Hey all, I'm the new guy here, PLEASE help me...

[Rickenbackerman]

Thanks nayr, yeah - IE for sure - no edge. I'll give SmartPSS a looksee.

Regarding "Resources are limited" in firefox - I tried everything. Lowering the frame rate, bit rate, resolution, all of it. Says the same shit over and over. Encode mode is set to H.264.

 

[nayr]

I think I had that issue with Firefox too, and chrome when it used to work.. think the browsers are to aggressive at making simultaneous requests to the WebUI at the same time causing that to trigger if you get too click happy in the WebUI.. usually if i let things settle down a little bit and tried again it would load back up fine.

Didnt realize the 2nd one was Firefox, if that is scaling it correctly then might be something specific to IE..

 

[Rickenbackerman]

SmartPSS looks almost exactly like Amcrest's "surveillance Pro" which is extremely buggy as well. It will recognize my cam as long as I manually add it but I can't view it. I'm pretty much convinced Amcrest = garbage. Like I said earlier when I started this thread, it's too bad, because the hardware seems pretty good. The software and support are not.

Their spambot Amazon reviews don't help a whole lot, either.

 

[nayr]

that specific camera you mentioned does look like a heaping pile

Ive only ever seen one PTZ camera under $250 that was worth a shit, and its this one: Dahua Mini Black Face PTZ (SD29204S-GN)

 

[Rickenbackerman]

Yeah, I think I'm just wasting my time with this shitty rebranded junk. Back to amazon (China, hell, I don't care, as long as it's not here) it will go.

So if I can't access the PTZ capabilities remotely, what's the point, right? That was my whole goal when this IP cam thing all started for me. To be able to log in remotely and look around. But now port forwarding is out. So what cam should I buy?

 

[bob2701]

Have you tried the Amcrest support forum?
Technical Discussion - Amcrest Forum

I have been using the ip2m-841B for the past 8 months to monitor my dog with no problems. Using it with the IOS app on my iPhone and iPad. The camera works much better if it is hard wired instead of wireless.

 

[Rickenbackerman]

I tried creating an account there about five times - I never get a confirmation email (and yes, I checked my spam folder). Apparently even their forum has bugs.

Zero interest in the app, I want to stream to youtube live. Out of curiosity, though - does the app still work if you are away from home? I had the android app on my phone for a little bit just to test it and it didn't seem to connect unless I was at home, which kind of defeats the whole purpose of the thing.

Camera is hard wired BTW.

 

[bob2701]

I tried creating an account there about five times - I never get a confirmation email (and yes, I checked my spam folder). Apparently even their forum has bugs.

Zero interest in the app, I want to stream to youtube live. Out of curiosity, though - does the app still work if you are away from home? I had the android app on my phone for a little bit just to test it and it didn't seem to connect unless I was at home, which kind of defeats the whole purpose of the thing.

Camera is hard wired BTW.

Yes the app works away from home. I don't remember the actual steps (8 months ago) but it was simple, used the camera in the phone to read the QR code on the base of the camera. One thing is that it forces you to change the password from the default.

I registered in about a minute for the forum and don't know why you are having a problem with it. I would think you would get more answers there than here, more users with the same camera.

Even without registering you should be able to browse and search.

Good luck.

 

[Rickenbackerman]

Baby steps... I was able to log in to the camera and view the live feed with VLC using:

rtsp://username : password @ ip : port/cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=0

(With no spaces, emoticons were showing up here)

Took several tries w/variations on this using what nayr calls "google fu" (good one btw). Even then I had to play around with the 1's and 0's on the channel and subtype before I found the right combo that would let me in.

Next step will be to attempt to use ffmpeg to stream to youtube live. Will likely be a STEEP learning curve on that one.

 

[Rickenbackerman]

Nayr, I tried using ffmpeg using the code you pasted above. I know the rtsp works because I can see the stream with VLC. In ffmpeg I get the following error:

rtsp://userassword@xxx.xxx.x.xxx:554/cam/realmonitor?channel=1 Invalid argument (all in red).

Any ideas? Maybe because I'm not using an NVR? I'll admit I don't know what any of the command line options are...

 

[nayr]

escape the URI, it has characters your command line is likely to pickup.

on windows you just run the ffmpeg line from your cmd.exe window, I think..

 

[Rickenbackerman]

damn emoticons are showing up again, ugh, so you're not seeing what I'm actually inputting... and I X'd out my camera's IP, although I guess I didn't really need to.

Yes, running from a cmd window. Not sure what you mean by "escape the url"

 

[nayr]

put quotes around the rtsp url

 

[Rickenbackerman]

HOLY. SHIT.

It didn't work the first time, but I tried the exact same command line input the 2nd time and it works!

Cam is pretty zoomed in here and it's dark in here, but...

rickenbackerman1 Live Stream - YouTube

nayr, I may have more questions since it seems like the feed is kinda glitchy and it would be cool to have audio too, if possible... but for tonight, I'm going to bed happy. AND THANKS!

PS I see you're a Cubs fan. Lifelong O's fan here! Season tickets since the early 2000's (or what we call the "dark years").

 

[Rickenbackerman]

Interesting - I let ffmpeg run overnight and my computer was frozen this morning. Restarted it, fired up ffmpeg again and left for work. If you click the link in my previous post, it says the stream is offline right now, but about 20 minutes ago it would show about 7 seconds of the feed and then freeze. If I refreshed the page, it would show the same 7 seconds and freeze again.

 

[Rickenbackerman]

I guess YT live had an rmtp server error and that's why it locked up on me, at least that's what ffmpeg said when I got home. I've gotten several other ffmpeg errors tonight though - I must have killed and restarted the stream five times. I thought the "-b:a 128k" was supposed to limit the video feed bit rate? Here's what I'm looking at now:


ffmpeg1 by Robert Hampshire, on Flickr

~2700kb/s, but I've seen it as high as 6,000. Or is that combined video and audio? (BTW tho I get no sound on the TY feed - I had the mic disabled before but it's on now and I can hear it thru VLC).

 

[nayr]

the -b:a 128k is trying ot encode audio at 128kbit, all this is well documented.

 

[Rickenbackerman]

Ah, gotcha. I had my wires crossed on that part.

After playing around with it some more, I'm seeing two problems as of now:

1 - no audio on the YT feed (I hear it in VLC).
2- after some random amount of time the ffmpeg fps will drop to 1, ffmpeg will eat up about 50% of my CPU power and the YT feed will die.

Not sure if the two are related?

 

[zaul.mendez]

Google for Amcrest SDK API, nice document with all realted to HTTP, RSTP