Dashcam Troubleshooting Help

John Kimble on 09/07/2020 - 13:03

Hi All,

Hoping for some advice.

I was gifted a Kenwood DRV-330 dashcam for Xmas 2018.

A month or two ago I noticed some the videos did not have thumbnails visible when I tried to view them, just a red cross. Nothing would play when I tried to view. Chucked the SD card in my phone and I could see the file sizes (although they had the correct timetamp file names) were 0 bytes in file size.

I thought perhaps it was just a once off, so I just formatted the SD card and monitored it. Sure enough it happened again a few weeks later. So I thought perhaps my Samsung EVO SD card was faulty and I bought a new High Endurance SanDisk one in late June.

All seemed fine since, but I just noticed today that some videos from this morning and yesterday have had the same issue.

Has anyone experienced the same or similar?

Any tips to resolve or do I have to consider getting a new dashcam?

Apparently there is only a 1 year warranty on it. Cannot find any contact/support details on the Kenwood website.

TIA,
DJK

Automotive Dash Camera

Comments

  • jimbobaus on 09/07/2020 - 13:20

    I thought the red x were ones that were flagged to be removed/recorded over ?

    I could be wrong but i had a video camera that did that a while back, the 0 file size and red x indicated they were flagged to be recorded over

    • John Kimble on 09/07/2020 - 13:27

      Not in my case, the "corrupted" videos are the most recent videos, it should record over the oldest ones first (they seem fine, I can see the thumbnail photos and playback these videos with no issues).

  • Hithere on 09/07/2020 - 14:11

    Just grasping at straws here but how do you format your SD card?

    I used to have occasional SD card issues when formatting them using Windows and now I use a small (free) dedicated format program called GUI Format, and, touch wood, no more issues.

    https://dashcambros.com/pages/format-memory-card-to-fat32

    • John Kimble on 09/07/2020 - 14:12

      I use the format option in the dashcam itself.

      I don't have a laptop/pc to download that program unfortunately.

  • Zephyrus on 09/07/2020 - 19:23
    +1

    Where did you get the the cards from?

    Use something like https://h2testw.en.lo4d.com/windows to see if the full size is available. You can get that sort of issue on counterfeit cards or cards where part of the memory is faulty.

    Alternatively it's likely a power issue with the dashcam browning out internally when it tries to write a file. That's unfortunately a not worth fixing sort of problem, unless it's a battery problem then you could try replacing that.

    • John Kimble on 10/07/2020 - 11:35

      Latest one was from ebay, can't remember the Samsung one…that one was from years ago.

      • Zephyrus on 10/07/2020 - 11:58

        Yeah, 100% check if it's counterfeit. Ebay is notorious for counterfeit cards and cause exactly what you're seeing. Basically the first 512MB or so will exist, so you can read and write some files to it (including the file table) but anything you write past the first 512MB will disappear.

        Good news is you will 100% you will get your money back as it is a crime to sell them.

  • stueyh on 10/07/2020 - 11:10
    +1

    Try doing a factory reset on the dashcam as a first step, I was having issues with mine and this step seemed to fix them

    • John Kimble on 10/07/2020 - 11:15

      I actually figured out how to do this with a paperclip after I posted…keeping an eye on it now…

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