Here are some common issues regarding motion clips (video).
If you're new to Blink, we recommend first learning about viewing your clips in the Blink app.
Troubleshooting Cloud Storage or Local Storage Clips
How can I purchase a Blink Subscription Plan to view my clips when my trial ends?
Once your free trial ends, no new recordings will be saved to the cloud and your existing cloud recordings will be deleted based on your settings in the Blink app. Blink Subscription Plans provide you with exciting features, including unlimited cloud storage for all your motion clips and live view recordings. Select your marketplace to learn more about purchasing a Blink Subscription Plan.
If you have a Sync Module 2 with a USB flash drive and an active Blink subscription plan, a daily backup of your Cloud Storage clips are also saved to the USB drive. These backup clips are not viewable in the Blink app, but are viewable when the USB drive is inserted into your computer. Backups are added to the drive every 24 hours the moment you plug in the USB drive.
Learn more about how to access clip backups on your USB drive.
Am I using Local or Cloud Storage?
The Storage Switcher allows you to toggle between different storage types, such as Local Storage and Cloud Storage. If you are using multiple storage options, the dropdown arrow allows you to choose and view clips for the selected storage type.
Depending on your storage option, your motion clips are viewed in either Cloud Storage or Local Storage:
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Cloud Storage - Cloud Storage of motion clips begins when you have a Blink Subscription Plan or you’re enjoying a 30-day free Subscription Plus Plan trial. Once clips have been saved to Cloud Storage, they can be viewed in the Blink app by selecting this tab.
- If you’re subscribing to a Blink Subscription Plan, you’ll see an icon with an infinity symbol
indicating that you have unlimited storage capacity. - If you have a legacy Blink device with complimentary Cloud Storage, the icon
changes to indicate how much of your storage capacity is left.
- If you’re subscribing to a Blink Subscription Plan, you’ll see an icon with an infinity symbol
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Local Storage - Each Local Storage drive is labelled by the system it’s attached to. Once clips have been saved to Local Storage, they can be viewed in the Blink app by selecting it from the Storage Switcher menu.
- The Storage Switcher lists all the storage options throughout your Blink home. If you own multiple Sync Modules, each with USB flash drives being used with Local Storage, they are all listed in the Storage Switcher.
- Learn more about Local Storage with the Sync Module 2.
Are you trying to view clip backups?
If you have Blink Subscription Plan, clip backups are video files which are created every 24 hours and stored on a USB plugged into your Sync Module 2. The Blink app does not display or let you replay clip backups. You must first safely eject your USB flash drive from the Sync Module 2 and then plug it into a PC to view your clip backups.
Learn more by visiting How do I view backup clips?
Additional troubleshooting
Is your system armed with one or more cameras active?
To capture motion clips, your camera system must be armed and at least one camera must have motion detection enabled. Learn more about arming your system.
Do you have any active filters applied?
The filter icon in the lower right changes to reflect an active or nonactive filter status.
Filter icons
Shows that no filter is active. An unfiltered Clip List shows all clips from all cameras on all the systems that are available.
Shows that your Clip List is being filtered. Tap the icon to change the filter settings.
Removing filters
You can deselect any chosen filters by either re-tapping the filter so it is no longer blue, or by tapping CLEAR FILTERS at the bottom.
Tap APPLY FILTERS to apply your changes.
Landscape view
Viewing your clips should resize to the width of your screen. If your screen rotation is locked, the clips will not resize to fill the screen. Check the screen rotation lock in your device's settings.
- iOS - Change or lock the screen orientation on iPhone - Apple Support
- Android - How to automatically rotate your screen - Google Help
Where are my Local Storage clip thumbnails?
Thumbnails are only available in the Clip List for cloud storage clips. Local Storage clips display as play icons, with the camera name and recorded timestamp information.
My camera is recording motion clips when there isn't any motion.
If your camera is recording motion clips when no movement occurs, you may need to adjust the camera or its settings. Consider these factors for optimal motion clip capture.
- Thermal detection. The motion sensor detects changes in temperature in the camera's field of view. Big sources of heat or cold can cause false triggers. Try moving the camera to a different location. This will isolate any environmental factors that may be triggering the motion sensor.
- Retrigger time. Increase the Retrigger Time to 15 seconds. Learn more about Retrigger Time.
