Home security cameras are great for letting homeowners know when someone's at their front door, be it a friendly face, a helpful courier, or even an intruder. However, for most battery-powered camera systems that only start to record video when movement is detected, homeowners often miss out on how a visitor happened upon their doorstep — until now. The new Video Doorbell 3 Plus by Ring is the first battery-operated doorbell camera that can capture up to four seconds of video before any motion is detected.

Being able to record footage before sensors are tripped requires a significant amount of power — something that is already limited on a battery-powered video doorbell. To make Pre-Roll possible on the Video Doorbell 3 Plus, Ring had to build a custom hardware and software solution. As a result, Pre-Roll footage does look quite a bit different from the imagery captured by the primary lens.

Alongside a main camera like the one found on other Ring Video Doorbell units, the Video Doorbell 3 Plus includes a power-efficient triple-camera module. This system only captures black and white footage in low resolution and fewer frames per second. On the software side, these lower-quality images are then stitched together into four-second clips that can be viewed directly within the Ring app alongside main camera footage.

Pre-Roll is only available on the new Ring Video Doorbell 3 Plus, which can be pre-ordered today for $229.99. In addition to this doorbell camera system, the Amazon-owned company announced several other products, including the Video Doorbell 3 without pre-roll technology (9.99), Chime (.99), and Chime Pro (.99), all of which are also available for pre-order.

With Ring's recent privacy issues still a topic of contention, the company has made an effort to earn back the trust of its users. Last month, Ring launched a new setting that would allow owners to opt out of sharing their video feeds with law enforcement. As of yesterday, all Ring accounts are automatically protected by two-factor authentication, ensuring that only homeowners can login to view their private footage. Finally, Ring has temporarily paused the use of analytics platforms to keep user data from being exposed to third-party services.

Source: Ring