Remote Viewing With EZViz: What Should We Expect?

Sprocket

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We have just had 5 HikVision DS-2CD2042WD-I 4Mp cameras and a DS-7608NI-E2/8P NVR installed. Initially, viewing the output from the cameras on iVMS was very disappointing because, as I understand it, we were only seeing the substream which was something like 630 x 360 so the supplier returned and pressed the right buttons so we could locally monitor, record and take snapshots in what appears to be HD, 1080x1920.

Both before and after the change, remote viewing via EZViz was (to our way of thinking) very poor. You could seldom see four cameras at once, usually one or two and they regularly stopped to re-buffer every minute or two. The time codes show that Live View was hardly ever live, with up to 3 minutes difference between adjacent cameras making it impossible follow any action and often people would simply appear or disappear when the feed caught up.

Our supplier (who we are beginning to regret) says it's because we are trying to send HD and that our internet connection is too slow (it tested at 1.1Mbps up, by the way). We have explained that we are only concerned about seeing high res video at home and simply want reliable, continuous viewing of what's happening when we are away and that the sub stream would probably be fine for that. We are currently logging the performance while they scratch their heads, but the implication is that we are expecting too much, so here are my questions:


  1. Do other users with similar hardware get better remote viewing than I have described above. Are we expecting too much?
  2. Is there a way to have HD at home and something less sent to EZViz?
  3. Are there any (non geeky!) alternatives to EZViz that might work better? Unfortunately, there is no-one available to spend hours poking around with anything that isn't very friendly.

Thanks in advance for your help. We're new to this!
 

hook3m

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IVMS 4200 is the viewer you want to use and you can select main stream or sub stream as a viewing option. Your supplier is correct in that 1.1 Mbps is not enough bandwidth to view these cams in main stream over the internet. The software you use to view them is irrelevant at this point as the bottleneck is your internet speed.

As a test go onsite and connect to the LAN and pull up IVMS 4200. You should be able to view all 5 cams in mainstream with no issues. If you can do that, your almost definitely looking at a bandwidth issue. You can either up your speed with your ISP or get used to using the sub-stream for remote viewing.

Just curious, what bitrate are your 5 cameras set at?
 

Sprocket

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Thank you for your reply.

I see I wasn't clear about how we want to view the cameras - we want to be able to use a tablet, phone or iPad when away from home, so maybe I should have said mobile instead of remote. I didn't see an option for iVMS 4200 for mobiles so I installed iVMS 4500 on an Android phone and it does seem to work more reliably. I haven't found an option for changing the viewing stream but by the look of it we're seeing the low res version. As I said above, the sub-stream is fine for viewing on these devices but our poor experience with EZViz was bad no matter whether Basic or HD was selected in the app running on the phone or iPad. I would have expected our internet connection to handle the sub-stream without too many issues.

Is the resolution of the stream that is sent to the EZViz Cloud determined by the NVR or does that serve up what is requested by the app. To put it another way, can we configure the NVR (via iVMS 4200 on the LAN) to only send the sub stream to my phone?

Will look up the bitrate when I next have access to that computer.
 
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Sprocket

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This now seems to have boiled down to one question:

Can we view the live output of our DS-7608NI-E2/8P NVR in HD 1920 x 1080 on our LAN at home at the same time as sending the lower resolution substream out to EZViz or iVMS 4500 so I can see it on my phone?
 

SSNapier

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This now seems to have boiled down to one question:

Can we view the live output of our DS-7608NI-E2/8P NVR in HD 1920 x 1080 on our LAN at home at the same time as sending the lower resolution substream out to EZViz or iVMS 4500 so I can see it on my phone?
Yes, this should not be an issue. Bear in mind though that anything viewed thru cloud services could have a significant delay from the actual live view.
 

Sprocket

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Many thanks. Yes, we appreciate live view is less live when viewed from a distance. Can you point me in the right direction for the setting that will enable me to do as above?
 

hiky

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I have found if you output from the NVR @ 2688*1520 no ipad, phone app likes it, sub stream continues as normal but main stream stops playing on any device, everyones mileage will vary on that but that is what i have found, 1920*1080p and 1280*720 100% reliable when viewing outside of the lan on a mobile with an appropriate speed or from another wifi access spot dependent on upload speed from the NVR

If the Op only has up speed of 1.1mbps then you have no chance of viewing a decent image outside of your house on any device, your upload speed is way too low coupled with perhaps mobile download speed issues and the overall effect is no main stream to watch, only sub stream

you can try and improve on your sub stream with a bit of adjustment from the NVR`s web UI, here you can find some quality adjustments that may help with sub stream image quality
Or dependant on your NVR and firmware, try setting your main stream H264+ setting to ON, i have found this helps when mobile devices are accessing the camera outputs on main stream

Also lets not forget phones and tablets connect in different ways, your phone obviously is dependent on the signal it is getting from your carrier if not on wifi and tablets generally are only on wifi, so your best connection will always be from a wifi hotspot or other home location away from the cameras and NVR

IVMS-4500 is available for ALL devices, even Microsoft phones which do suffer from lack of apps, i have tried and used IVMS-4500 on Iphones, ipads, android tablets, phones, Pc`s and if i am honest they all work very very well, main stream and sub stream but you do need a better up speed to be able to view your main stream, to be honest you did really answer your own question, you may be expecting too much with the connection you have !

I assume you have tried the various settings on the mobile devices that may help with quality ??
 
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Chris Race

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I have found if you output from the NVR @ 2688*1520 no ipad, phone app likes it, sub stream continues as normal but main stream stops playing on any device, everyones mileage will vary on that but that is what i have found, 1920*1080p and 1280*720 100% reliable when viewing outside of the lan on a mobile with an appropriate speed or from another wifi access spot dependent on upload speed from the NVR

If the Op only has up speed of 1.1mbps then you have no chance of viewing a decent image outside of your house on any device, your upload speed is way too low coupled with perhaps mobile download speed issues and the overall effect is no main stream to watch, only sub stream

you can try and improve on your sub stream with a bit of adjustment from the NVR`s web UI, here you can find some quality adjustments that may help with sub stream image quality
Or dependant on your NVR and firmware, try setting your main stream H264+ setting to ON, i have found this helps when mobile devices are accessing the camera outputs on main stream

Also lets not forget phones and tablets connect in different ways, your phone obviously is dependent on the signal it is getting from your carrier if not on wifi and tablets generally are only on wifi, so your best connection will always be from a wifi hotspot or other home location away from the cameras and NVR

IVMS-4500 is available for ALL devices, even Microsoft phones which do suffer from lack of apps, i have tried and used IVMS-4500 on Iphones, ipads, android tablets, phones, Pc`s and if i am honest they all work very very well, main stream and sub stream but you do need a better up speed to be able to view your main stream, to be honest you did really answer your own question, you may be expecting too much with the connection you have !

I assume you have tried the various settings on the mobile devices that may help with quality ??
This is all good stuff....does no one use the ddns instead of the ezviz???
 

Sprocket

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In answer to the above, now that we've installed fibre and upped the connection to 30/10 Mbps, the EZviz cloud seems to work OK but using iVMS4500 to view it gives a more reliable streaming experience.
 

carnagelan

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I setup alot of remote connections for my customers. Eziviz streaming is much slower that your standard dns forwarding.

I prefer using forwading or if its Hikvision hik-online has never failed me.
I can also keep track of all my customers dvrs/nvrs with hik-online.
 
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