What’s changed from 5.1.1 to 5.5.3

ChangedNew name and icon

Blackvue Downloader is now Dashcam Downloader, with a new icon and a new title. It is the same app on the same Microsoft Store page with the same licence; cameras, settings, logs and downloads carry straight over.

• The name is Dashcam Downloader in the Start menu, the Store, window titles, the tray, notifications and messages. Under the version on the main window: For BlackVue and VIOFO dash cameras / Formerly Blackvue Downloader; in About, above the copyright.
• The title reads DASHCAM DOWNLOADER. While a camera is connected the top word now and then fades to that camera's make - BLACKVUE or VIOFO - and back (taking turns when both are connected); never in the first 5 minutes after the app starts.
• The Ms Pac-Man start-up splash: she eats the old title and Dashcam Downloader appears behind her.
• Live View's Attempting to Connect picture shows the new title; exported KML tracks credit Dashcam Downloader.

NewEvery camera at a glance

• The icon in the main window's title and in the taskbar tray sums up all the cameras: red when none can be reached, blue when one is connected, green with the arrow turning while one downloads. The tray icon is the app's own icon in these colours.
• A downloading camera's card shows a green arrow turning behind its picture.
• Right-click the tray icon: the menu names the app at the top.

ChangedDownload by date

Redone in the new style, like Add / Edit camera: the camera, then Recordings between with a date, hour and minute for From and To. It sizes itself to the screen at any display scaling (the old window was cut off).

Fixed

• At 150 % display scaling or a narrow window, the top of the main window grew down over the cameras; it now fits (the title narrows and the description lines hide when there is no room).
• Download by date showed will download on the next connection even when the request had not been saved (no download running to stop); it is now saved first.
• Small icons had stray coloured pixels round the edge.

ChangedIndependence

The main window and About stated that the app is independent and not made by or affiliated with BlackVue / Pittasoft or VIOFO (Microsoft Store certification). From 5.5.3 this is in About and the Store description.

Fixed

• The flowing arrows on a downloading camera's card stood still after the window came back from the tray or from being minimised; the Live tile's pulse ring faded but did not grow. Both now run whenever the card is on screen.

NewProcess GPS data progress on the card

Parsing GPS tracks · 1,234 of 17,483 (7%) with the card's fill growing to match, then saving day tracks · 5 of 15. Each .gps file is now read once (5.5 read it twice), which matters on a network or USB drive.

NewVIOFO cameras

BlackVue Downloader now downloads from VIOFO dash cameras as well as BlackVue - side by side in the one app. VIOFO support is included for everyone; there is no add-on.

• Add a VIOFO camera by its IP address, the same as a BlackVue. The app recognises it when it connects (VIOFO's Novatek netapp interface); there is nothing to choose.
• Downloads use the same per-camera settings as a BlackVue: check interval, days to download, download order, never-delete types, ignore hours, transfer group, Download this camera now, Download by date and Cancel download.
• The camera must join your home Wi-Fi (VIOFO calls this station mode), which is set up in the camera and the VIOFO app. Models with station mode (website list): A329, A329S, A229 Pro, A229 Plus, A139 Pro, A119 Mini 2. VIOFO says its new T330, T340 and A149 Pro Duo support it too (not yet confirmed by users). With standard VIOFO firmware the camera switches its Wi-Fi off when parking mode starts, so it can only be downloaded while the car is running unless VIOFO provides a firmware that keeps Wi-Fi on.
• Read-only: the app sends the camera only read requests (identify, status and settings, file list, live view link). Commands that could change or erase anything on the camera are refused by the app itself. One request at a time - the camera's web server handles one at a time.
• Clip names are kept exactly as the camera writes them. The four VIOFO naming layouts seen in the field are recognised (including the A129 Pro's).
• GPS: VIOFO stores the GPS inside the MP4. The app reads it and writes a .gps file beside each clip (valid fixes only, position jumps removed), so fastest speed, Drive Analytics, Track Data and the Google Earth tracks work as they do for BlackVue.
• Drive Analytics: VIOFO clips carry no G-sensor data, so the G-force column becomes Locked Events - the clips the camera has locked (its RO folder). Locked clips count as Events in Recent Events, and clips in the camera's Parking folder count as Parking. Both are remembered in viofo-locked.txt / viofo-parking.txt beside the Record folder (not inside it), so they are kept after the camera deletes the originals. A mixed BlackVue + VIOFO folder keeps its G-force results.
• Live view: the camera's own live stream (which lens it shows is set in the camera).
• Overview: the VIOFO camera's own settings, decoded with VIOFO's settings table for that model (VIOFO's app data as reformatted by viofosync, MIT licence). A value the table does not list is shown as code n; nothing is guessed.
• Analyse Folder Only works for a folder of VIOFO footage; Process VIOFO GPS on its card reads the GPS from the clips once.

