IP3M-941/IP2M-841: FTP causes jumping

[buckyswider2]

Hi all, been running both an IP3M-941 and an IP2M-841 for a few years now. (Side note: How can I tell the model from Amcrest Webview? I forget which is which!) Prior to a few months ago, I was recording to the SD card. Had a few situations where the ~3.5 days available on the SD card was not enough, so I set up an FTP server on my PC and pointed both cameras to that.

Well, that has caused degraded performance on BOTH cameras. The live view on tinycam has always been jumpy, but webview had been flawlessly smooth. But after turning on FTP, even Webview was jumpy. I figured that was just an artifact of network congestion either on the camera side (they're both hardwired ethernet; no WiFI) or my PC side. When I first set it up, I looked at a few of the MP4s that had been FTP'd and they looked great. Fast forward two months...I viewed an MP4, and it, too, was jumpy. As a test, I turned off FTP (and rebooted) on one of the cameras, and Webview live view is STILL choppy, even without and recording happening.

So what did do to break these things? I *think* I'm at the latest firmware (V2.420.AC00.18.R, Build Date: 2020-02-17 on one; V2.620.00AC00.3.R, Build Date: 2019-12-18 on the other- now I'm guessing that the first one is the 941 and the second is the 841). The "Check Version" button works on neither.

Since these are a little "long in the tooth" as far as Moore's law is concerned, I'd be perfectly willing to upgrade to something newer with maybe a hotter CPU that may resolve these issues, but Amcrest doesn't seem to offer anything in that form factor that is newer. (They are mounted horizontally to a narrow window frame just inside of windows, so a bullet cam is not usable here).

And as another side note, what is with Amcrest's trend of making everything with a wide and wider field of vision? That's very frustrating. I have a shield form factor IP3M-HX2W for another situation, and that field of view is so wide that's it's almost useless to view anything over 30 feet away.

So anybody have any suggestions about how I can improve my file saving need without going back to SD cards and their size limitations? Would setting up NAS be any improvement over FTP? Any newer cameras that may work better? Amcrest needs a new company slogan: "So close, and yet so far".

Thanks!

[jack7]

If FTP and PC FTP server are what is causing the problem, you could try Amcrest Surveillance Pro which has the PC-NVR feature for recording camera video. 
Or you could review your camera video settings to try to reduce video file sizes on SD card.
Or get an Amcrest NVR to store your video files.  Example:
https://www.amazon.com/Amcrest-NV4108-H ... r=8-2&th=1

[buckyswider2]

Thanks Jack. I'm not really sure if it's the PC part that is the issue- I'm more thinking that the camera itself doesn't have the horsepower to both record and stream to FTP simultaneously. But that could be way off base. I did try sureveillance pro in the past and it was pretty flukey. Maybe it's stabilized in the intervening years since I've last tried it. That NVR looks interesting- I wonder what protocol the cameras use to get video to it? If it just records the streams maybe that will help...

[Revo2Maxx]

I have a good few 841 and and 1051 and 941 all streaming to NVR, Recording on NVR, on the MSD, and also sending data to a local FTP server. ONly time I have jumping issues is of the camera goes to long without a Restart or my Router goes over a few months without a restart.. Outside of that as long as my cameras are on Cables and the couple that I have on WIFI are good and Strong I don't have any jumping out of any of my footage.. Oddly I do have some Green screens on my 1046WE-AI that is kind off odd in the early AM starting of a AI recording outside of that no issues from my 841 or others like it...

[jack7]

...I wonder what protocol the cameras use to get video to it? If it just records the streams maybe that will help...

The NVR records camera video streams constantly and/or motion detect events, according to schedules.