IP4M-1041B poor image quality in Synology Surveillance Station

[mooch91]

Hi all,

I'm currently testing two fairly equivalent 4MP wifi IP cams. One is a Reolink E1 Pro. The other is an Amcrest IP4M-1041B. Both were configured as ONVIF devices (neither shows up in the Synology list).

The problem I'm having is that the image quality of the Amcrest in Surveillance Station (seems to be both Live View and Timeline View) is poor. I'm not quite up on IP cam functionality, so I don't know how to describe it properly - I don't think it looks pixelated per se, but the edges of features in the image are not smooth on the Amcrest. Even the text overlays are not smooth. I've included a screen shot from Live View here. It's better in the camera web interface, and when I take a snapshot from both the camera interface and Live View, they are nearly identical and of good quality.

Settings on the Reolink are H.264, 1920x1080, 10 fps, VBR. Settings on the Amcrest are H.265, 2560x1440, 10 fps, VBR. The Amcrest is running latest firmware. I've had the same results with the Amcrest changing it to H.264, changing resolution, turning substream off, and changing the other parameters as well.

Any thoughts on where I might have gone wrong?

Thanks in advance!



Left - Reolink, Right - Amcrest

 

[mooch91]

I did find one major selection that I believe resolved the problem. Live View in Surveillance Station has a selection between "High Performance" and "High Quality". It was set to "High Performance", and once I switched it to "High Quality", the Amcrest image tightened up.

Here they are again both at 1080p, with the performance/quality selection set to High Quality". The difference in readability of the text is the indicator. Reolink left, Amcrest right:

 

[wittaj]

I wouldn't go by the readability of the time/date text.

The first Amcreast looks better. Look at the plate on the table - you can see all the detail on it compared to the second Amcrest picture. The amcrest may be a tad noisy, but you could up the NR just a smidge and still be fine.

Reolink is well reolink and they crank up the noise reduction.

 

[Shaggy D]

You might also want to review the saved video from each setting.

I say this because it looks to me like the software is just not doing well with anti-aliasing the resized view, while the saved video may actually be a better quality