[Tam the Bam]

Originally Posted by TikiTourer

What I did is put the drive recorder app on the home screen bottom right side. If I want to activate the drive recorder manually, it's then just 1 touch. It's easier and less distracting than holding the camera button down when you are driving.

Same here..... it also showed if ‘Drive recorder was available’ back in the days when the software didn’t always initiate it.

[Bris-M340i]

It’s not the best set up but does what it says on the packet. My only concern is how accurate the crash detection system is as I haven’t been able to test this Also the resolution could be a little better in my opinion.

[murderedg20]

Wasn't able to test the crash detection because I didn't get in a crash but someone was switching into my lane without checking their blind spot and I had to swerve and almost hit the wall. About 5 seconds after it happened I rememebered I had drive recorder so held the record button and was able to catch it! Definitely would have been helpful if I would have actually got in an accident to prove what happened. I would have liked some sort of crash warning from the car since I have the DAP and side collision detection but I got lucky that I didn't have to deal with an accident. I'm putting a link to the drive recorder footage here - not sure if it will load or not. File type is a ts which is annoying because I had to convert it before I could upload. https://streamable.com/roltzd

[Radarman]

To call this drive recorder a disappointment would be an understatement.
The cameras and video quality are really good, better than expected but then the utility of the system is destroyed by ridiculous operating parameters. To have +-20secs of recording only is bizarre enough but the lack of display of speed, time and position renders it mostly useless for the one function that would normally justify the time, effort and cost of producing it. That is evidence in a court of law in the event of serious accident or prosecution.
That additional data is recorded but only available in a separate text file. Furthermore, the GPS position has the Southern latitudes recorded as values from 180deg to 360deg. i.e. 1deg South of the equator is recorded as 359deg.
If BMW or a 3rd party produce a player or reader for these files, that would be a good solution but I've yet to find one.

[Bimmer006]

I think Driver recorder is useful and good (BUT ONLY WHEN IT WORKS). I had couple issues with Driver recorder, During one of my trip I wanted to record something so I was trying to Initiate the recording using the camera button but nothing happened, so I was checking the app from my Installed app & to get surprised that app totally disappeared. So I had to reboot the iDrive (by pressing and holding the power button for 15 seconds or more) in order to get this app back and also guess what my previous recordings were wiped out and it was pretty much a new installation and setup.

Another time, while driving I wanted to record something so while triggering the record manually button, of course it didn't work again. So I was trying to open the Drive recorder manually from the apps list, but got a message saying cannot do this operation while driving (because I had to read and accept the terms again). So I have to stop the car and read the terms again and then re-setup the app from scratch. Really bad & for this I had to pay 100$ for the 3 years subscription (what a crap).

Please BMW, if you want customers to pay for something, please make sure you build a robust/reliable system that will consistently work. Also, please enable the parking mode recording in the future, so that if someone hits your parked car we can get a notification in the mobile app. I know this might drain the car's battery, probably set the limit if the car battery level is lower than a certain point then the recording will not work.

[KoolioDaddio]

You can create a recording of an incident (and actually, if it is to record an incident, 20seconds either side of an impact is probably enough) and you can export the video to a USB stick, but then what? Each recording ends up in a folder containing two files - the video and a .json file which contains the data (velocity, position, etc) which is not really for humans to read. What software can you use to view the video and data together?

BTW: to save files onto a USB stick you need to format it to MS-DOS (FAT) but if you can't then view the material I'm not sure if there's any point.

[KoolioDaddio]

Originally Posted by richardvinger

I've had it since October and so far it's proven fairly useless, for good and bad reasons.

The bad reason: as mentioned, you can manually start a recording and make it record the 20 seconds prior and the 20 seconds after the manual start. If you consider the number of menus you'll need to go through to start a recording, you're losing a lot of those 20 seconds upfront.

The good reason: Drive Recorder is supposed to start recording automatically in case of an impact, but since I haven't had one, I'm not even sure if this works. But I intend to keep it that way.

Another bad thing: you're supposed to be able to copy the video files to a thumb drive over USB, but haven't been successful so far. I tried two different formats on the drive, but apparently didn't have the right one.

Totally agree that continuous recording would be very useful.

Getting the files onto a memory stick seems to be a bit flakey. First the memory stick must be formatted to MS-DOS (FAT) format so that it can be read in the car's USB port. (Other formats may work, but I know this format does) The next part is a bit odd - you seem to have to play one of the videos before you get to the option to Save the video you're currently playing or Save All of them. The save process seems to take a long time - it downloads about 11% then has a rest for about 15 seconds before downloading the next 11% and it then finally has a 30 second breather between about 99% and 100%. This may be partly due to using a fairly old memory stick. But you end up with a memory stick containing up to 10 blue folders (labelled as the recording date (eg Recording_on_01_04_2023_11_44_39am) and inside each folder are two files. A video file and a data file. So you plug your memory stick into a computer and that's about as far as I can help you with. The video file can be played on more or less any media player/editor and the data file can be read in a basic text reader/editor. But if you need to send the file to your insurance company or the police, I'm not sure what they could do with it to make something meaningful. For a 40 second video at 30 frames per second you get a data file with 1200 blocks of data - 1 block per frame. I have yet to find an app that will merge to two files so that the speed, location, etc is displayed along with the video as an overlay - a bit like subtitles. BMW Customer service, BMW Connected Drive Service and BMW Technical Support are clueless, as is the dealership.

[KoolioDaddio]

Originally Posted by murderedg20

Wasn't able to test the crash detection because I didn't get in a crash but someone was switching into my lane without checking their blind spot and I had to swerve and almost hit the wall. About 5 seconds after it happened I rememebered I had drive recorder so held the record button and was able to catch it! Definitely would have been helpful if I would have actually got in an accident to prove what happened. I would have liked some sort of crash warning from the car since I have the DAP and side collision detection but I got lucky that I didn't have to deal with an accident. I'm putting a link to the drive recorder footage here - not sure if it will load or not. File type is a ts which is annoying because I had to convert it before I could upload. https://streamable.com/roltzd

Re murderdg20's post and a couple of my posts: this demonstrates my point. I don't know what the situation is in the States, but in the UK if that incident had involved police and/or your insurance company the first question they would want answered is how fast were you going. This video doesn't answer that question. Nor does it prove exactly when and where the incident occurred. If this were to come to court, I doubt whether it would be accepted as evidence unless that information is in someway embedded in the video and the police etc have the software to read it. If that is the case, what is the software and where can we get it?