I have two IP4M-1028EW cameras. I have a very simple setup: Cameras are connected to my router through gigabit POE injectors, and the only other device connected to the router is my pc (also gigabit). all cabling is cat-6. I want to get the video looking perfect before I add my NAS/NVR software into the setup.
I find that when I set a camera to:
- Encode mode H.265
- resolution 2688x1520
- FPS=30
- Bit rate type variable
- quality best
- streamlimit to 4000Kb/s or higher
the video starts exhibiting choppiness or occasional slowdowns If I go full max settings, in other words, the settings listed above plus a streamlimit of 9984Kb/s, the video becomes very slow - people appear to move in slow motion and the clock counter runs slowly, sometimes skipping seconds.
To remedy this I must turn the bitrate down. A setting of 2048 Kb/s seems to ensure smooth video. it's possible there are other combinations of settings that return the video to smoothly running, but I have not tried everything yet.
Is the Amcrest IP4M-1028EW incapable of providing H.265 video at its own max settings? This would be a problem for me, since I bought these cameras after considering these specifications. But perhaps I missed a spec note, or perhaps there is some setting I am not understanding on the camera.
I have tried to eliminate all other equipment as the cause of the problem. I have tried both of my amcrest cameras, two different gigabit POE injectors, two different routers, and I've even swapped out the network cables. The problem always follows the cameras. I have viewed the video on only one PC, but it has a gigabit connection. I am not currently operating a NAS or any third party NVR or video software...I'm going directly to the cameras through internet explorer by entering its static ip address and logging in.
One confusing thing that I'm not sure is related - my router is reporting that the camera connections to the router are not gigabit connections. I have swapped routers and I've changed ports on the router to make sure I don't have a bad port. I'm also using new poe injectors that are spec'd to 1Gb/s. But while my pc shows green (gigabit), both cameras show orange (not gigabit). It's strange to me that a networking device in 2018 would not have a gigabit connection, and perhaps this is related, I don't know.
I'm also under the impression that using a combination of settings that includes max video resolution but low bitrate would compromise the quality of the recorded video (when I eventually start recording). In other words, my goal is to get the highest quality video recording possible. If I'm mistaken in this assumption please let me know.
Any ideas?
Can't run max settings on IP4M-1028EW
Re: Can't run max settings on IP4M-1028EW
I'm not an expert, having recently installed my first system, but I'll share a few things that I have found when setting up my system that might help. I currently run 9 cameras (seven 4MP and two 3MP) using a NV4116-HS NVR.
As far as the gigabit connection, I seem to recall investigating the same issue when I set mine up. I believe that the cameras have 10/100 Ethernet cards. If you run the calculations using one of the many online calculators, you'll see that the bandwidth usage for a single camera runs between 20MBPS-25MBPS for a 5MP camera and maybe 50MPS for a 10MP camera. So each camera does not require a gigabit connection. However, if you have a 4 port or 8 port switch, the output connection on the switch would need to be gigabit if all of the ports were populated with cameras and streaming data. Some switches have 10/100 ports except for one, which is 10/100/1000. I decided to spend a little extra and go with full gigabit switches (Netgear), meaning each port is gigabit. I have two of them in my system, both connected directly to routers.
As for getting a smooth video stream, I'm not sure what your problem might be, but I can attest to the fact that my nine cameras run pretty smoothly. Not always perfectly smooth, but generally no more than a second delay during high load (meaning lots of movement in the image, from wind or something).
This was not the case when I first set up my system using four wireless cameras. Wireless did not work well for me at all, so I ended up running Cat5e to each camera, which solved the problem. So I have turned the wireless feature off and the remaining cameras I purchased are all wired POE. I run all of my cameras using H.264H at full resolution, 30 fps (except the two 3MP, which max out at 20FPS), VBR, and 3072 streamLimit. It took me a while to get everything configured and working smoothly (mostly due to the wireless issues), so I have not experimented with raising the streamLimit, nor H.265 (which, theoretically, should improve the streaming ability since it is more highly compressed).
