Summary: Keep your videos in the cloud. Do not Use Ring alarm pro for any video storage.

I got the Ring Alarm Pro system 18 months ago since Ring deactivated my account because the auto payment didn’t go through and all videos were deleted even though I just bought installed and activated the Ring Alarm Pro in September 2022.

According to this article and also Ring customer support

https://ring.com/support/articles/pmod0/Learn-About-MicroSD-Cards-for-Ring-Alarm-Pro

You are able to save unencrypted videos on the MicroSD card.

This is not true at all. The videos are encrypted even if you do not choose encrypted.

The file system is a linux file system. I used every video player and codec known to try to play back videos. I worked for months with Ring tech support to later find out that the article that I read and is still listed was not true that you cannot backup videos by means of using the MicroSD card. The microSD card slot no longer works well, and the SD card doesnt stay in most of the time, and when it does, the ring alarm pro cannot detect it.

There is only one reason why you would use the microSD card to locally stored videos. That is if you never want them to be viewed by anyone else and maybe even yourself.

The live playback is very slow with local videos. The only way to access the videos is with the website that indexes the videos time stamps and then accesses the locally stored video from your network, decrypts it then plays it. It is a slow process even with very high speed internet and computers.

You cannot download more than 1-10 videos at a time and sometimes cannot download any videos even though you can play them back.

I cannot find a decryption algorythim to play back these video files so If someone out there thinks they are really smart with encrypted ring videos, I can send you a video file and you can have a crack at it.

Now I cannot even playback any videos on the microSD card even if it is in my ring pro device. The SD card is not damaged but the system will no longer read the microSD card at all and I do not even get an error message when trying to play back videos.

I totally regret ever buying any ring product. Such a closed system even for the premium paying user.

If anyone out there can help decrypt the video, that would be wonderful. Even the Ring support team has no Idea how unencrypted videos were actually encrypted without anyone knowing the encrypting key including the device. I have worked for months to get the help I need from Ring Support, and no one at that company knows how I can playback the videos, and back them up as the advertisement for this product says.