Troubleshooting Kasa Camera 24/7 recordings missing and corrupted
I have a 128GB SD card in my camera and I needed video from it to document damage that was done to my fence less than 24 hours before. I could not pull it up on the app so I removed the SD card and followed the directions provided by KASA. When I opened the directory for yesterday there were only three folders (I am using WIN 10) labeled 00, 01, 23. So it was missing the rest of the hours of the day. Inside the 01 folder were only 9 folders all timestamped 5/19/2022 12:00 AM. They were all also 2,065 KB in size. When I tried opening any of these files I got a message that it could not be played and the file maybe corrupt. I had directories on this card that went back to May 5 and each of those directories have 24 subfolders and each of those have 60 files corresponding to the 1 minute mp4 videos that make up the 24/7 recordings. However when I get to May 17,2022 there are only 17 folders instead of 24 and in the folders labeled "00" to "14" there are 30 files instead of 60 and they are seperated by 2 minutes instead of be time stamped every minute yet the video file is one minute long, so I am starting to loose every other minute of "24/7" video. In the next to last folder "15" instead of 60 files there are 520 files with the files time stamped up until 5/17/2022 2:15 PM being viewable and of varios sizes in the 7,005 KB range but at 2:16 PM they are "possibly corrupt" and cannot be viewed and no files stored on the SD card after that are viewable and are all the same size at 2,065 KB. Needless to say that I am very disappointed that the one time I needed the video off my Kasa cam it was not there. I put a smaller 32 GB card in the camera and it has been working so far and I am able to call up 24/7 video from the iPhone app. Does anyone have a similar problem?
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@Bill333 @DaveGeorgi @ScottX @creaker @JHonis @want2beunique @Alvin121 @dsh15
Hey Everyone,
I figured I should give everyone that has come to the forums with questions about this bug, an update on what we're doing, so as to ensure you that we're not sitting idly by.
As @creaker said previously, some of you may have been contacted or received firmware for your cameras that will help the engineering team finalize the reason why the recordings can become corrupted. Creaker is on his game because I believe this happened last night. If I get any more info, I will let you know in a reply here.
We are always appreciative of our community working together to identify problems and help us troubleshoot the cause. As we become more active, we can hopefully identify and push fixes to bugs at a much quicker rate. Having a Community that is working with our teams on finding and patching any bugs that may appear is more helpful than you all can imagine.
Thanks Again!
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@Riley_S I seem to have the same problem. Ever since the SD card filled the first time the camera will not display a recording. Some days there are no recordings listed even though there are events that should trigger a recording. Other days there are recordings in the list, but when clicking on them there is just are round a round symbol that never stops and the day field always displays --:--:-- --. I tried reformatting the SD card within the KASA app but that didn't fix the problem. Is the the same problem that will be addressed by the firmware update you mentioned?
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I just had the same issue today as well. I have a model KC411S, with hardware version1.0 and firmaare version 2.3.13. I don't know what a MAC address so I don't know if I should post that here, but I can give you that if it is useful for anything. I am using Sandick 256GB ultra plus for my card. I've had a landlord sneaking into my office and I wanted to catch him. I've been closing a certain door to know if he was coming in or not previously, and would occasionally find it open, and sometimes he even forgot to restart my alarm. That's why I bought the camera. I get lots of motion alerts because the cars on the streets trigger alerts as they flash on the hallway walls. No big deal. I can always do a quick check and see if that door is still closed and I would know. But, today I got an alert, and on the live feed, I saw the door was open, and therefore I went in and looked for the video feed and It wouldn't come up to replay. Live video worked, but not recordings, so I couldn't view the entry I was wanting to see.
So, I drove in to the office to try to see if something was wrong with the camera. It is still working live, but wouldn't pull up past videos. I then took the card out and downloaded it to my PC. I was unable to view the MP4 files on the card on anything I could try. I even downloaded VLC media player as i saw on one post here, and it wouldn't work. When copying, there were two files that wer unable to transfer. They were both MP4 files and the error code was "0x80070570: the file or directory is corrupted and unreadable" on the windows 11 transfer popup for the error. I don't know if this helps at all.
One more thing, I did format the card I believe it was earlier this week.....if not, then it was last week. I noticed things were loading slower to review videos that recorded, and I looked at the memory available, and I noticed it was getting low, so I did a reformat to get a fresh start. It was working fine after that from what I could tell.
