So I've learned some things in playing with settings. My mainstream video was "choppy" and skipped frames both viewing live on the NVR, smartpss and web interface as well as recorded video. Also, my snapshots often had the bottom half cut off. These settings fixed it.
1. Definitely do this - Not sure if this is a default setting or something I changed but in the storage settings --> schedule, snapshots tab make sure to de-select continuous. I believe with this selected it was taking snapshots on all channels, every 10 seconds bogging down the NVR. Now I only have IVS selected for snap shots. That completely fixed my cut off IVS triggered snapshots and makes the video smoother with reduced (maybe even no) skipped frames. Be sure to change for all active channels.
2. This may not be optimal as there are multiple variables to test but is an improvement over my previous settings. These settings are the worst for conserving hard drive space but good for smooth video, not loosing frames and full snapshots. Originally I was using H.265, smart codec on, and VBR with max resolution and max frame rate. I don't think IVS and smart codec play nice so I'm 99% sure both should not be enabled simultaneously. I'm now using H.264H, smart codec off, CBR, max resolution and max frame rate and notice an improvement in smoothness. Also, with the old settings the mainstream took longer to load in gdmss and in the lechange app I'd have to try twice in a row to get the mainstream to load. Now mainstream loads much faster in gdmss and loads the first time in the lechange app. I'm pretty certain I'm going to leave smart codec off, since I use IVS, no matter what. When I have more time I'll play with VBR vs. CBR and H.264H vs. H.265 to see if I can maintain the improvements and save some storage space. Maybe just disabling smart codec was what really made the improvement? Also, I may only just play with VBR vs. CBR, because - Look closely at video quality of H.264H vs. H.265. On my front yard cam that see's the road, the pavement was a bit more pixelated with H.265 and looked better with H.264H - that's with smart codec off. Conversely with smart codec on, I found the H.265 video quality slightly better. At the end of the day, lot's of possible setting combos to methodically compare. Worst case, if the settings I have are best for smoothness I'll just buy a bigger or additional hard drive.
Other tips I had already implemented and seem to be best practices
- For encoding make sure main stream settings for continuous, MD, and alarm are all exactly the same.
- Probably best to disable able sub stream 2. Even if it is enabled I can't seem to access sub stream 2 resolutions from the mobile apps so I see no point to make the NVR work harder. When I have time, I'll try disabling sub stream 1 and only enabling sub stream 2 and see how that behaves
- In general only enable the features you need and use. Pretty sure the more you enable, the more you over work the CPU, GPU and hard drive leading worse video performance. Less is more!
- System ---> general date & time tab: I've heard if the time gets out of sync the NVR acts screwy. Make sure you have the correct time zone selected. Setup DST properly. And enable NTP. I recommend an interval of "1" for the ntp so that it frequently updates and keeps your time accurate.
- In storage --> scheduling I highly recommend my suggestion above about snapshots. As far as the recording I only have continuous and IVS enabled.
Hope this helps!