NewFind cameras

Find cameras... on the Add / Edit camera window looks for BlackVue and VIOFO cameras on this PC's network and fills in the IP address (and the name, if none has been typed). Read-only and quiet: a short connection test on ports 80 / 443 across this PC's own network(s) (adapters with a gateway only), then the app's usual identification requests only where something answers. Nothing is changed on any device.

NewSet-up tips for BlackVue and VIOFO cameras

in About, on the Add / Edit camera window, and on the first page of each camera's Overview: joining the home Wi-Fi, a fixed IP address, power while parked, and (VIOFO) station mode and Wi-Fi in parking mode.

Newmodern main window

A new main window with a card for each camera. The original window is kept: About > Settings > Classic layout (takes effect at the next start). The modern window opens unless Classic layout is ticked, and the classic one opens instead if the modern one cannot.

• Each card's heading is the camera's state bar, as in the Progress Bar Guide: it fills left to right in the state colour (blue / green / amber / red / magenta / lavender / steel), with a solid strip along the bottom, the sweep while checking and flowing arrows while downloading. A pill at the top right names the state (Connected, Downloading, Offline...) and carries the status dot.
• One line when away: a camera that goes offline folds down to one line (colour, picture, name, status, counts, pill) and opens again by itself when it is back or a download starts. Click the line to open it; a button on the card folds it down. Analyse Folder Only cameras are never folded automatically.
• Live view, Drive Analytics and Overview and health are coloured buttons on every card and large tiles on the opened card (the Live tile pulses while the camera is connected).
• The opened card shows the camera's figures: total downloaded, download speed, last connected, last download, disk used, fastest speed and highest G-force (click to open the clip; Reset beneath them), firmware, low-voltage cut-off, last file, model, config, download order and never-delete types.
• Check now has an arrow for Download this camera now and Download by date; Cancel download, Process GPS data / Process VIOFO GPS and Edit details are on the card. Everything else is on right-click the card. Delete camera is on Edit details only.
• Camera order: right-click a card > Move up / Move down / Move to top / Move to bottom. Display only - it does not change which camera downloads first.
• Light or dark, following the Windows colour setting. About, Drive Analytics, Live View, the Overview and the set-up tips follow it too while the modern window is open (standard title bars as well). The classic layout is unchanged.
• Status bar at the bottom: the latest log line; click it to open the full log. The Log file button is gone.
• Closing hides to the tray as before (a one-time notice says so). Exit from the tray icon, or Windows shutting down, closes the app properly.
• The title graphic now and then changes BLACKVUE to BLACKVIOFO and back.
• Once per release, Ms Pac-Man eats the old title in a launch splash (modern layout; click or any key skips; the usual start-up splash is not shown that time). Double-click the title to see it again; Ctrl + double-click plays it at the next start.
• Hidden in the tray or minimised, the cards are taken down (their animations stop) and the log is not copied, so the app uses almost nothing while it runs for weeks in the background.

NewAdd / Edit camera window

Redesigned in the same style as the new main window (both layouts), light or dark as above.