The other thing that I have noticed is the PC software (Surveillance Pro) seems to be very graphics intensive. I have a workstation computer running a Xeon processor and a heavy duty graphics card, and I still have problems if I try to run other graphics software at the same time (like Photoshop). And, as a side note, I think Surveillance Pro has some memory leaks or something because it will eventually crash if I'm running too many other graphics intensive programs.
I have not spent much time analyzing how the video stream works through the web browser camera inteface. Frankly, several of my cameras still suffer from the browser plugin issue, so I don't even see the video stream, I just use the browser interface to edit settings. I almost always use Surveillance Pro to view camera streams (or the iPhone and iPad apps).
Also, as a side note, I don't believe you indicated any usage of an stand alone NVR, but if you do, know that the graphics capability in the NVR itself is not highly robust. So watching multiple cameras directly on the NVR monitor outputs is not always successful. Using Surveillance Pro on a highly graphics capable PC seems to work better.
So, I realize I did not necessarily answer your questions directly, but I hope I've given you some info that will at least will be somewhat helpful.
Mike
As far as the gigabit connection, I seem to recall investigating the same issue when I set mine up. I believe that the cameras have 10/100 Ethernet cards. If you run the calculations using one of the many online calculators, you'll see that the bandwidth usage for a single camera runs between 20MBPS-25MBPS for a 5MP camera and maybe 50MPS for a 10MP camera. So each camera does not require a gigabit connection. However, if you have a 4 port or 8 port switch, the output connection on the switch would need to be gigabit if all of the ports were populated with cameras and streaming data. Some switches have 10/100 ports except for one, which is 10/100/1000. I decided to spend a little extra and go with full gigabit switches (Netgear), meaning each port is gigabit. I have two of them in my system, both connected directly to routers.
As for getting a smooth video stream, I'm not sure what your problem might be, but I can attest to the fact that my nine cameras run pretty smoothly. Not always perfectly smooth, but generally no more than a second delay during high load (meaning lots of movement in the image, from wind or something).
This was not the case when I first set up my system using four wireless cameras. Wireless did not work well for me at all, so I ended up running Cat5e to each camera, which solved the problem. So I have turned the wireless feature off and the remaining cameras I purchased are all wired POE. I run all of my cameras using H.264H at full resolution, 30 fps (except the two 3MP, which max out at 20FPS), VBR, and 3072 streamLimit. It took me a while to get everything configured and working smoothly (mostly due to the wireless issues), so I have not experimented with raising the streamLimit, nor H.265 (which, theoretically, should improve the streaming ability since it is more highly compressed).
The other thing that I have noticed is the PC software (Surveillance Pro) seems to be very graphics intensive. I have a workstation computer running a Xeon processor and a heavy duty graphics card, and I still have problems if I try to run other graphics software at the same time (like Photoshop). And, as a side note, I think Surveillance Pro has some memory leaks or something because it will eventually crash if I'm running too many other graphics intensive programs.
I have not spent much time analyzing how the video stream works through the web browser camera inteface. Frankly, several of my cameras still suffer from the browser plugin issue, so I don't even see the video stream, I just use the browser interface to edit settings. I almost always use Surveillance Pro to view camera streams (or the iPhone and iPad apps).
Also, as a side note, I don't believe you indicated any usage of an stand alone NVR, but if you do, know that the graphics capability in the NVR itself is not highly robust. So watching multiple cameras directly on the NVR monitor outputs is not always successful. Using Surveillance Pro on a highly graphics capable PC seems to work better.
So, I realize I did not necessarily answer your questions directly, but I hope I've given you some info that will at least will be somewhat helpful.
Mike
Re: Can't run max settings on IP4M-1028EW
Hi Mike, this is really good info; thanks for taking the time to give me some ideas.
My post actually came after a few weeks of messing with my equipment and settings, so by the time I posted the problem I had simplified things down...for example, yes I have an NVR (Surveillance station software as part of my Synology DS118 NAS), but to eliminate possible effects from that, I physically removed the NAS connection from the setup and chose to access the camera direct from my browser. Actually removing the NAS was part of my troubleshooting...until I did that I was not sure Synology was not to blame.
