SecuritySpy 4 - FPS and Pre-Capture Issues
Issue 1:
The Mac Mini CPU with v4.0 is even less usage, around 8%. 16GB ram, 2.3ghz i7 processor.
I have two identical cameras – Axis M3026 – identical settings in SS. Both are lighted well. Without fail, and having trashed all plists, and reinstalled various times, the street camera FPS jumps around from 3-12, while he door camera is consistently 12 FPS. The door camera's motion and continuous clips are consistent, even, and reliable. The street camera drops frames constantly. I even contacted Axis and they sent a replacement camera out (as I thought it was hardware) – same issue with the replacement camera. I changed the POE router to a new one, no change. If I remove the door camera (the good one), the street camera still jumps around on FPS, and is choppy. (If I watch live through the street camera's IP address, it's excellent, no choppiness at all, looks like 30 fps!).
Issue 2:
Pre-Capture doesn't register. I set it to 0, and it consistently captures 4-5 seconds prior to the instance of motion. This seems new to v4. Web server thumbs now do not show the person in the clip, it's always a blank scene, and once you watch the clip you wait 4-6 seconds and the person arrives.
The Mac Mini CPU with v4.0 is even less usage, around 8%. 16GB ram, 2.3ghz i7 processor.
I have two identical cameras – Axis M3026 – identical settings in SS. Both are lighted well. Without fail, and having trashed all plists, and reinstalled various times, the street camera FPS jumps around from 3-12, while he door camera is consistently 12 FPS. The door camera's motion and continuous clips are consistent, even, and reliable. The street camera drops frames constantly. I even contacted Axis and they sent a replacement camera out (as I thought it was hardware) – same issue with the replacement camera. I changed the POE router to a new one, no change. If I remove the door camera (the good one), the street camera still jumps around on FPS, and is choppy. (If I watch live through the street camera's IP address, it's excellent, no choppiness at all, looks like 30 fps!).
Issue 2:
Pre-Capture doesn't register. I set it to 0, and it consistently captures 4-5 seconds prior to the instance of motion. This seems new to v4. Web server thumbs now do not show the person in the clip, it's always a blank scene, and once you watch the clip you wait 4-6 seconds and the person arrives.
Comments
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Hi - were you using SecuritySpy version 3 previously? Is this issue with the jumpy frame rates new to version 4, or were you getting it with version 3 too?
To help us debug both these problems: hold the alt (option) key when clicking on the File menu in SecuritySpy, and under the Debug section, choose "Create Debug File On Desktop". This creates a file called "Debug File" on your desktop; please email it to us. Thanks. -
Yes I was using SS 3 previously. The issue happened in both. The pre-capture thing was less of an issue, now when set to 0, it's running at about 6 seconds pre-capture. I will email the file now.
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Great, thanks. If you can also email us a short video clip captured by SecuritySpy to demonstrate the pre-capture problem that would be very helpful.
What I suspect is going on here is that the new version is not recompressing the video stream, whereas the old version was. This results in much better performance, so it's a better situation.
However, this could very well result in what you are seeing. All recordings must start on a key frame, which is a frame that encodes the whole picture (as opposed to a P frame, which encodes only the differences since the last frame). When doing motion capture, SecuritySpy keeps all frames since (and including) the last key frame in a buffer, so that if there is a motion trigger it can go back and start recording from the last key frame. If it were to wait for the next key frame, it might miss important motion.
So in this situation there is a certain amount of pre-capture built in, depending on the rate at which your camera sends key frames. This is most likely adjustable in the camera's settings, so you could reduce this in order to reduce their effect on the pre-capture duration. This could be called "key frame rate" or "I-frame interval" or "GOV length" somewhere in the camera's settings pages. -
Both issues resolved: By separating the HD continuous clips and the Motion "web" clips, then setting the web clip to be recompressed, the pre-capture now works fine. Also, there is no more stuttering... Thank you for your support!
