Recordings poor quality

[timelinex]

I have cameras that are 4 to 8 MP for my NVR and when streaming the video looks fantastic. When I look at the recorded video though it's often pixilated and pretty terrible. Night time even more so. I have all quality settings on the highest.

Is this because I am using 265+ to record? Will switching to 265 or 264 make it better or are there other settings that could possibly be effecting this?

 

[wittaj]

Many here believe that H264 results in a better quality. Personally I have found H264 to give a better picture than H265.

But the issue could be the NVR and cannot process the bandwidth and downrezes recording. Maybe it is recording substream?

Provide more specifics - camera brands, model, and NVR make and model. And perhaps some screenshots of your settings.

Saying you have it all on the highest quality settings doesn't mean much. For example, the camera may be able to run at 20,000 bitrate, but if the NVR maxes it out at 4192 bitrate, then 4192 bitrate becomes the highest quality setting and that bitrate is usually too low for 8MP.

 

[timelinex]

OK, the NVR is LTN8708Q-P8 . Supposedly handles up to 8mp.

I see the bitrate may be the issue. It seems like many of my cameras have different set max bitrates in the settings for some reason. Not sure if it was just something set at install. I have attached 2 of them.

Does bitrate also effect streaming or is that just for recording? Because again, streaming it looks fantastic.

What should I set my max bitrate at?

 

[timelinex]

Also, what if the day recording is ok-ish, but it's the night recording that really sucks?

 

[sebastiantombs]

Without specs, including make and model for the cameras it's impossible to say definitively. A random guess is that the cameras just don't see well at night due to small sensor sizes and high megapixel counts. Do not chase megapixels, chase sensor size. The best performance is a 1/2.8" sensor on a 2MP sensor and a 1/1.8" sensor on a 4MP. 8MP really needs a 1" sensor to perform well at night.

 

[wittaj]

Bitrate affects both live viewing and recording.

According to the specs of that NVR, it caps bandwidth at 50Mbps. A typical camera puts out 10Mbps, 8MP is more.

So when you are watching one camera live stream, it is sacrificing quality of the recording at that time to give you what you call "fantastic" live viewing.

But with all the cameras going, the NVR can only process 50Mbps, so bitrate is dropped to process all the cameras for recording. The more cameras you have, the more the recordings will be degraded.

And night quality could be a result of the camera MP to sensor combination. What camera brands and model number?