Troubleshooting poor image quality - frustrated.

Valiant said:
You can install the smart client (download separate component from the Milestone web site, or from the installer and selecting the smart client option only) on your laptop and point the IP address to the recording server.
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Am having a bit of trouble with this. Installed Smart Client on my laptop but cannot get it to connect. Keep getting "Failed to connect! Check the username and password!".

I am using the server IP for "Computer", basic authentication and admin for un and pw but not working. I thought it might have been an issue with resolving the host name but added an entry to the hosts file on the client machine and still not letting me in. I can ping the server host name fine so the resolving is working, just doesn't seem to be the issue. Any tricks to this? I can see that the original installation has the user as "Network Service" for Milestone processes.

Since turning on the Level 3 overlay on the Smart Client (running it on the server), I notice that the Render queue overflow and underflow counts are very large on all cameras.

The way that this is explained by Milestone is:
Overflow - "Accumulated number of frames not shown. (Decoding speed equals or is higher than display speed. Frames are received quicker than the graphics card can display)."
Underflow - "Accumulated number of frames missed. (Decoding speed too slow. Frames received quicker than the graphics card can decode.):

I have limited understanding of graphics cards. I have tried reading about these parameters but there is limited info as to whether they represent anything meaningful.
I know the card built into my i7 is a HD4000 and supports Quicksync. I have hardware acceleration turned on and I have run GPU-Z in the past and it showed that the GPU was no where near stressed even with the Smart Client open and all three cameras displaying live feed it still only run at about 20%. For this reason and from reading other threads I have not thought it necessary to add an NVIDIA card.

One source indicated that this might represent a bandwidth issue. Not sure where to go with that. 2 of these cameras are running at 15FPS and 1080p and the other one is running at 10FPS and 1080p - I would have though my hardware was easily up to this.
 
You should have a Windows account set up on the recorder and use that account with 'Windows authentication' on the Smart client. Don't use basic authentication. Try logging in with ComputerName\account as the username. Also check under the security settings of the Management client, ensure the Windows account is listed there.

Also try disabling the Windows firewall. This often blocks access. You can add an exception later. Also check system time on both PC's, ensure the time and timezone are accurate.
 
Valiant said:
You should have a Windows account set up on the recorder and use that account with 'Windows authentication' on the Smart client. Don't use basic authentication. Try logging in with ComputerName\account as the username. Also check under the security settings of the Management client, ensure the Windows account is listed there.

Also try disabling the Windows firewall. This often blocks access. You can add an exception later. Also check system time on both PC's, ensure the time and timezone are accurate.
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That worked. You are a friggin legend.
 
So. Now that I have managed to get Smart Client running on another computer, I can provide an update.

Running Smart Client from a separate machine did not help the issue but didn't really expect it to. It dows allow me to compare the video overlay from Smart Clinet running on Server and Smart Client running on Client machine.
Render overflow count is lower when running Smart Client on separate machine but render underflow count is through the roof. This machine is old and does not support hardware acceleration (NVIDIA Ferni card, basic intel HD graphics). CPU (i5) runs hard - 70%.

When running Smart Client on Server machine the Overflow count is higher and continues to climb, underflow count is still high and also continues to climb- numbers are closer together though.

FPS is still all over the place.

Running task manager and GPU-Z on server confirms that CPU and GPU are not stressed according to performance stats. Pinging large amounts of data has no lost packets - I feel that physcially the network is robust.
My PoE switch is a gigbit switch. Everything is Cat 5e.

I tried switching off secondary stream, changing primary stream to MJPEG, changing H264 codec to base profile. Nothing helped.

I am wondering if it could be the GPU on the server (Intel HD 4000) - perhaps the amount of shared RAM or just not up to spec? From what I understand these cards share system RAM and there is heaps of that (32Gb). Reluctant to get an NVIDIA card unless really necessary due to extra power consumption.
 
