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Tapo C310 - tiny stutter

I have installed a new camera at a remote location and it works fine except for a slight stutter every couple of seconds - when viewing the stream on the Tapo app the stutter isn’t there but using ss about every three seconds there is a slight drop as if it is losing a couple of frames.

I am using a 2013 iMac and have two other Tapo cameras locally which do not suffer from this - could it be my iMac just can’t keep up with the stream or is there something I can adjust?

Comments

  • If you are seeing this happening very regularly - e.g. exactly every 2 seconds or exactly every 3 seconds - then this is most likely due to key frames. Encoded video streams consist of repeated segments comprising a key frames (I-frame) followed by multiple delta frames (P-frames), where the key frames encode the whole image, and the delta frames only encode the changes in the image since the previous frame. Therefore, key frames are much larger, and the stutter you are seeing is most likely due to the additional time required to transmit the key frames over the Internet.

    To mitigate this, you could look into increasing the upload speed of the Internet connection at the location of the camera (since this is likely to be the bottleneck). You could also try a lower frame rate and/or lower compression quality/bitrate in order to generally lower the bandwidth of the stream.

  • Thanks for the reply - it does sound like this is the problem. Not sure how to sort it though, upload from the remote location is certainly enough to cope, no problem at this end either. Un fortunately, being a 'cheap' camera it doesn't have a lot of options aside from changing the resolution and 720p isn't really good enough.

    Still, I guess that a price to pay for not spending much, and at least it descent sound like anything that I can really change so will just have to live with it.

  • I have this camera but haven't been able to connect with it via SecuritySpy. It's working in the TP-Link Tapo app and I have created a camera account for it there to allow access from 3rd party apps. Can anyone tell me what the SecuritySpy settings should be to connect with it? I've tried the TP-Link profiles and the Manual Configuration profile (although I'm not certain what the Manual profile path should be).

    Thanks

  • path is /stream1 but it should work with the onvif profile.

  • Hi @Dipsea these cameras are ONVIF compliant, so ONVIF is the correct profile to use in SecuritySpy. The camera should have been auto-discovered by SecuritySpy and available via the "Discovered Devices" button under Settings > Cameras > Device. You have to create a camera account for the camera via the Tapo app, but it sounds like you have already done this.

  • Thanks. I finally sorted it out - a problem with my TP-Link Deco XE75 router. I've had various issues connecting IoT devices and finally resolved things by creating a seperate WiFi network for those on the router. Camera is working well via ONVIF as you suggested.

  • Great to hear you worked this out!

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