Foscam R2 poor quality in Blue Iris

[Alistair Hardy]

Hi. So basically, the picture quality I'm getting from my Foscam R2 is abysmal. Day or Night it's a pixelated mess

The above is what it's looking like now. And day time is no better.
When the connection first starts, it's crisp and clear, but after a minute, it goes right back to what you're seeing here.


The above are my settings.

Any ideas?
Its' running on a gen7 HP Microserver with 8GB of RAM and is connected to the network using TP Link Powerline Ethernet. Not ideal but better bandwidth than Wifi

 

[SouthernYankee]

Change bite rate control to vbr
Change frame rate to 15 or less.
Leave key frame interval at 30, or drop it to 15.

 

[fenderman]

Could be the powerline adapter or if the camera is connected wifi, that would do it as well..test wired.

 

[Alistair Hardy]

I changed it from to powerline from wifi to see if it made a difference, sandly not the case.
I've updated the settings as proposed by SouthernYankee and we'll see how it goes.

When I move out of this flat and into a proper house, I'm going to run cat6 everywhere, properly. Because it's just so much more reliable....

 

[Alistair Hardy]

Sadly no joy.

When I update the settings, the bit rate goes up to about 500kB/s and then sinks. Quality is maintained until it drops below 100Kb/s, then it just goes down the toilet.
Initially, you can clearly make out the alloy wheels on the blue car on the right and make out some of the cars number plates

EDIT: Initial quality for reference

 

[fenderman]

Sadly no joy.
View attachment 34505
When I update the settings, the bit rate goes up to about 500kB/s and then sinks. Quality is maintained until it drops below 100Kb/s, then it just goes down the toilet.
Initially, you can clearly make out the alloy wheels on the blue car on the right and make out some of the cars number plates

EDIT: Initial quality for reference
View attachment 34506

It's the connection. Test wired

 

[Alistair Hardy]

Partners out for the night so I can actually do that for once.
I've just run some CAT6 from the switch on my desk to the camera in the bedroom window and it's still the same..
3 Screenshots here.

After coming back from placing the cable


After forcing the camera feed to reconnect


After 10 mins or so, the camera quality has returned to low quality

 

[fenderman]

Partners out for the night so I can actually do that for once.
I've just run some CAT6 from the switch on my desk to the camera in the bedroom window and it's still the same..
3 Screenshots here.
View attachment 34514
After coming back from placing the cable

View attachment 34515
After forcing the camera feed to reconnect

View attachment 34516
After 10 mins or so, the camera quality has returned to low quality

Try using find inspect for the onvif profile...if that doesn't work email support. You can also stream rtsp to VLC player and if it happens there then it's got nothing to do with blue iris but the camera.

 

[Alistair Hardy]

For some reason, I'm unable to open the network stream in VLC.
The format is rstp://<username>:<password>@192.168.0.240:88/videoMain ?

 

[fenderman]

For some reason, I'm unable to open the network stream in VLC.
The format is rstp://<username>:<password>@192.168.0.240:88/videoMain ?

seems like you set your rtsp port to the same as your http port...try this...keep all ports on default ...try again in BI leaving rtsp at 554

 

[Alistair Hardy]

Nope, it was me putting rstp instead of rtsp
Anyway, it appears to be the camera. VLC is having the same issues.
I've emailed foscam support and hopefully their support is half decent...

 

[SouthernYankee]

Could the quality and the pixelation be caused by shooting the camera through a glass window.

Are the pictures from a live feed or from play back ?
What is the format coming from the camera, h.265 h.264 ..... ?
Turn off bi hardware acceleration.
Are you storing the bi video on a local harddrive or on a nas.?
Are you recording direct to disk ?
When did this start happening ?
Is the wifi turned off in the camera?
Can you access the camera by the web interface ? Is the video on the web interface pixelated ?
For the rtsp is the port correct ?

 

[fenderman]

Nope, it was me putting rstp instead of rtsp
Anyway, it appears to be the camera. VLC is having the same issues.
I've emailed foscam support and hopefully their support is half decent...

Dont bet on foscam support...also in the future avoid the brand. its crap

 

[fenderman]

Could the quality and the pixelation be caused by shooting the camera through a glass window.

Are the pictures from a live feed or from play back ?
What is the format coming from the camera, h.265 h.264 ..... ?
Turn off bi hardware acceleration.
Are you storing the bi video on a local harddrive or on a nas.?
Are you recording direct to disk ?
When did this start happening ?
Is the wifi turned off in the camera?
Can you access the camera by the web interface ? Is the video on the web interface pixelated ?
For the rtsp is the port correct ?

He noted the issue occurs in vlc, so its not related to blue iris

 

[Alistair Hardy]

Dont bet on foscam support...also in the future avoid the brand. its crap

I was on a pretty tight budget and there isn't much selection these days for cameras that allow you to record to your own NVR (I'm looking at you, LG & Netgear, Hive & Nest).
I needed one that I could just place on the side, with pan & tilt so I could get it to look down on the car park.
I would have liked Axis as I use to use them at an old job and they were pretty good but they don't really fit the bill + they're pretty expensive.
If anyone has a recommendation for a camera that fits the bill while not destroying the bank account, I'm all ears.

It's also worth noting that the recorded video displayed by foscam's app is perfect, crisp and detailed.. It's live feed also appears to suffer from the same poor quality.

 

[fenderman]

I was on a pretty tight budget and there isn't much selection these days for cameras that allow you to record to your own NVR (I'm looking at you, LG & Netgear, Hive & Nest).
I needed one that I could just place on the side, with pan & tilt so I could get it to look down on the car park.
I would have liked Axis as I use to use them at an old job and they were pretty good but they don't really fit the bill + they're pretty expensive.
If anyone has a recommendation for a camera that fits the bill while not destroying the bank account, I'm all ears.

It's also worth noting that the recorded video displayed by foscam's app is perfect, crisp and detailed.. It's live feed also appears to suffer from the same poor quality.

Read the wiki...there are lots of options.

 

[Alistair Hardy]

I contacted Foscam UK through Facebook and they've organised an engineer to call me on Friday.
Surprised me how easy that was...

 

[Alistair Hardy]

Just got off the phone. It was a setting that's only available on the live video feed through the camera's web UI called NAA.
This setting makes the camera try to auto adjust it's output for network conditions. However, it's pretty bad at doing that.
Odd place to put such a key setting. It's now crystal clear again.

 

[Dan Bran]

Just got off the phone. It was a setting that's only available on the live video feed through the camera's web UI called NAA.
This setting makes the camera try to auto adjust it's output for network conditions. However, it's pretty bad at doing that.
Odd place to put such a key setting. It's now crystal clear again.

Where exactly did you find that setting, i am having the same issue with only 1 of three foscam cameras, the other two work perfectly. but one has the same problem. starts out looking great after initial connect then turns into pixelated garbage after about 2 minutes

 

[willis.zion]

Where exactly did you find that setting, i am having the same issue with only 1 of three foscam cameras, the other two work perfectly. but one has the same problem. starts out looking great after initial connect then turns into pixelated garbage after about 2 minutes

See the NAA settings in the attachment