Security Camera Recordings Multi-Download is Broken
UPDATE: After a very long process, the ring development team seems to have fixed this issue. After annoying them over this for a while, they finally got back to me on the issue claiming not be able to reproduce the problem. Won't get into the all the details, but they were not following the steps and not checking the correct data, so it took a bit of effort to get them to reproduce the problems. Once they did, they acted quickly and got an initial fix rolled out last month, but there were still issues which requires some refactoring to address properly. Last week (12/20/24) they rolled out a new fix and it seems to be working as it should. Appreciate them sticking with it. ------ Downloading any number video recordings greater than 1, it appears the produced zip file which gets downloaded contains only corrupted truncated videos which are only partially playable. The zip file itself is not corrupted, but the files that were placed in the zip file on the server are truncated and corrupted. Downloading the same group of clips multiple times results in different clip and zip file sizes each attempt. I am curious if others can reproduce the problem, and I'm concerned that folks are backing up important video clips and not realizing they are not actually downloading properly, since it appears to work, until you try to play the files and then notice the file sizes don't make sense. To repro: Using a web browser, got to ring.com->History->Filter and Pick a date - Save - Filter Events... Now click Manage and select some number of videos to download (I have tested with 50, 25, 20, 15, 10 and 5) Now click Download and wait for it to complete. Now click Download again and wait for it to complete. Got to your downloads folder and notice the two zip files are NOT the same size. Open the zip files and you will see the right number of files and filename root names, but the compressed file size and file sizes will not match between the two downloads downloads Try playing the videos clips. They usually start, but most files will fail if you seek into the video with "unsupported encryption method". What appears is actually happening, the header of the video is for the full video, but the data for the video is truncated/missing and the file is only partially encoded into the zip file. For example: I download 5 clips one at at time (this still works). They totaled about 751mb for all 5. Now, put them in a folder and compress them using ZIP. Keep in mind the video files are already compressed, ZIP will not get very much additional compression. The compressed folder is now 738mb. Expect the ring downloaded zip file to be similar in size The zip file ring produced on those same 5 clips, downloading them as a batch, was only 139mb, the second attempt of the same files is only 61mb. All videos in both ZIP are partial and corrupted. I have tested this on multiple PC's, multiple web browsers and even on iOS using Safari. Same corrupted and unpredictable results each attempt. It seems the ONLY currently functional way to download any video clips from Ring is to download each clip one at at time. If they can't get this to work, I wish they would fix multiple download so the server would just download each file individually instead of putting them into the zip file, clearly they are struggling to get their code that packs the files into the zip file to function.I talked with product support twice, but feel like the issue has not been escalated as they claimed. I would suggest if you have batch downloaded video clips in the last 60 days to go and verify you actually have the videos you thought you downloaded before they get purged from the cloud.
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16-10-2024 11:45:51
Responses (2)
- U
Edit: After your post I did some more testing and realized the problem seems to be related to videos longer than about 45 seconds (don't know exact length where problem kicks in). Video clips less than about 35-45 seconds seem to work fine. Video clips longer than 50 seconds (all the ones I was attempting to download were 2 minute clips) will be partial download. I contacted product support again, and shared the new information. They seemed to be completely unaware of this issue, took notes and seemed to escalate the issue. Have not heard back, and was not told to expect to hear anything back only that it's been reported. (Justin_Ring - can't reply to your comment, but if I was added to a group and would be notified in email once it is corrected, this would be useful information for product support to share when reporting an issue, nothing like this was mentioned) The simpler repro is to simply download 2 videos at once. One less than 35 seconds and one longer than a minute. The longer video will be a partial/corrupted video in the zip file, and will be a different truncated size each time you download those same two clips at once.
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17-10-2024 11:07:49
JHi @user31213. There is no need to test this concern. Our team is investigating and working to resolve the issue as soon as possible. If you have called in already to speak with our support team, then you should have been added to the group of neighbors having this issue, and when it's resolved, you will get an email that it has been fixed. Thank you for your time and patience.
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21-10-2024 11:23:27
- U
Thanks for your highly detailed testing, user31213. Ring Support, has this been fixed yet? This problem has been going on for well over a month already. I initially thought it was just me in early October 2024, so I re-tried days later to find that the same issue persists. I finally (and continue to) download my stored videos one-by-one, which to say the least, is taking quite a long time. I've also lost days' worth of videos since they're being deleted after hitting the 90-day storage limit I had previously set (I've since extended to the 180 maximum trying to buy more time since batch downloading is a major failure). This is clearly not a one-off issue experienced by a few users, as there are other posts on here from users with the same bulk downloading issue.
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09-11-2024 05:30:09
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UThis has been a long-standing issue with Ring. I've discovered that most videos are now corrupted when downloaded as a batch, but when downloaded individually, they are fine. Ring support is of no help, and I doubt they're concerned. We needed the videos for a court case, but due to the corruption of videos downloaded as a zip file, we could not use the bulk of the necessary videos as evidence. Does Ring care? Cleary not! Unfortunately, it's about their server space, and they are essentially forcing subscribers to create only short videos and keep videos saved for the shortest time possible. I'm upset, and this neglect should result in a class action (which I'm investigating now). As of today, and for the last year, this has clearly been an issue they've had for a very long time. Again, if I download videos one at a time, they are fine. As a compressed file, I get corrupted videos! I've lost my faith in Ring, and this year, 2024, they have been the worst with customer service; even their representatives are frustrated.
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12-11-2024 05:18:33
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Tom_Ring
Hi @user31213. I would continue to follow up with our support team on this issue. I've performed the steps you've mentioned and, I was unable to recreate your concerns. If this issue has been escalated, you can rest assured that they are looking into this concern.
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17-10-2024 01:49:49
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