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Gilera said:
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.
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I think you are delving too deeply in the wrong areas without checking some basics. I doubt it would be a graphics card issue. The recording server works fine without a dedicated GPU. The most probable bottleneck on a recording server would be disk, for a small system this shouldn't be an issue. The cool thing that Milestone does is prebuffers video to RAM which you have plenty of. Check to see if pre buffer is enabled under each of the camera settings.

Can you see the video on the web interface of the camera ?. Is it jerky there ? If so, probably nothing to do with the PC hardware or software. Do you have another brand of camera, does camera have latest FW and what drivers are being used when camera was added ?. Did you count the recorded frames, frame by frame ?, does the count match to your settings ?. If so they are being recorded correctly.

Not exactly sure about dragging pixels but lots of cameras do this/ghosting when WDR or other 'features' are enabled, try turning them off.
 
Valiant said:
I doubt it would be a graphics card issue.
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That's what I had always assumed.

The web interface is quite poor quality and has little freezes every few seconds but it only capable of displaying the second stream which must be set to MJPEG. I have the quality and FPS set low to avoid consuming unecessary resources. If the second stream is set to H264 the video will not display through the web interface.

The only cameras I have are 3 identical ones at the moment unfortunately. If I identify that the camera is definitely the issue I would consider buying different ones.

Buffer is set to 3 seconds on all cameras. I had this on when I was using motion triggered recording, but motion was hit and miss for my complex scenes so now recording 24/7. I was actually thinking of turning this off but will leave it on if might be helping.

Firmware is latest for cameras. I updated it prior to using them so no other experience. Drivers are up to date.

How can I count the recorded frames? From the Smart Client? I tried to do it on exported MKV video through VLC but as you frame advance, the timer just seems to freeze.

I have BLC turned on 1 camera only. WDR not turned on any cameras.
 
Just pause the video on the smart client and click to the next frame. The timeline shows the time, seconds and fraction of a second. You should be able to count 15 frames between the elapsed second. Eg 12.05.30.xxx to 12.05.31.xxx

If you are getting that for all cameras means system is recording ok.
 
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Ok. So I have checked the time taken for 15 frames when set at 15FPS and also time taken for 10 frames when set at 10FPS.

For 15 FPS it is taking between 1.16 and 1.2 seconds for 15 frames.

For 10 FPS it is taking around 1.05 seconds for 10 frames.

That is at night in the dark without IR lights (capturing nothing).
 
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Not sure how you measured that. I was more concerned that frames were missing and not being recorded. Sounds like it's recording ok.

Image quality appears to be a different issue. Without a more reputable camera to compare, it's hard to test further.
 
I think they are (missing frames I mean). I measured this by advancing 15 frames and seeing difference in time stamp. If it is taking more than 1 sec for 15 frames at 15 FPS then surely it is missing frames?
I just measured how long to record 15 frames during a glitchy recording such as that posted above - it took 2.14 seconds for 15 frames - so almost double what it should. Another way of saying it is that in a 1 second period there was 11 frames recorded (for 15 FPS setting). That does not seem right. At 15 FPS there should be an average 0.06 sec delay between frames. Within this 1 second window there was a gap of 0.64 seconds between 2 particular frames. This is 10 times what the average should be.

Edited - sorry didn't make sense.
 
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Ok, understood. Frames are missing since you're not getting the expected number _within_ the one second. Check performance monitor for high disk activity, disable all cameras except for one and see if that helps. Check that antivirus is not scanning the recording folders. Agree something is NQR.

Are all devices on a local switch and not going through the modem/router? Post up a network diagram.
 
Disk activity 0-2%

Added exception to windows defender (only antivirus running) for mediadatabase folder.
 
Unplugged 2 ethernet cables from the switch disabling 2 cameras - issues remains.
 
IMG_20190531_201738558.jpg
 
Me too. Will try that and thanks for your help.

Milestone support forum reckon it is the camera capabilities.

Hard to swallow given that i've dropped frame rate down to half capability and still an issue. Maybe should just buy a Hikvision or Dahua turret and compare.
 
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