• Grouped: Camera (name, IP address with Find cameras, Analyse Folder Only) and Save folder on the left, Keeping footage (days or GB, delete oldest when needed, never-delete types) below them, Downloading (check interval, days to download, file timeout, download order 1-4, skip footage between two times, transfer group, ignore GPS) on the right. Analyse Folder Only hides what it does not use and the window narrows.
• Fields start empty with the default shown in grey; editing a camera no longer wipes a field when you click into it.
• A missing or invalid IP address, or no save folder, is shown under the field and nothing is saved (the save folder could previously be saved as Click Select to select Save directory).
• Cancel button; Enter adds / updates, Esc cancels. Delete camera (editing only) asks for confirmation as before.
• Cancel now really cancels changes to the never-delete types (they used to be kept).

Clip player: plays on into the next clip in time, from the same lens, until you stop it; Page Up / Page Down step a clip at a time.

Camera pictures for the DR770X (1CH, 2CH, Box) and DR590X; a DR770X used to show a blank tile. Pictures are matched on the model number whatever the spelling (900X2, DR900X-2CH Plus...), and the BlackVue pictures were updated.

Changes

• Fastest speed: only trustworthy GPS samples count - a valid fix (RMC status A; VTG only when there is no RMC, and not flagged invalid), no more than 300 km/h, matching a neighbouring sample within 3 s to within 37 km/h, and, where the fixes either side have positions, matching the distance between them. One bad sample (a fix just acquired, reflections in a car park, a void fix still carrying a speed, single parking-clip readings) used to become the camera's fastest speed. Applies to the card, Drive Analytics and the GPS track peak. On 851 real clips every driving peak was unchanged. Track Data also treats an isolated one-second spike as missing. A record already saved stays until Reset.
• Highest G-force: gravity is now taken out. It used to be included, so a camera at rest read 1.00 g and a 0.8 g stop read about 1.3 g; figures are now the actual acceleration (a parked camera reads about 0.01 g). Each clip calibrates itself (its resting level is 1 g), so a G-sensor with a different scale reads correctly; readings beyond 16 g (outside the sensor's range) are ignored as corrupt, and a file that is not laid out as G-sensor records gives nothing instead of nonsense. Short knocks are kept - Drive Analytics lists the hardest impacts. Figures saved before 5.5 are cleared once and worked out again in the background from the footage on disk.
• Licence: a slow Microsoft Store answer at start-up (over 5 s) could leave the licence check stuck, so a paying customer got no downloads until the app was restarted. Fixed; a check that fails is retried every minute instead of after 12 hours, and while it is unconfirmed the main window says Licence not confirmed yet - downloads are paused.
• The trial bar (Trial version / Purchase) shows only once the Store has confirmed a trial, never to a paying customer while the licence is being checked.
• After a purchase from an expired trial, checking and downloading start straight away (an app restart was needed), and the classic layout's Trial Expired, Click to Purchase button goes.
• The trial ends at its actual expiry time (it could end up to a day early).
• An expired trial does nothing: no checks or downloads (including one that could slip through at start-up before the licence was known), and no file management (it could keep deleting older footage by age). Check now, Download this camera now, Download by date, Process GPS data and Process VIOFO GPS now offer the purchase, as Live view, Drive Analytics and clip playback already did.
• A camera on older firmware that answers with an empty recordings list (SD card missing, not mounted, still being checked after a restart, or needing a format) now shows amber Camera lists no recordings - check its SD card and stays Connected. It used to show red Not connected (camera did not return its file list), although the camera was reachable and Live view worked.
• Settings are saved more safely: written to a temporary file and swapped in, one save at a time, so an interrupted save can no longer leave an empty settings file.

NewTrack Data column in Drive Analytics

A fifth column (far right) lists each day that has a GPS track file, newest first, in the same style as the other columns: rank, distance (red), date and number of drives, then a green line with the driving time and top speed - click it to open that day's Track window. The window is wider to fit it (1900, reduced to fit smaller screens).

