Ring doorbell showing black recording

This is not solved several months later.

Just realized one of my ring cameras had been saving only black recordings most of this week. The still, between motion events, time lapse images are saved but all else just shows up as black.

Hi neighbors! Video connection concerns are often related to wifi, mobile device, or Ring app communication variables. The best first thing to check is your wifi signal strength, or RSSI, which can be found in the Device Health section of your Ring app. Check out our Community post about RSSI for tips on optimizing this signal strength.

Removing and reinstalling the Ring app is a quick way to ensure it is up to date and optimally integrated with your mobile device. As you mentioned the recordings do not display video, please log in to your account at Ring.com to see if your recordings will play via web browser. Additionally, any recent network changes or new network equipment is always worth considering as a factor.

If this concern persists, try power cycling your Video Doorbell (if it has a quick release battery) by removing the battery for a couple moments, then replacing it in the Doorbell. You can also attempt a reset on the Video Doorbell, by holding the setup button for 20 seconds. I hope this helps! :slight_smile:

I discovered today that I’m having the same issue for the last two days without even knowing it.

It’s been affecting both my stickup cameras, with good -40 to -45 signal strength, and fully charged batteries.

I get a notification, but black video recording both through the app and through the ring.com website.

I think I was able to solve the issue though

  1. I switched the wifi network to my guest network to open the connection and avoid any potential firewall problems.
  2. When I switched the cameras to setup mode, both decided they needed a software update and went offline for about 5 minutes.

Maybe there was a bug that popped up, and fiddling with the settings triggered the update. Or it’s also possible my Netgear router automatically updated and introduced a network problem as well.

Just sharing my experience and solution. Hopefully they continue to function well as they have for the last 1.5 years.

2 Likes

I am having this exact issue, It started yesterday with the motion alerts but ever video is black. I have walked in front of it and it doesnt go off and if I try to go live on my iphone or pc it cant bring up the door bell. I have tried all the steps on here with no luck. I tried to chat with support and it says chats not available. Thoughts?

Blacked out video is a problem. Notifications are sent of activity, but video is black and we can’t see anything. About every 10th notification I get a video works but the rest are blacked out. I have restarted wifi and devices and it is still a problem.

It was working fine for several weeks.

The “Black Recording of Death” has struck my Ring Doorbell 2. RSSI is -34 so connection to router is pretty good. Using the Android app and the PC Dashboard app give the same black recorings for motion detected notification. However, live viewing works fine for phone or PC Dashboard, so it’s not a router problem. I’ve gone through all the highly tecnnical solutions suggested on this site, and No Joy. Someting’s wrong either with Ring’s servers and/or their software.

This problem is NOT SOLVED!

4 Likes

Just started having same issue, all videos are now black

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I’m getting intermittent black videos starting Thirsday 9/24/2020, where I’ll have some good recordings in a row, followed by some black ones. There is no rhyme or reason, and its like this whether I use my browser to access my dashboard or Ring apps.

Everything was working fine since July when I added 2 stick up cams to my 2 doorbells. I’ve made no changes to routers, wifi, or anything, with good signal at all 4 devices. Rebooting the Xfinity wifi router didn’t help. Reserving IP address for the 4 ring devices didn’t help. No firewalls on the Xfinity wifi router. Adding/removing Xfi pods and rebooting Xfi wifi router again didn’t fix the problem.

It’s freaking frustrating.

I have a couple of wifi access points on different SSID’s that I can try connecting to, but having to remove the ring doorbells from the wall to access the “orange” button to change the network is a pain, as is getting a ladder to access the two stick up cams, so changing wifi network isn’t an option.

What makes it worse - I bought 2 indoor cams in that I haven’t installed yet but it’s too late to return them to Amazon; so ditching Ring for something else means throwing away hundreds of dollars of equipment, some not even used but too late to return.

EDIT - some times the device will work with live view, and others not, and it’s not always at the same time as when getting black recording - so sometimes no live view but motion is recorded, and sometimes I get neither, and sometimes I get live view but nothing was recorded, etc.

4 Likes

So, here is how I SOLVED the black video issue - Ring now seems to be working since I did some changes last night, and througout the day today it’s fine.

Context - I had switched to an Xfinity xFi Gateway wireless router with xFi pods (mesh network) about 6 weeks ago (switched from Apple Time Capsule), at the same time that I got the latest xFi gateway to replace my 4 year old box. I’d immediately had the black Ring video issue for the 1st 24 hours, but then EVERYTHING WORKED JUST FINE the past 6 weeks, until the issue came back 90% of the time from Thursday 9/24/20 thru Sunday 9/27/20.

