Well, I think we all found out this companies manuals have a lot to be desired. Just about everything is undocumented and one has to find out by fire.
That said, I can't link anything yet, but a manual I found online, shows victure cams can use up to 128 gigs, which I believe to be true as I've used them on an older victure.
The manual in the box always says 32 gigs. Which I believe is a safe nofault card amount to cover victure's butt.
BUT... All manuals state to format the card with fat32. This may also be a safe default. I will test the modern file system ntfs and report back.
The modes of the HC500 are just three. Photo only, video only or photo plus video. Photo just takes like 8 count max at a time then resets to the delay interval till next trigger event - movement. Video only records a video per resolution you set from 10 sec to 3 minutes, stops per time set and waits next trigger event. Photo+video mode is when movement triggered the cam takes one photo to how many you set first then automatically records video per your length setting, regardless if movement stops. Then awaits next trigger event.
What I'm not sure of with victure, and of course no manual mentions this, is the software capable of stopping shooting in any mode if no movement is detected into the timed period.
Other brands do have this ability, and I find nowhere on victure's website or manuals an answer. I also don't know about the blue tooth and wifi functions as I have no intentions of using that ability. The thought of my trail cam wifi active and trained on my camping tent showing me getting up at 4am in my underwear to relieve myself in the woods isn't something I want port scanned across the internet. And believe it, a wifi/internet cam can be found.
One thing I have found out, is that almost 80 percent of these brands are made from the same one or two japanese firms and rebranded to a mess of different companies, victure being one of them. Which may explain why our manuals are so bad. Japanese engineers (Engineers should NEVER write user manuals) writing the the instructions, only to be translated by east indians into Dutch and French, translated into German, who translate that to American. We never stood a chance.
Another thing, one MUST format the media card in the camera AFTER formatting on a windows computer. This establishes the base system file system. You MUST set the proper real time as well. And I found that these models don't seem to save the time settings when changing batteries. Always set the time when changing batteries.
Since I'm a photographer and have been using all sorts of controllable cameras, these trails cams are beyond frustrating for me because they're so lacking features. But I got use to it. What does catch people who don't do photography for a living or hang around nerds, when they correctly have the camera set to record, timer or not, and turn it on ready to go and then look at the media the next day and wonder why nothing was recorded? Believe or not, nothing triggered the camera that night. No bears, mice ... just a nothing night. It happens a lot and people start doubting themselves in setup.
Here's how you solve that. Because this will help you learn the basics of programming aggravating trail cams and have confidence you are completely capable of setting these cameras as well as all the VCR's still in your house. And I am guilty of not doing this. Set the cam on your table, turn it on to record with motion (if that's even a setting) and then ... walk around in front of it about 20 feet out. First do this in the daylight, make sure you set the time for that time of your test. Then check the media, either by looking at it in camera playback or computer and if everything is set properly, you should see your silly self goofing around in your living room. Now the next test is important for people who like to night time surveillance or animal stuff.
Again, set the time or start it right away at nighttime sitting on your table, make sure it's running then turn out all the lights and jump around or walk slowly again 20 feet out. But THIS time pull out your smart phone, or digital camera and in video record mode face your camera at your table in the dark. You should see at least ONE led lit up looking right at your phone or camera lcd, if not then your trail camera has the newer dark leds. I think the HC500 may have those too. Now walk around facing your trail cam and pointing your camera at the camera on the table. Now your media should show you moving around waving your phone at nothing in particular like you're trying to record ghosts. Your phone camera is also great at checking if your tv remote or any IR remote is working by aiming the remote at your camera and you should see a little purple kind of light coming from the remote. That means it's still working. <---free tip, lol.
I'm ordering a HC500 tonight and will report back to this thread when I test it out. I will try 64gig cards at least, or even a 128gig. I will also test the file system format on the new camera.
The larger the card size the possibility of file reading slowdowns, which is typical of any device that uses media cards. I will also try and research which dc power supply can run this camera in lieu of batteries. This would be handy for when I set up my cam in the basement to see which critters are getting in and knocking over my beer bottles and eating my snacks left over from my dart games.
Hope this helps you and other trail cammers. More later.
Stay safe.
Well, I received the HC500 that I ordered direct from victure last Monday. First it was a bit late, but with the virus environment I don't mind. Not happy it arrived in a unpadded plastic bag. The camera box was banged up and the box had been opened and seal broken. I almost sent it back without looking. Unlike my first victure that shipped in a bubble wrapped box, victures packaging is nice. But this was clearly taken out of the box. Nothing was in it's original bags. The camera didn't look used and it had all the protective plastic sheeting on all glass/clear plastic parts and didn't look removed. Since I didn't find anything missing, and the unit had no visible scratches and the battery compartment did not look used, I decided to try it out.