Each port on my netgear WNR3500L router is gigabit. Good idea though. I heard from a guy that router ports can go bad, so at one point I moved the camera to the port that my pc was on, that was previously showing a gigabit connection. The non-gigabit connection followed the camera. But good info on the bandwidth calc...I knew I didn't need gigabit, but the router assessment is like a pass/fail - if it's not gigabit I don't know what the speed is. No external switch in my setup right now. So anyway, I think the infrastructure is ok.
Funny thing - the camera stream looks beautiful at max settings when I use H.264. I'm starting to think that compressing the video to the H.265 standard is beyond the camera's ability at the max settings. So I can live with that if I have to, but to record at max video settings I would need to spend bigger bucks on a larger hard drive, and/or maybe not record continuous. And had I known that up front, I would not have gone with the DS118, since it has just one hard drive slot. It would have been more cost efficient to get a multi slot NAS so I could buy several smaller capacity hard drives. Or get a different camera that could actually do H.265. But I'm getting ahead of myself; this is just the scenario if the IP4M-1028EW can't do H.265 at max settings. My fall back at this point would be to keep the settings lower...but bummer if I do that, I was hoping for 2k resolution. Synology also has an advanced recording mode that records continuous at lower settings and on motion detection cranks up the video to higher settings...so I can play with that to minimize the hard drive size.
Another thing I don't understand is how the streamlimit setting affects video quality. Considering you need 20, 30, even 50 Mb/s for the high settings on some of these cameras, by limiting the stream aren't you just dropping data and affecting the video quality? If that's the case, then it seems like why should you bother with video settings that greatly exceed the streamlimit setting? In other words, you limit your stream to 3072. Logically doesn't that mean you would choose your video settings to be just above a 3072Kbps (3Mbps) so you don't waste camera resources / cpu, which will get dropped anyway when the data is sent?
I don't mean shouldn't YOU do this personally in your setup...I just mean, this is a general question on something I don't understand, and I'm using the 3072Kbps rate as an example. If you or anyone else understands how these things work I would love to learn.
Again, thanks for the insight and ideas
Matt
My post actually came after a few weeks of messing with my equipment and settings, so by the time I posted the problem I had simplified things down...for example, yes I have an NVR (Surveillance station software as part of my Synology DS118 NAS), but to eliminate possible effects from that, I physically removed the NAS connection from the setup and chose to access the camera direct from my browser. Actually removing the NAS was part of my troubleshooting...until I did that I was not sure Synology was not to blame.
Each port on my netgear WNR3500L router is gigabit. Good idea though. I heard from a guy that router ports can go bad, so at one point I moved the camera to the port that my pc was on, that was previously showing a gigabit connection. The non-gigabit connection followed the camera. But good info on the bandwidth calc...I knew I didn't need gigabit, but the router assessment is like a pass/fail - if it's not gigabit I don't know what the speed is. No external switch in my setup right now. So anyway, I think the infrastructure is ok.
Funny thing - the camera stream looks beautiful at max settings when I use H.264. I'm starting to think that compressing the video to the H.265 standard is beyond the camera's ability at the max settings. So I can live with that if I have to, but to record at max video settings I would need to spend bigger bucks on a larger hard drive, and/or maybe not record continuous. And had I known that up front, I would not have gone with the DS118, since it has just one hard drive slot. It would have been more cost efficient to get a multi slot NAS so I could buy several smaller capacity hard drives. Or get a different camera that could actually do H.265. But I'm getting ahead of myself; this is just the scenario if the IP4M-1028EW can't do H.265 at max settings. My fall back at this point would be to keep the settings lower...but bummer if I do that, I was hoping for 2k resolution. Synology also has an advanced recording mode that records continuous at lower settings and on motion detection cranks up the video to higher settings...so I can play with that to minimize the hard drive size.
Another thing I don't understand is how the streamlimit setting affects video quality. Considering you need 20, 30, even 50 Mb/s for the high settings on some of these cameras, by limiting the stream aren't you just dropping data and affecting the video quality? If that's the case, then it seems like why should you bother with video settings that greatly exceed the streamlimit setting? In other words, you limit your stream to 3072. Logically doesn't that mean you would choose your video settings to be just above a 3072Kbps (3Mbps) so you don't waste camera resources / cpu, which will get dropped anyway when the data is sent?