One last thing.... I took the card out to download the videos to my computer and they wouldn't play on the computer either. So, I put the card back into the camera, and
new videos started to record properly. I then took the card out again to try to view it on my computer just to see if there was anything different with the old videos. I was able to view the newly recorded videos (after the card reinsertion), but I was still not able to view the previously recorded videos on my computer. I put the card back in the camera, and I was able to view the new videos, but still not the old ones. It looks like it recognizes that there are old videos to view, but can't download them.
I hope this is some info that could be helpful in debugging. I just hope I didn't lose the video of my intruder. Lets just say that what was once a great landlord/tenant situation has gotten really as someone has given him some very poor advice. He has broken a lot of laws, and I have proof, but these videos would be the final proof I need to pursue legal action with a slam dunk piece of evidence like actually seeing him, and probably someone else with him as witnesses have said in the past. Thanks for the help.
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I had a similar problem with a new EC70. See Chat ID 16809398. The 24/7 feature seemed to be recording by looking at the sd space and the progress bar on the 24/7 view section. However, I could not display any of the recording. I tried new sd cards, reformatting the sd card through the app, etc. Nothing worked. I did not reset the camera through the app or the hard reset button. I then deleted the activity zone I set originally. Then recording and viewing 24/7 video worked. Somewhere there appears to be a glitch between the 24/7 system and the activity zones.
John
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Does anyone know if there has been a resolution to the issue of not being able to play back recordings? I have two of the KC420ws hardware 1.0 and firmware 2.3.13. Nothing seems to help. Formatting nor resetting makes any difference.
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Having similar issues here. I have two KC410S that work fairly well. It's my two KC420WS that frequently display "Your camera hasn't recorded anything at the current moment" when trying to playback. Just can't seem to get them to record everything regardless of motion. Reformatting the SD card seems to make it work again for a couple days, sometimes..
I keep hoping for new firmware for this model. Currently at 1.0 / 2.3.13 / 2.39.0 / 1044
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@Bill333 @DaveGeorgi @ScottX @creaker @JHonis @want2beunique @Alvin121 @dsh15 @M579 @RP707 @JHP49 @Busterlou @DL607 ,
Another Quick Update for Everyone!
I received word from our QA team that it appears as thought the first batch of cameras to receive the update hopefully this week or next will be the:
KC410S, KC411S, EC70, and KD110 2.0
If you have one of these cameras, keep an eye out and let us know if the issue is fixed after the firmware update is received.
If you have another camera please keep checking for updates, or I will try to let you know if I receive information of further devices receiving the firmware that were impacted. If you believe that you have a camera that is affected and is not one of the below, please let us know:
C210, EC60/70, KC105, KC400, KC410S, KC411S, KC420WS, KD110 == These are the cameras that users have reported as having symptoms similar to the one that we are tracking. Having a camera on this list does not mean that is affected by the SD Card issue. These are simply the devices we have asked our engineers to try and replicate the issue with
9/9/22
Sorry for how long it has taken for the team to get back to everyone, as it is difficult to replicate the issue, as it seems to mostly occur when the SD Card is approaching capacity, and only seems to affect larger SD Cards.
I got word today that they will start releasing new firmware for the cameras next week, so make sure to keep an eye out for a firmware update. I am not sure what cameras will be the first to receive the firmware update, but I will update everyone as I find out.
Until then, I have heard that simply unplugging the camera and plugging the camera back in will fix some of the issues when it comes to viewing the recordings and having the camera continue to record after filling.
We really appreciate all of your feedback and information on the topic as this was a very difficult issue for our engineers to diagnose what the cause of the issue was. If you receive the firmware update for your cameras, stop by and post what camera and firmware you are using to help other users know if their cameras have received a firmware update.
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Is there a way we can recover the corrupted files from the SD card? I am in a similar "Murphy's Law" scenario and need to recover some footage from this morning and I cannot open any of the recorded files.
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I have heard from our QA Team that unplugging and replugging the camera in with the SD card may make the SD card usable and the file viewable again. New Firmware should be going out soon that may fix the issue too, so make sure to keep an eye out for any firmware updates to your camera
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@Riley_S If it helps, I can confirm that all of my cameras have 256GB cards and it does seem to occur more often when the card is nearing full capacity. I thought reformatting just got things going again but this makes sense if the behavior is related to available space.
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