Hi everyone,
I'm new to the forum and could really do with some help. Tricky question to answer I know but I am trying to hunt down the source of some image quality issues on my residential installation. I feel that I have used good quality hardware and software throughout and despite playing around with various settings, i've been unable to sort this out.
My setup is shown in my signature below -
Three Illustra i610 mini domes (american Dynamics). These are a few years old and might have limited functions compared to some new cameras but the specs are all I need and they seem well built. I bought them for a very reasonable price from a close friend that had never unboxed them. They are fixed cameras and support 2 streams. Cameras with no IR built or mic built in so I am running separate external 12v powered microphones and IR lights.
PoE with Cat 5e cable, gigabit switch. Longest run about 30m.
Running current version of Xprotect Essentials+.
I have streams set up as H264 for primary stream, 1080p, VBR, 20fps.
Secondary stream JPEG.
Motion detection is currently being done on software side although cameras support doing this.
Hardware acceleration turned on. The Intel HD4000 card in the older i7 i'm using supports Quicksync should be up to this I believe. Drivers are up to date.
The issue is that I am getting jerky motion and dragging pixels in high motion regions such as somebody walking. This occurs in both live stream and recorded footage. Also I get very noisy images at night with IR lights.
I asked Milestone technical support and their response was that it is definitely a camera issue and something they have seen many times before. Basically that the encoding capabilities are not sufficient to keep up with the demands. They said that lowering the frame rate, resolution or compression should make a huge difference.
My initial thought was - sure blame the camera!
I really struggle with this. I cannot understand why the camera would be struggling, especially since I am not using the camera to do the motion detection and only have the frame rate at 20fps (max capability is 25fps as i'm set to PAL). I do not really want to accept any less and don't want to reduce the resolution. Why have these capabilities if you can't use them?
Can anyone with similar experience confirm if the capabilities of the camera is really a common issue?
Currently I have the second stream (JPEG) turned on in the camera even though I have Xprotect configured to use H264 for both live feed and record. The only time I utilise the second stream is for live feed when navigating directly to cameras which I have only reallydone for troubleshooting purposes i.e. to make sure the stream is intact when something goes wrong.
If it really is the camera, would I take some encoding load off the camera by turning this JPEG stream off?
Would I take some load off the camera by leaving the the second stream on and using it for the live feed through Xprotect rather than using H264 for both viewing and recording (which seems to be the default setting)? I notice that this is recommended by Milestone when troubleshooting SmartClient performance issues but not sure about camera performance.
Any other troubleshooting ideas??
I'm new to the forum and could really do with some help. Tricky question to answer I know but I am trying to hunt down the source of some image quality issues on my residential installation. I feel that I have used good quality hardware and software throughout and despite playing around with various settings, i've been unable to sort this out.
My setup is shown in my signature below -
Three Illustra i610 mini domes (american Dynamics). These are a few years old and might have limited functions compared to some new cameras but the specs are all I need and they seem well built. I bought them for a very reasonable price from a close friend that had never unboxed them. They are fixed cameras and support 2 streams. Cameras with no IR built or mic built in so I am running separate external 12v powered microphones and IR lights.
PoE with Cat 5e cable, gigabit switch. Longest run about 30m.
Running current version of Xprotect Essentials+.
I have streams set up as H264 for primary stream, 1080p, VBR, 20fps.
Secondary stream JPEG.
Motion detection is currently being done on software side although cameras support doing this.
Hardware acceleration turned on. The Intel HD4000 card in the older i7 i'm using supports Quicksync should be up to this I believe. Drivers are up to date.
The issue is that I am getting jerky motion and dragging pixels in high motion regions such as somebody walking. This occurs in both live stream and recorded footage. Also I get very noisy images at night with IR lights.
I asked Milestone technical support and their response was that it is definitely a camera issue and something they have seen many times before. Basically that the encoding capabilities are not sufficient to keep up with the demands. They said that lowering the frame rate, resolution or compression should make a huge difference.
My initial thought was - sure blame the camera!
I really struggle with this. I cannot understand why the camera would be struggling, especially since I am not using the camera to do the motion detection and only have the frame rate at 20fps (max capability is 25fps as i'm set to PAL). I do not really want to accept any less and don't want to reduce the resolution. Why have these capabilities if you can't use them?
Can anyone with similar experience confirm if the capabilities of the camera is really a common issue?
Currently I have the second stream (JPEG) turned on in the camera even though I have Xprotect configured to use H264 for both live feed and record. The only time I utilise the second stream is for live feed when navigating directly to cameras which I have only reallydone for troubleshooting purposes i.e. to make sure the stream is intact when something goes wrong.
If it really is the camera, would I take some encoding load off the camera by turning this JPEG stream off?
Would I take some load off the camera by leaving the the second stream on and using it for the live feed through Xprotect rather than using H264 for both viewing and recording (which seems to be the default setting)? I notice that this is recommended by Milestone when troubleshooting SmartClient performance issues but not sure about camera performance.
Any other troubleshooting ideas??