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Location. Is your camera located where it will get the view you want?
- If your camera is placed outdoors, it will be more prone to false motion notifications. When it is outside, the changing temperatures or moving objects (at slightly different temperatures) can trip the motion sensor.
- Angle the camera to avoid viewing random motions, bright spots from reflections, blowing trees or high traffic areas.
- Learn more about how to properly place your cameras for motion detection.
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Sensitivity. Each camera has a setting to control how responsive it is to motion.
- Low Sensitivity means the camera is less responsive to motion, so it takes more motion to trigger an event.
- High Sensitivity will respond to just about any motion like blowing leaves or rain.
- Set the sensitivity so that your movement is detected, then use Activity Zones to block out areas of random motion or reflections.
- Learn more about adjusting sensitivity for your Blink camera.
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High motion areas. Is there a regular source of motion in the camera view?
- Active roads, moving shadows, flocks of birds, and neighborhood pets can all cause a motion event.
- Activity Zones can be set to block out motion in a certain area. Learn more about Activity Zones.
- Network. If the camera has a weak connection to your wireless router, it may cause the camera to record false motion clips. Increasing the Retrigger Time should resolve this issue. You can also move the camera closer to your wireless router.
- Power cycle. Power cycling the camera may also resolve this issue. Try removing and then reinserting the batteries or the USB cable connection.
Delete
One or a few of my clips were deleted. How do I get them back?
Once you delete a clip, it is immediately and permanently removed from the Blink servers. Unfortunately, Blink Support does not have the ability to recover or restore deleted motion clips.
If you have a Sync Module 2 with a USB flash drive, check to see if your clips may have been backed up on your USB drive. Learn more about accessing clips on your USB Drive from a PC.
For more information about the different ways to delete clips, learn more in How do I delete Motion Clips?
DeleteI'm looking for some of my clips (videos) but they seem to be missing. What happened to my clips?
Here are a few causes for this scenario:
- The most common answer is they were auto-deleted. All clips have a limited lifespan in Cloud Storage. This means that depending on your setting, after a certain amount of time has passed, your clip is permanently removed from our servers automatically. Once it's removed, there is no way to recover that clip.
- A trusted person, who has access to the account, could have deleted the clips.
- Your local storage USB flash drive could have become corrupted, causing data loss.
Note: Local storage clips that are automatically backed up to your USB drive do not auto-delete. However, if you've reached maximum storage capacity on that drive, backups are no longer created and more storage space must be made available for clip backup to resume.
How do I change my auto-delete storage settings?
The default auto-delete period of 60 days; however, the length of time for auto-delete can be adjusted to 3, 7, 14, or 30 days (EU and UK users have 30 days maximum).You can also choose to leave the auto-delete setting at 60 days.
Note: If your Blink Subscription Plan expired and you have a new plan, your auto-delete Storage Setting will keep the setting from your expired plan.
There are two ways to access the auto-delete setting to change the length of time before auto-delete occurs.
From App Settings
- From the Home screen, tap Settings
> Device and System Settings > Cloud Clip Storage. - Tap Auto Delete After and select the desired period to change your auto-delete period length.
From the Clip List
- From the Home screen, tap Clips
. - Scroll to the end of your Clip List and you will find Clips auto-delete after __ days (default is 60).
- If you have numerous clips saved, it may take some time to scroll to the end of your list.
- Tap Change.
- Select the desired period to change your auto-delete period length.
What happens to my clips when I switch storage types?
When your primary storage type changes (i.e., switching from Cloud storage to Local Storage or vice-versa), all clips stay where they were created until they reach the auto-delete limit or get deleted manually.
Local Storage switching to Cloud Storage
- If you're a first-time subscriber or are re-subscribing, once you begin subscribing, your motion clips will be stored in Cloud Storage by default. The Local Storage flash drive will be used to store a backup of the clips saved in Cloud Storage. Backup occurs once every 24 hours.
- Clips on the USB drive are not subject to the auto-delete process. Delete single clips in the Blink app, or safely eject the USB drive and access clips on your computer to delete clips all at once. When you re-insert the USB drive into your Sync Module 2, the remaining clips are recognized and local storage resumes.
- If you aren't using a USB drive for backups, Cloud Storage will be the only place your clips are saved.
