Where clips are saved

A folder you choose, with a JSON sidecar beside each clip.

Clips are named by date and time, so they sort chronologically.

Beside each one is a small JSON file recording what happened: which detector fired, how strong the signal was, what sensitivity was in force, and what the sound classifier heard. When you're wondering why something recorded at three in the morning, that file answers it.

It also lists everything the camera noticed during the clip: a person, a dog or a cat, which of your pets, a sound such as glass breaking, the moment it happened and where it was in the picture. A video app that reads these files can use them to jump straight to each moment. The file stays in the folder with its clip and isn't sent anywhere.

By default they go to Movies › OdinCam in your home folder. You can change that in Settings › Storage, and reach the folder any time with ⇧⌘R or the button in the sidebar.

If you point the destination at an external drive, OdinCam checks the drive is present and has room before starting a recording, rather than discovering the problem halfway through writing.

Avoid iCloud Drive. If you turn on "Desktop & Documents Folders" in iCloud, those two folders sync — and a motion recorder pointed at one is a poor combination. Every clip uploads, which can be tens of gigabytes a week against your quota; with Optimize Mac Storage on, older clips may be evicted to the cloud and replaced by placeholders; and the uploads compete for I/O with the recording itself. OdinCam warns you in Settings › Storage if the folder you pick is inside iCloud. Movies, the default, is not synced.

Quitting while a recording is in progress is safe. A movie file is only playable once its writer has finalised it, so OdinCam asks macOS to wait while it closes the clip properly. It's usually imperceptible. If the writer were ever to hang, quitting proceeds after a few seconds rather than trapping you — better to lose one clip than to have an app you can't close.

A power cut or a forced quit is different: there's no opportunity to finalise anything, and the clip being written at that moment will be unplayable. Clips already finished are unaffected.