• Follows the Time frame selector at the top of the window.
• Lists the day track files already in the camera's Tracking folder (<camera>-yyyy-MM-dd.kmz). They are made after each download for the last 3 days; for older days use Process GPS Data on the camera's Details tab. Nothing is built when Drive Analytics opens.
• Days with only parking footage show as parked; files named for a different camera are left out (unless there are no others, e.g. after the camera was renamed).
• Day summaries are cached while the app runs, so re-opening Drive Analytics is quick.

NewTrack window - the day's speed graph and the route on a street map, linked together

• Summary: distance, driving time (time actually moving), top speed and when, number of drives, first and last time.
• Speed graph: every drive side by side, in proportion to its length; the hours parked in between are left out (a pause of more than 5 minutes starts a new drive). Stretches that barely move - parking clips with one GPS fix each, GPS drift while parked - are not counted as drives or distance. The top speed is marked; times are labelled along the bottom.
• Move over the graph: a read-out shows the time, speed, which drive, and the clip for that moment. The clip name is a link - green if the file is in Record, red if it has gone - followed by the offset into the clip. The cursor stays where you leave it, so you can move down and click the link.
• Click the graph, the route or the clip link: the clip plays from that exact second, in the player chosen in Drive Analytics (Internal / External / System). Closing the built-in player returns to the Track window.
• Street map: the route drawn on a street map, coloured by speed (blue under 30, green 30-60, yellow 60-90, orange 90-110, red 110 km/h and over; mph limits 20/40/55/70 when the PC is not metric), with the start of each drive marked and a legend below. A marker follows the graph; moving over the route moves the graph cursor. Drag to move, mouse wheel to zoom, a button to show the whole day again.
• The street map needs internet but no account or key. If it cannot be shown (no internet, the map service down, or no Edge WebView2 runtime on the PC) the window says so and draws the route in its speed colours on a plain background instead - the graph, marker and click-to-play still work.
• Open Tracking folder button; Escape closes the window.
• A clip is found from the moment's time: the latest front clip (Normal first) starting at or before it, within one clip length (estimated from the spacing of the day's clips). A moment in a missing clip says no clip in Record instead of seeking past the end of the previous one.

Google Earth: the earlier plan to open the day file in Google Earth on the web was dropped. Earth on the web cannot open a local file from a link (the user has to find and upload it each time), and it has no speed profile - that is only in Google Earth Pro, which still opens the same KMZ files as before.

Fixes

• GPS track (KMZ) files recorded a false 0 km/h at the start of most one-minute clips (981 of 1,332 clips on one real day): each clip's first position line comes before its first speed line, and the speed was reset to 0 for every clip. The speed now carries over when a clip follows the previous one within 10 seconds. This also removes the dip to 0 every minute in Google Earth Pro's speed profile. Existing files are corrected when rebuilt (Process GPS Data); the Track window already ignores those zeros.
• Speeds that are impossible (below 0 or above 300 km/h, e.g. a GPS glitch) are ignored in the Track window, and missing speeds are worked out from the positions, so one bad reading cannot become the day's top speed.
• Drive Analytics now seeks up to 3 minutes into a clip (was 2), so events late in 3-minute clips open at the right second.
• 38 m driving read as metres next to a distance - driving times now read 38 min / 1 h 52 min.

NewWi-Fi passwords page in the Overview window

Shows your own saved passwords read from the camera - the camera's own hotspot password and the home Wi-Fi networks it connects to - so you can recover one you have forgotten (like Windows' show Wi-Fi password). They are decoded only on screen; the stored settings keep only the camera's encrypted form, and passwords are never written to the log.