Cloud Storage switching to Local Storage
- If your 30 day trial runs out or your subscription ends, or is cancelled, your clips will remain in Cloud Storage until they reach the auto-delete limit or get deleted manually.
You have a mix of cloud and local storage clips
When you have clips in more than one storage location, the following message appears in the Blink app.
We removed your Cloud tab
This warning message appears when you stop or cancel your subscription, and all of your Cloud storage clips have either been deleted or reached their auto-delete time.
Manifest Stale error
If you receive an error that says Manifest Stale when viewing your Cloud Storage clips, this means the Sync Module was unable to connect to the main Blink servers due to an unfinished update or a network error.
- Make sure your Wi-Fi network and equipment provide 2MB per second or more download speed at all times.
- Note: Upload speed is the speed at which you can send data from your location to Blink servers. Most ISPs have a big difference between download speeds (which they advertise) and upload speed (which you often have to research).
- Make sure the power to your Sync Module is still on.
- You may need to perform other Wi-Fi troubleshooting. Learn more about troubleshooting your Wi-Fi network.
Other network issues
Some Wi-Fi or other network equipment may be configured to allow only certain network communications. Certain network and firewall settings may block the ports and servers that Blink products rely on to communicate.
Blink products use port 443, it should always be available for these devices.
For more network troubleshooting, please visit our Wi-Fi Information and Troubleshooting Guide.
DeleteTroubleshooting Clip Backup and Local Storage Clips
My USB drive isn't saving backup clips.
Clip Backup downloads all clips from eligible cameras that were saved to your Cloud Storage and writes them to the USB flash drive that's plugged into your Sync Module 2.
- If you don't have any new clips, none are available to download.
- If a download is interrupted or fails, the files will be saved to USB at the next opportunity.
Is your USB flash drive working properly?
In the Blink app, tap the Sync Module banner to access the Sync Module Settings screen.
Tap Local Storage to see the status of your USB drive. The drive icon should be green, indicating that it has been recognized by the Sync Module.
Learn more about troubleshooting a USB flash drive, or you can insert a new USB flash drive with 1GB to 256GB of memory.
Is your clip in the most recent backup?
Clip Backup occurs once a day. It is possible that the clip you are looking for was not included in a backup. Check the last backup time and date to see if your clip is included. The time and date each clip was created can be seen on the media screen.
Is your USB storage device full?
When your USB flash drive has less than 375MB of storage space, clips are no longer saved, and clip backups stop.
If you do not have enough free space on your USB flash drive, backups cannot continue. Clip recording resumes when there is enough free space. Delete clips to make space or insert a new USB storage drive with more space into the Sync Module.
Is your Internet reliable?
Backup requires a reliable internet connection with a download speed of at least 2MB/second (going from your network to the Blink server). If the internet connection stops or is interrupted for a while, some files may not be stored correctly and they will be included in the next daily backup.
Is your Sync Module online and working?
If your Sync Module's power is interrupted or its connection to 2.4 Ghz Wi-Fi is lost, backups will halt. The Sync Module does all the important work for saving files to your USB memory device. Make sure the Sync Module displays a solid blue and green light.
Is your account active?
Log in to your Blink app and make sure your storage preferences are correct. You must have a Blink subscription plan and an eligible camera to use Clip Backup.
Why do Local Storage clips take longer to load?
Local Storage clips may take a few moments to appear in the Blink app because they are being uploaded from your Sync Module 2. Blink recommends your Wi-Fi and internet upload speeds have a minimum of 2 MB/sec for best results.
It is worth mentioning that Cloud Storage with a Blink subscription plan allows for rapid video access as well as thumbnails for each clip. Learn more about the benefits of having a Blink subscription plan.
My USB drive isn't working.
No USB Connected error message
If the Sync Module 2 does not detect a good connection to the attached drive, the app notifies you with this message. If your app is displaying this message, try unplugging the drive and plug it back in to check if it's seated in the port correctly and that power to the Sync Module 2 is working.
If you plugged in a USB drive and it needs to reformat, but reformatting isn't working, there may be an issue with your USB drive. Learn more about troubleshooting a USB flash drive.
Is your Sync Module offline?
See the Troubleshooting Sync Module offline for more information.