For 4 days and thru the weekend and last night I was about to tear my hair out trying to fix things - I had 2 doorbells and 2 stick up cams that were intermittently taking turns not activating for live view or storing a working video after motion alert or live video. Videos viewed from a computer web browser were also black, so it was an issue with the video not properly going between the cameras and the cloud.

I reserved IP addresses in the router, I changed the names of my network and access points around, I rebooted anything that I could (cameras, gateway, access points, pods), I switched the cameras to a different network (3 diff SSID in the house), etc.

So as a last resort I put the xFi gateway into bridge mode, and set my Apple Airport Extreme Time Capsule to run as my wireless router (it had been in bridge mode acting like an NAS for time machine backups). I already had all my IP address reservations saved in the Airport TimeCapsule for D-Link cams and NAS, etc. when I’d previously used it as a router; so when I changed it back to being a router, all I had to do was add an IP address reservation for all 4 Ring devices like I did with the xFi gateway.

Since the Router and Modem are in the basement, and I lost the xFi mesh network when I put it in bridge mode, I plugged in a couple of extra Airport Extremes and set them to create their own network on the main floor and the other upstairs (like I had done before the xFi mesh). This time I set the network SSID on the main floor to be the MAIN SSID to which all the Ring and D-link cameras will connect. The Ring were no longer connecting to the wifi in the basement or the xFi pods upstairs (speed and strength had always been good).

Not only do I have Ring working, but it gave me back a guest network with my Apple router (xFi doesn’t have VLAN for second network, as it’s used for their hotspot I’m guessing), but also my iPhone 11 Pro Max is seeing 400+ mbps speeds on the main floor (while xFi was giving me about 50 mbps when connecting to a pod, or 250 mbps when connecting to the basement xFi gateway router).

I have also been experiencing the black screen, on one of my Rings - the one at the front door. This only started happening recently. I have not changed my routers, Wi-Fi , internet connection, or anything else. But, I have noticed one thing that is common on all of the black screen occurrences. I have a Ring spotlight set up in my driveway. So, when a delivery van pulls up to deliver a package to my front door, the Ring spotlight goes off first, and records for its 40 seconds. The delivery man walks up to the front door, and the front door Ring gets set off. But, because the front spotlight is already recording, the front door Ring doesn’t record (or at least the signal does not get through to the cloud to record). This WAS NOT an issue in the past. Only started recently. I note that if the Front Spotlight is NOT set off (like if I open the front door to pick up the package), then the front door Ring records just fine.

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That was one of my symptoms too - if one was recording the other didn’t. That is all working now, and both record video with motion at the same time, since I set up my netowrk with Apple Router instead of using the xFi gateway as the router.

I’ve also run into this problem after months of ok-ness.

Ring camera v1

Looks like it was due to a failed software update it tried. Noticed because first thing it did was update and present new options I never saw before ONCE I got it working.

Solution was:
Seperate home network to use diff SSID names for 5g and 2.4 VERY IMPORTANT
Hold orange button and reset 20 sec
Reinstall ring app
Remove camera and info from ring app
Add camera back to app
Choose 2.4 network
Wait for update to finish
Eventually everything back to normal
I’m not a rapper

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No surprises here. Seems the most important recordings are not captured, and actually getting helpfull support requires going through so much time consuming repeats that it’s not worth it.

This isn’t the solution because this isn’t the problem. Video worked for over a year. This past Wednesday. It recorded a video then six minutes later the video was black and has been black ever since.

ISP hasn’t changed, mesh network hasn’t changed, firewall hasn’t changed, router settings hasn’t changed, upload/download speeds far exceeds what is required for this to work. Combed through settings and configuration it is not an issue with the router.

I am in Agreement with some of these other posts. You have a bug you need to fix. Probably in the last update. You want owners to pay for a cloud service to view any kind of history, fix it or plan to issue a refunds.

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I’ve been intermittently having the same issue lately. It was especially persistent today on the one at the side door of my house (a Ring Video doorbell 2 with removable battery). Nothing I tried including all the aforementioned router tricks worked. Finally I just swapped out the battery pack even though the one that was in it was at 50% still. Now, the motion and live view works again. No black videos (for now).

Ring, this needs to get fixed. There’s no excuse for the thing being this finicky.

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I followed all of the suggestions with changing router etc. No good
Finally I realized I have the battery. I charged the battery, problem solved.

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Try charging the battery

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Ours was working fine yesterday, but today, nothing but black videos. It is like somewhere in the setup you choose what the camera is supposed to do when it senses an alert, and the camera is shut off, but I can’t find anywhere to turn it on.

1 Like