Starting with the manual, well, microscopic printing in a four inch square pamphlet in broken english isn't the most conductive.
102 pages and only 18 were in english. 3 pages of warnings, and battery insertion. Then main parameters and product structures with a diagram. The description of buttons, but not what the actually accomplish, just where they are. No real explanations of camera functions themselves but final 7 pages about blue tooth and wifi, showing how to find an app and download and maybe get the camera to find wifi. But nothing at all what the app does for the most part. I guess one needs to download the app to find that out. I had to go to the internet and search uboob videos and duckduckgo searches for user manuals that had slightly more info. One almost exact match but different camera website had a better online manual. Victure site itself was basically useless. Stumbled on a similar victure model that had a better user online manual where I found out that 'monitor mode' had to be on before the camera would start the programmed timed recording session. Unfortunately I did not keep these links and wish I did so it would help people out if needed. From now on I will keep better surfing records. The manual gives no instructions of what the menu items actually are. That means more internet searching and trial and error, or hopefully some experience in basic menu functions of any camera. Menu items are familiar to me so I muddled through it.
First, nothing I could do to make the camera software use the windows newest ntfs file system. For some reason most of these Asian cameras will not use the newer windows file system which works with large files and is much better than the fat file system which technically can only use 4 gig size workloads. I have no idea why these cameras are stuck in 1988. Maybe some other brands that are newer use this generation of file systems. But the HC500 will use a 128gig card. Formatting the card in the computer in ntfs first, resulted in the camera rejecting the media until I formatted in the camera. Presumably the camera formats fat32. I did the file tests with 4gig, 8gig, 16gig, 32gig, 64gig and 128gig. Exact same results, no recognizing ntfs. Only fat32. I do expect possible video problems due to fat32 files and larger cards, but didn't expect to see it on a very fast 64gig card.
Already recorded some video as I always use the cameras on photo+video. On max resolution setting for video of 1729x1296p @ 30fps I saw some stuttering. That resolution is about 2.2 mega pixels or as good or better than 1080P High def video. The 30 meg quality is for photos only and it does look great photo wise. The video quality is very good as well and I have to test some more and see if the video stuttering is operator error.
The fresh card should be formatted with your computer first, but since the camera will also format media, this may or may not be mandatory. Page #7 did mention this.
When I tried my table test for video, it wouldn't work with a correct format. That's when research found that the monitor function needs to be on to tell the camera to do session programs. This was nowhere in the supplied manual. The HC gives two separate programming options. So that you can set auto monitoring for like 7am to 5pm then it goes standby with no activity and if you set the second input for 11pm to 5am the camera kicks back on at 11pm. You will find videos recorded between those two set times only. I only use it at night right now. So 10pm to 6am. In photo+video, the camera will detect movement, take a photo then start video recording right then. This two session ability is a very nice option if you want some daytime surveillance as well as night time. The camera will not just stay on for 24 hours if needing both times of day. The camera will run in very low voltage standby to conserve batteries if programmed this way. As far as I can tell, the HC200 may not have this option.
The HC500 does not turn itself off if no movement is detected from what I can tell during the pre set recording time length of up to 180 seconds of video. I believe a browning I have may shut down if something is not moving for like 10 seconds. Every video of the HC500 runs the full 180 secs that I have set. The bunnie has left the room, and recording a tree for the final 2 minutes.
So for now to summarize - Manual = sucks. Even some better online manuals are still cryptic and assume too much mind reading and like people are pros with trail cams. Camera quality very good so far. Daylight video is at least better than 1080P, night video is very good quality. Menu, once one gets a handle on what things hopefully are, is fairly simple to navigate.
It's also much simpler to set the time format to 12hour. 24 hour in the menu time modes is just not intuitive and it doesn't seem implemented correctly when trying to input a program time. Maybe it's me.
HC500 quality of photo/video is clearly superior to my victure HC200 res wise. Interestingly, the 200 has a better detecting distance of 80m, the 500 is only 30m. I believe the higher cost of the 500 is in the wifi marketing. I may play with the wifi as the HC500 is just out back about 30 yards from my den office and my wifi modem. It may be possible to do this on my computer, I don't know yet. It depends on the software that I can find. My luck my older turbo max smart phone won't work with the app.
I'll try to update this information soon if anyone is interested. And like the very helpful Mag1cp2x, I will try to help if there are questions.
