Doorbell camera doesn't record the beginning of events

[ImKK]

My doorbell camera is slow to start recording when it senses something. Animals seem to just materialize on my front porch without walking up. Walking up to the house from the car, the camera misses the first 20 paces from the street, which is a straight line. When people walk down the sidewalk, by the time the recording starts it's missed their face. This makes it useless for security. Recently I heard gunshots in the middle of the day and a couple minutes later someone ran onto my porch, facing the front door, crossed the porch and ran off. I watched this happen from my home office window, so I went to the app to download the video to share with the police. Watching it from my window, I know he looked right at my front door- I thought he was trying to come in. I expected a clear image of his face. All I got was the back of his head as he ran off. Is this even meant to be used for security or is it just supposed to be for the convenience of seeing who's ringing your doorbell?

[ImKK]

I should have mentioned that I have the sensitivity set to "high". 

[MplsCustomer]

@ImKK 

That seems to be a deficiency of the 2nd gen Google Nest cameras and doorbells (or of the Google Home app). Event clips in the Google Nest app always start a little before the event that triggered recording of the clip.

We have a plugged-in battery camera with a Nest Aware Plus subscription, so we get 24/7 video history in addition to the event clips, but the event clips always start a little late in the event. But since we have 24/7 history, we can see what happened before.

With the battery doorbell you can't get 24/7 recording because the doorbell ALWAYS runs on battery power (https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/11830989), and you can't get 24/7 recording on battery power (https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/9681538: "If your camera is battery-powered, it'll only have event video history, even if you have a Nest Aware Plus subscription. 24/7 video history isn't available for the Nest Doorbell (battery), even with optional wired installation.")

[ImKK]

Thanks for the explanation, even though I don't like the answer. We bought this house 8 months ago and transferred our ADT service here. We just went along with what their rep suggested. I think we should have looked into other security companies. The house was built in 1870 so hard wiring a camera sounds like a headache. 

[MplsCustomer]

@ImKK 

Part of the problem is also that the battery doorbell runs off of battery power even when wired (https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/11830989), and is therefore normally in "Idle" mode and has to wake up before it can start recording an event.  We have a battery camera, plugged in with the optional power cable, and so it at least catches events close to when they start.

We had seen reports of this phenomenon two years ago, before we added a doorbell for our third entrance, and so decided not to purchase the battery doorbell but instead got another 1st gen Google Nest Hello Doorbell and wired it with this OhmKat adapter and plugged it into an outlet near that entrance: