more zeros on the price tag for a camera with that kind of hardware.

With the technology in today's dashcams you can really only expect plate capture ( even of large simple EU plates ) in the best of weather in the daytime, it doesn't even have to be late evening for dashcams to start struggling with illusive things like plates on cars.

There are tricks like pixel binning on some cameras, this means the camera bin 4 pixels on the sensor to act as one and so more light sensitive unit, but doing that you, of course, sacrifice resolution.
This we have not yet seen in dashcams, but I reckon we will see that soon, and personally, I don't think its all that stupid.
Say you have a sweet sensor with the +8 megapixel it takes to record nice daytime 4K footage when the light than dim the camera could change to binning and so just have 1/4 of the resolution but then be much more light sensitive.

BUT ! you should not focus that much / hard on plate capture, if you do you will never get a dashcam, of pay over the moon for something professional that's not really a dashcam.
And trust me any dashcam are much better than no dashcam.

[Guest_Dichogamous_*]

Identifying a license plate is a critical requirement. Therefore, I'm curious if any dashcams focus on doing a good job of that by taking pictures every X seconds to match up with video. Considering that single image quality in a video is often really crappy (try pausing a video on your iPhone compared to taking a picture on your iPhone) I'm wondering if a few snaps would greatly enhance the ability to identify a car if the license is blurry in a video?

The good dashcams have 1080 resolution sensors and they record 1080 resolution video, so taking a photo doesn't give any extra resolution. The only advantage would be if the photo had less compression, however, that is not normally the case, as long as the video bitrate is decent then the photos don't have any advantage over a freeze frame from the video.

It may be possible to get a better photo if you used a lower ISO setting and longer shutter speed, but you can't do that because the sensor is in use for video, and anyway it would cause extra motion blur which is normally bad for reading plates.

[Guest_Cybernate_*]

If plate capture is important, the best sensor for that is your eyes. One trick some people do is say the plate number aloud so the cam's audio recorder remembers it, and it is time-referenced to that spot in the video. Between those two you should have enough to get official involvement of some kind if you need it.

[Guest_danielhowell_*]

There are some action cameras that are also used as dashcams which can record video along with photos at regular intervals. The 8MP / 4k GitUp F1 can do it, for example. However I consider the time interval between photo frames is too big to be really useful for number plate capture.

[Guest_seobacklinks420_*]

If plate capture is important, the best sensor for that is your eyes. One trick some people do is say the plate number aloud so the cam's audio recorder remembers it, and it is time-referenced to that spot in the video. Between those two you should have enough to get official involvement of some kind if you need it.

That's good for cars in front of you that you can see. Not so good for ones that rear end you!

[Guest_charterpoison_*]

Thanks for the really informative response! That helps my understanding a lot. I guess I'm stuck in a bit of a hard spot though. I am particularly interested in the hit and run cases where I was not present in my vehicle when it happened so saying the plate out loud won't be an option :confused: but I guess having a dash cams to at least capture daytime hit and runs is better than nothing at all. Thanks again for the replies!

[Guest_Dichogamous_*]

That's good for cars in front of you that you can see. Not so good for ones that rear end you!

If they back away afterward you can see their front plate in your mirrors. If they turn around or pass you, you can see the rear plate. If it's at night you jump out and get the plate with your honking big flashlight, which will probably let the rear can get more details too. And you use enough light, you'll temporarily blind the buggar making it a lot harder for them to run.

No dashcam is going to cover every possibility. These cams are not professional "Hollywood" stuff where there's a crew working everything and enough time to set things up to get a perfect shot. They generally capture enough to prove your innocence in a crash and to get at least a halfway decent description of a person or car who causes you or your car grief. That is usually enough, and if you're that concerned about it you should get well-insured to cover the rest. You can't really expect more from a ~$200 consumer-grade product. Your eyes will always be able to outperform a dashcam at close range.

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