NewCamera settings in the Overview window

The Overview now shows the camera's own settings as last read from it (kept while the camera is offline): time zone and daylight saving, how the clock is set (GPS / manual), the camera's clock compared with this PC (judged from its newest clip), recording options (audio, parking mode, quality and codec codes, stamps, speed unit, lock-event, sensor sensitivities), power (low-voltage cut-off incl. 24 V, scheduled reboot, Bluetooth) and Wi-Fi (the camera's own hotspot name, band, the Wi-Fi networks it joins, Cloud on/off where the model reports it, when the settings were last changed), indicators and sensors (LEDs, proximity sensor, GPS, image flip), voice prompts (volume, which prompts are on) and firmware details (version, language, config version, revision, image-sensor versions). Settings a model does not report are left out. Passwords are never read or stored.

• A camera still on the factory time zone (UTC-11:00, i.e. never set) is shown in red, and this PC's zone is shown alongside for comparison; the log warns too. A lot of cameras are wrong here, and every clip time, Days to Download, Ignore hours and Drive Analytics Today / Yesterday depend on it.
• The Overview window shows the camera's picture and opens centred on the main window. Its contents are five pages, changed with the arrow buttons (or the Left / Right keys): Files, transfer & telemetry · Camera settings · Downloaded by recording type · Failed files · Health check.
• New Health check page: looks over this camera's setup, the camera's own settings, its connection history and its failed files, and lists anything likely to cause trouble - worst first, each with what to do in plain words - plus the checks that passed. For example: no or invalid IP address, two cameras with the same address, camera on a different network from the PC, the camera's hotspot address used by mistake, save folder missing, drive nearly full, nothing being deleted, every download type set to Ignore, never connected / not seen for a week, camera not set to join any Wi-Fi, repeated drop-outs (weak signal or no internet on that Wi-Fi), time zone never set or different from the PC, clock hours out, GPS off, low-voltage cut-off too low, high failure rate, SD-card read errors on the same files, clips overwritten before download, slow downloads, and several cameras downloading at once. It only reads; it never changes a setting or contacts the camera.

NewAll Clips column in Drive Analytics

A fourth column lists every recording in the chosen time frame, newest first, under a heading for each day, in the same style as the other columns: type and date/time, then the full front and rear file names (green if the file is there, red if missing) - click to play. The window is a quarter wider to fit it.

Compatible with new BlackVue firmware (ELITE 10 v1.009, ELITE 8 v1.013, DR970X v1.014, ELITE 9 v1.010).

(Internal: the updated interface is the IMSL/CivetWeb API, as opposed to the legacy Boa/CGI interface. Verified endpoint by endpoint on a live ELITE 10 v1.009.)

New firmware (ELITE 10 v1.009 and other cameras on the IMSL/CivetWeb API)

• The Overview shows the camera's serial number and MAC address. The MAC is what your router lists the camera by - the Overview says so, and the Health check quotes it whenever you need to find the camera in the router (e.g. to give it a fixed IP).
• Rear and interior camera connection status is shown, and the Health check warns when the rear camera has been unplugged (only if the camera has been recording a rear camera, so front-only cameras are never flagged).
• If the camera's settings cannot be read on a check, its model and firmware are still identified from its device information, so it stays on the correct (new-firmware) download path.

New startup summary: a short title at startup, then - once the cameras have had their first check - one line per camera (online / away, last download, Health check result), free space on each save drive, the transfer mode, and a tip about a feature.

Fixes

• Closing the clip player now returns you to the window you opened it from (Drive Analytics), not the main window.
• Hardening against crashes: every new window handler is guarded, the Drive Analytics results display and window opening can no longer close the app on an unexpected error, a fault in the background-task error handler itself is fixed, and camera settings reloaded from the settings file are matched correctly regardless of upper/lower case.