I don't mean shouldn't YOU do this personally in your setup...I just mean, this is a general question on something I don't understand, and I'm using the 3072Kbps rate as an example. If you or anyone else understands how these things work I would love to learn.
Again, thanks for the insight and ideas
Matt
Re: Can't run max settings on IP4M-1028EW
You bring up some interesting points that will take some study for me. I fiddled with the settings a little, but have not drawn any hard conclusions. Changing H.264 to H.265 does not seem to affect the "lagging" of the camera. What I mean by that is I watch the time counters on each of my cameras and they generally stay within 1 to 2 seconds of each other. As a side note, I have found in the past that some of the lag is in the live stream viewing, and not always on the recording. In other words, when live viewing, I might see some jumpiness in the action, but upon playback, it's smooth.
Until I run it for a while, I won't know what affect it will have on recording times. Currently (using H.264), I've been getting about 6 days of recording, nine cameras, 1TB drive. I plan to get a bigger drive, but had the 1TB laying around, so put it to use.
The streamlimit function is still a bit confusing to me. As you pointed out, you would think it would limit the video stream in such a way as to limit video resolution. However, I didn't notice any real change in video quality when I increased it. It slowed the streaming speed down, showing more like 2-4 second lag in the time stamp, but zooming in on mailbox numbers showed about the same resolution. What is really confusing is, when I look at the real time stream rate (in Surveillance Pro), it often far exceeds the streamlimit setting. For example, I set the streamlimit to 8192 (max on the pull down list for H.265), but the real time stream rate shows as much as 65,000KBPS. So I do not yet understand what real effect the streamlimit setting has.
So, there's a lot I still don't understand. I'm going to change all of my cameras to H.265 for a while and see what effect it has on storage. I'm also increasing my streamlimit to 4096 to see if it affects motion lag.
Note: FYI, the NVR has its own settings page, which allows access to each camera's settings. On the NVR, the streamLimit setting is simply called "Bit Rate", whereas on the camera's settings page, it's called streamLimit.
Mike
Until I run it for a while, I won't know what affect it will have on recording times. Currently (using H.264), I've been getting about 6 days of recording, nine cameras, 1TB drive. I plan to get a bigger drive, but had the 1TB laying around, so put it to use.
The streamlimit function is still a bit confusing to me. As you pointed out, you would think it would limit the video stream in such a way as to limit video resolution. However, I didn't notice any real change in video quality when I increased it. It slowed the streaming speed down, showing more like 2-4 second lag in the time stamp, but zooming in on mailbox numbers showed about the same resolution. What is really confusing is, when I look at the real time stream rate (in Surveillance Pro), it often far exceeds the streamlimit setting. For example, I set the streamlimit to 8192 (max on the pull down list for H.265), but the real time stream rate shows as much as 65,000KBPS. So I do not yet understand what real effect the streamlimit setting has.
So, there's a lot I still don't understand. I'm going to change all of my cameras to H.265 for a while and see what effect it has on storage. I'm also increasing my streamlimit to 4096 to see if it affects motion lag.
Note: FYI, the NVR has its own settings page, which allows access to each camera's settings. On the NVR, the streamLimit setting is simply called "Bit Rate", whereas on the camera's settings page, it's called streamLimit.
Mike
Re: Can't run max settings on IP4M-1028EW
Interesting! So you see it too. I did not mention, I checked both live stream and recorded video, and the problem exists on recorded video also. So before you move everything to H.265, you may want to try it on just one camera...one that has motion on a regular basis, so you see the effects without risking bad video on all of your cameras.
I'll see if I can find more about the streamlimit setting. And my findings are the same wrt the NVR. It's called bitrate there.
Matt
I'll see if I can find more about the streamlimit setting. And my findings are the same wrt the NVR. It's called bitrate there.
Matt
Re: Can't run max settings on IP4M-1028EW
Sorry I misunderstood... You don't see the lag. I read it too quickly and thought you wrote you do see it.
