Car DVR

Events that are worth recording during driving happen once in a while. For example, a hiking trip to mountains often include scenic routes. Encountering deer is not uncommon in New England suburbs. One can get a decent car DVR for well under $100 now, so owning one for occasional use can be justified. There are numerous car DVR models on the market.  Choosing one that has adequate quality and suits one's needs best can be a challenging task.

F900 Car DVR has resolutions up to 1080P and a 2.5'' LCD screen. It uses MJPEG for recording.  MJPEG has much less demand on computing power compared with other codecs with higher compression such as H.264, but takes much more storage space.  It uses about 1.5GB for 10 minutes of recording.  The required storage space varies with the recorded scene.  Colorful scenes take more space than dull scenes.

The SD slot is at such an awkward position that you may need a tweezers to take the card out. The image may be upside down, so you may have to flip the display a few times for the sensor to trigger the correct orientation of the image.  A fast SD card may be necessary for recording video without frequent stops.  I tried a 32GB Class 10 SD card, and the camera refuses to record any more video after using about 1GB of space.  I am not sure whether the SD card has a problem, but I am sure the camera's firmware has bugs judging from how the situation is handled.  I currently use an 8GB Class 6 SD card. and it seems to work fine.

Its video file has the following specs: 

Video stream:

• Codec: Motion JPEG Video (MJPG)
• Resolution: 1280x720
• Frame rate: 30
• Decoded format: Planar 4:2:0 YUV full scale

Audio stream:

• Type: Audio
• Codec: PCM S16 LE (araw)
• Channels: Mono
• Sample rate: 32000 Hz
• Bits per sample: 16