Nest Cam - No audio when video recordings are downloaded to device

[NestUser36]

When I download a video clip to my device, there is no audio. I have set my max recording time to 1 minute in my settings. However, the downloaded video clip in question is 1 minute and 30 seconds long. There IS audio while watching this clip on the google home app, but when I download this same clip onto my device, there is no audio. It seems any video clip that I download to my device that exceeds the 1 minute max recording time (in my settings) there will be no audio. I'm not sure why the Google Home app is downloading clips longer than 1 minute. I can not start and stop a recording manually, so this is all controlled by the app. Any video clip I download under 1 minute onto my device has audio.  So my question is: 1. How can I edit and download video clips under 1 minute in length to my device, so I can get audio on the downloaded video recording; OR 2. If I can't edit or modify the recordings to less than 1 minute prior to downloading to my device, how can I get audio to play on video recordings that are downloaded to my device where the video recording exceeds 1 minute?  

[MplsCustomer]

@NestUser36 

Could you just change your Maximum Event Length to 2 minutes or 3 minutes to get around this bug until it's fixed?  (It seems that, instead of blocking downloads of events longer than your Maximum Event Length, they are letting you download them but excluding the audio. It could be worse, though; they could just obey the setting and block downloads of events longer than your Maximum Event Length.)  Ours is set to 3 minutes, but I found just one event longer than 1 minute in the last few days. On the one, which is 1:09 minutes in length, the downloaded clip had audio on my iPhone.

[NestUser36]

I've changed it to 3 minutes now. Something occurred on my camera that I now need the recording. It's vital that I download the video clip with audio. If my settings was set to a max recording of 1 minute, I should be able to download a 1 minute video clip with audio. However, the app won't let me do that. It downloads a video clip that exceeds the 1 minute max recording; thus, not giving me any audio in the downloaded clip. Google further makes it frustrating because I'm prevented from modifying the clip to under 1 minute prior to downloading onto my device.  If I knew I would not get audio when I downloaded video clips to my device, I would have moved to a different platform and not use this frustrating Nest cam and the clunky Google home app.

[EmptyNester]

Hi NestUser36,  What country are you in?  There may be privacy limits in place (just a guess).

I think the fastest way to get an answer it to open a support ticket and speak with an actual Google Nest Technician on the phone.  Here is the link to get you going.... (I think they are there 24/7)

https://support.google.com/googlenest/gethelp

[NestUser36]

I am in the United States of America. Also, I contacted a nest technician and they can’t figure out how to fix the bug. Not sure if there’s a fix or if I will be stuck with video with no audio. Not sure why they would let us watch a video with sound on their platform  but then disable sound when it’s downloaded to our device. 

[MplsCustomer]

@NestUser36and @EmptyNester 

I suspect this issue is the result of a poor design definition of what SHOULD happen when an event exceeds the "Maximum Event Length", and so it got implemented incorrectly. It seems like it does NOT just cut off recording the event at 1 minute when "Maximum Event Length" is set to 1 minute, but maybe @NestUser36 has a Nest Aware Plus subscription with 24/7 recording, so the event is in the history anyhow. And then it lets the customer download an event even though is longer than the maximum, but then inexplicably omits the audio from the download if the event is longer than the maximum. It's a bug, but who knows what the behavior is SUPPOSED to be?

[NestUser36]

I do not have Nest Aware Plus. I just have the standard Nest Aware subscription. I wish the app would just allow audio even if the recording exceeded the amount of time set in the settings. Or, when downloading the video onto my device it would only download 1 minute of the video and then the remaining time left on the video will be on a separate file to maintain the audio for the video. I will wait and see if there's a workaround to the bug. Even if I set my settings to max record for 3 minutes, this bug could still be present as you might be able to download a video that exceeded 3 minutes and your video will be useless without the audio. 

[EmptyNester]

So, here is a work-around to the problem but it isn't very elegant.  On the iPhone you can set it to record the screen and audio.  Once it is recording you pop over to the app and let the clip play in full.  Return to the iPhone recording and stop the recording then you should have the complete clip (audio and video) saved on the iPhone.

As I said,  not very elegant but it might work enough to get you where you need to be.

[NestUser36]

Thanks for the tip! We'll see if Google will provide a better solution, since this an issue on their end.

[Brad]

Hi there,

Just checking in on this thread and the activity on it. We'll leave this topic open for another 24 hours in case there are any follow-up questions or comments. Thank you for your help, @EmptyNester!

Best regards,
Brad