Re: Can't run max settings on IP4M-1028EW
I haven’t had much time to mess with it, but I changed 7 of my cameras to H.265 (my two 3MP cams don’t support it). Surveillance Pro choked badly. Some cams wouldn’t connect at all, others froze. I changed them back to H.264 and they started working again.
I also changed the bit rate on all of them to 4096. So far, they seem to be working fine, but I haven’t had time to evaluate it.
So it appears H.265 is not ready for prime time, at least on my system.
Mike
I also changed the bit rate on all of them to 4096. So far, they seem to be working fine, but I haven’t had time to evaluate it.
So it appears H.265 is not ready for prime time, at least on my system.
Mike
Re: Can't run max settings on IP4M-1028EW
Good to know. Thanks for trying that out. I think I'll probably go with H.264 for now and make some tradeoffs among motion detection, hard drive capacity, and video resolution & frame rate settings. I'll also play with the bit rate.
I also submitted my questions to Amcrest directly. I'd like to hear them say exactly what the constraints are, and if/when they will be resolved, or if only the more expensive cameras can do the job, etc.
Thanks again for the feedback.
Matt
I also submitted my questions to Amcrest directly. I'd like to hear them say exactly what the constraints are, and if/when they will be resolved, or if only the more expensive cameras can do the job, etc.
Thanks again for the feedback.
Matt
Re: Can't run max settings on IP4M-1028EW
I have a hard time letting things go that I don't understand...now I'm thinking perhaps my pc is not up to task for decoding and viewing the H.265 compression. Maybe the camera is just fine. I'm seeing some stuff online that I might need a higher end cpu and/or video card. I'll keep looking
Re: Can't run max settings on IP4M-1028EW
I, too, like to understand as much as possible so if I have to accept something, at least I understand what it is I'm accepting and why. This is why I continue to fiddle with my system and browse the forums every so often, to try and get the maximum performance possible.
While I do think computer power has an impact, it appears there are some other variables at play. For reference, I am using a workstation with an Intel Xeon E5-2630 CPU running at 2.3Ghz, 32 MB RAM, and an AMD FirePro W7000 Graphics card. It's a fairly powerful system, and yet, still has trouble with H.265. Again, my brief test was using Surveillance Pro software, which adds another element to the mix. So, I guess my point is, while computing power is important, it doesn't appear, at least from my test, to be the only factor. Something else with H.265 (or H.265 combined with some other settings) is creating more load than the system can keep up with (using 7 cameras). And my system includes the cameras connected to switches, routers, and the NVR. So there are plenty of places to investigate and there's a lot I don't know.
The good news is, H.264 does work well, at least for me. The brief test I ran on video quality didn't reveal any noticeable difference, although I have not yet compared video with a lot of motion. And disk usage may certainly be higher (after all, smaller file size is supposedly the main advantage of H.265, right?), but big hard drives are readily available and not too terribly expensive, so I find it at least workable, even while pushing the camera resolution towards the top.
Mike
While I do think computer power has an impact, it appears there are some other variables at play. For reference, I am using a workstation with an Intel Xeon E5-2630 CPU running at 2.3Ghz, 32 MB RAM, and an AMD FirePro W7000 Graphics card. It's a fairly powerful system, and yet, still has trouble with H.265. Again, my brief test was using Surveillance Pro software, which adds another element to the mix. So, I guess my point is, while computing power is important, it doesn't appear, at least from my test, to be the only factor. Something else with H.265 (or H.265 combined with some other settings) is creating more load than the system can keep up with (using 7 cameras). And my system includes the cameras connected to switches, routers, and the NVR. So there are plenty of places to investigate and there's a lot I don't know.
The good news is, H.264 does work well, at least for me. The brief test I ran on video quality didn't reveal any noticeable difference, although I have not yet compared video with a lot of motion. And disk usage may certainly be higher (after all, smaller file size is supposedly the main advantage of H.265, right?), but big hard drives are readily available and not too terribly expensive, so I find it at least workable, even while pushing the camera resolution towards the top.
Mike