Fixes

• With One download at a time per transfer group on, the app could freeze at the moment one camera finished and the next was due to start: the finishing camera's thread and the waiting camera's thread each held a lock the other needed. The waiting camera showed waiting for another camera... forever, and pressing Download This Camera Now then froze the whole app (no error, no log - a deadlock). Fixed: the scheduler's status/pulse helpers never wait on a busy lock.
• Camera statistics (Overview) were not being saved from the download threads (The calling thread cannot access this object in the log). Saving now happens on the UI thread.
• The transfer metrics time/rate for a batch that paused at a file boundary was frozen at the moment it first paused.
• A camera waiting for its turn now logs once a minute what it is waiting for (which camera holds the slot, or is downloading without one).
• A camera waiting for its turn is pinged every 30 seconds; if the car leaves Wi-Fi while queued it is shown as Not connected - camera left Wi-Fi while waiting for its turn and the next camera starts, instead of it taking its turn and failing on the first file. After a long wait, one confirming ping before the first file.
• The progress bar now names the camera being waited for, and shows priority download - starting when X finishes its current file... after Download This Camera Now - including when the camera was already waiting.
• Restart of the camera threads (after adding/editing/removing a camera) could stop working for the rest of the session if a thread took more than ~50 seconds to end - an index error in the restart code. Fixed.
• Opening a camera's Overview while that camera was downloading could show an incomplete window (its lists were being updated underneath it).
• A date-range download started while a normal batch was running recorded that batch's metrics twice.
• A batch paused at a file boundary and then cancelled (or interrupted by a camera edit) lost its metrics line for the files it had already downloaded.
• The twice-daily automatic settings save could silently fail while a camera was still establishing its first connection after start-up (an unfrozen colour brush loaded from the settings file). Brushes are now frozen on load.

NewOne download at a time per Wi-Fi group (transfer scheduler)

BlackVue cameras are single-antenna (1x1) Wi-Fi clients. When two of them download at once through the same access point they talk over each other - each camera can hear the AP but not the other camera - and the radio spends most of its time on collisions and retries. Two cameras downloading together are SLOWER in total than one after the other.

• About tab > Settings: One download at a time per transfer group. Off by default (everything works as before). Tick it and only one camera per group downloads at a time; the others wait their turn and show waiting for another camera in Group X to finish....
• Edit Details: Transfer group (Default, A, B, C, D, E). Cameras that share one access point / radio go in the same group. Leave everything on Default if all your cameras use the same Wi-Fi. Different groups download in parallel.
• Checking the camera and reading its file list are never held up - only the file transfers queue.
• Switching the option on or off takes effect at the next file: a camera already downloading pauses at the end of its current file until its turn (Paused - waiting for another camera in Group X to finish...), then carries on where it left off.
• Right-click a camera's progress bar > Download This Camera Now: that camera goes to the front of its group until its download finishes - the camera currently downloading pauses at the end of its current file and resumes afterwards.
• Cancel Download also works while a camera is waiting for its turn.
• Each completed download batch is logged to transfer-metrics.csv (camera, group, mode, bytes, seconds, Mbps, files ok/failed) and the live queue state to transfer-status.json, both in the app's log folder.

NewCamera Overview window

A new Overview button on each camera's Details tab (where Delete Camera used to be) shows that camera's lifetime figures, kept since the camera was added to this version (or since you last pressed Reset):

• Files: checks that reached the camera, files listed, new files found, downloaded, skipped, failed.
• Transfer: data saved, download batches, time spent downloading, average and best rate, last download.
• Telemetry: GPS tracks and G-sensor files obtained, top speed, max G-force.
• Downloaded videos by recording type (Normal, Event, Parking, Manual, Impact...).
• Failed files: the most recent 200 with the reason - e.g. Not found on camera (404) - may have been overwritten on the SD card, Camera returned 500 Internal Server Error (often an SD-card read problem), No data received for 120 s (timeout), Save drive full.
• Buttons to open the transfer metrics CSV and to reset the statistics.

Changes

• Delete Camera moved from the camera tab to the Edit Details page (red button beside Update) and now asks for confirmation.
• Right-click a camera's progress bar > Open Download Folder opens its save folder in Explorer.
• About tab: all app-wide options (Debug Logging, Run at Windows Startup, Debug Cameras, the new scheduler switch, 64-bit) are now in one Settings panel.