HD footage being captured by SS as 320x240
Really weird. Been tweaking my settings and now my HD footage from two Avtech cameras is being captured by SS as 320x240. If I check both cameras in my browser configurations, both appear in their appropriate HD resolution and frame size. The new foscam camera is unaffected by this, retaining its appropriate frame size.
In Video Devices in SS there is no option in my case to change the frame size so how did this happen ?
OK after digging around I've discovered that choosing H264 in 'Format' Video Devices settings automatically re-sizes my captured footage to 320x240 in both avtech cameras.( AVN257). If I choose Mpeg 4 the captured footage is the appropriate HD frames size. ??? The foscam will only work with the H264 Format in Video Devices, but resolution and frame size are not downscaled. It shows a blue screen if I choose Mpeg4. Go figure ?
In Video Devices in SS there is no option in my case to change the frame size so how did this happen ?
OK after digging around I've discovered that choosing H264 in 'Format' Video Devices settings automatically re-sizes my captured footage to 320x240 in both avtech cameras.( AVN257). If I choose Mpeg 4 the captured footage is the appropriate HD frames size. ??? The foscam will only work with the H264 Format in Video Devices, but resolution and frame size are not downscaled. It shows a blue screen if I choose Mpeg4. Go figure ?
Comments
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Hi Peter, SecuritySpy will capture the video at whatever resolution is being supplied by the camera; SecuritySpy will never down-scale the video before capturing.
So it must be that the H.264 stream is set to a low resolution in the camera. Log on to the camera using a web browser and check the stream profiles and make sure they are all set to the highest resolution. Sometimes you will have a primary and secondary (or multiple secondary) profiles, with the secondary ones providing lower resolution, so make sure the primary stream is set to H.264.
Does this resolve it? -
Thank you Ben. I'm still tweaking this. Here's what I can tell you definitely.
The h264 stream in the camera's browser settings has a few resolution settings including D1 resolution which is set to 'Best'. In the camera I select this D1 resolution and I also select D1 in device settings . If in SS I select Mpeg4 in device settings I get my full 720 x 480 resolution. tweaking the Di quality settings from Best to Basic doesn't change the frame size.
If using the same browser camera setting I switch in Device settings to H264 the video is captured at 320x240 ?? Still puzzling. -
And still more puzzling. In device settings I opt for 'no re-compression of data from this device' for all three cameras. BUT if I switch the compression settings around from H264 to Mpeg 4, the change is reflected in my captured footage, SS is ignoring the 'no re-compression' option and compressing the footage anyway according to my selection in device settings.
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Ok this is shaping up to be a real detective story. In a browser I set this camera up as full HD 1080, 4mb bit rate, CBR, 25 fps and the browser captures the clip and reports in QT that it is 1080, app 24.5 fps, 4193 kbit/s, motion is complete, smooth no problems.
In SS; the same browser settings in the camera. SS shows the fps jumping all over the place, from 10fps, to 130 fps, to 60, to 20 etc. In the captured QT movie, the fps is 8.29 and the data rate is 15.85mbits/s !!! Something crazy going on in how SS is seeing and capturing from this camera. -
Hi Peter, the fact that the data rate is so much higher in SS than with the other method indicates that either SecuritySpy is getting video with a much higher quality setting, or it is getting a different codec (e.g. JPEG rather than H.264). If you email us screenshots of the camera's settings pages showing all the available options for the video stream setup we'll take a look to see if we can spot anything else you can try.
Note that D1 is rather low resolution (it's defined as the highest resolution you get from a digitised analog signal, which is 720x480 for NTSC). -
Thanks Ben but I've sent the camera back. Sorry to have bothered you with it. I've ordered a Hikvision, it's on your list of supported cameras so fingers crossed.
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Thanks Ben I still have my two Avtech cameras, one at 1280x1024 at 'High' resolution in camera configurations and another at 720x480 ( D1 resolution setting is the highest setting for this camera in camera configurations ) and am waiting on the Hikvision, both cameras produce excellent video in daytime. You can take off the glass and turn the lens manually to tweak the focus, quite good for relatively inexpensive cameras) but they do need tweaking for optimum nightime performance. The best performance is to set them to deliver MPEG4 in the camera itself, then set SS to deliver MPEG 4 in Device settings, this gets me crisp footage. At night, I ignore IR as the minimal fogging in the cameras makes it useless so I tweak my settings to deliver H264 from the camera and the same in device settings.The footage is noticeably lighter, softer but with better FPS so it's a tradeoff but the footage from both cameras changes the frame size to 320x240 when switched to H264, AND I've slected 'no re-compression' from this camera in settings for both cameras. Cannot understand why.
So thank you but I'll raise this again if I may, when I get the Hikvision. I'm curious to see if selecting h264 in Device settings in this camera also causes SS to deliver 320x240.
