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1fps -- Changing Frame Per Second Capture Rate

edited November 2015 in SecuritySpy
Issue: The upper left camera window displays "[Camera Name] - Active - 1fps" and I want to increase the frame capture rate. I was experimenting with improving download bandwidth and somehow set the Frame Per Second rate too low.

At first I thought I had done it at the camera's firmware but discovered through their software that it was capturing live video at what appears to be 30FPS. The cameras are HikVision 3MP Bullets Model DS-2CD2032-I.

So far I haven't had any luck going through the manual, searching discussions, or back tracking what I did. Help..., what did I do? I've checked Camera Settings... > Continuous Capture & Motion Capture as well as Compression Settings with no luck.

I did learn to change cameras from Active to Passive Mode before changing Settings, maybe I accidentally did it there?

I'm really enjoying Security Spy! HikVision software was buggy but I could get around their problems with Security Spy (e.g. unable to change 2004 camera calendar by blanking using HikVision and then using Security Spy's Settings > Camera Settings > Setup > enabling Text Overlay > Overlay Settings... Camera hardware and images have been very good so far.

Many thanks! It's a shame I feel I need this software but I'm glad I've got it.

Comments

  • Hi - glad that you found SecuritySpy! Open the Video Device Settings window and locate the camera in question. Is the Format setting set to JPEG? This would explain the low frame rate. Change this to H.264 RTSP and you should get video at the full frame rate. 30fps is unnecessarily high for most purposes, so I would recommend lowering this in the camera's settings.
  • FANTASTIC, Thank You Ben! Yeah..., I had seen the (video and audio) and figured since no audio, bandwidth would be increased by (video only) with the JPEG option.

    Really enjoying Security Spy and wishing HikVision would hire you as a consultant. :-)
  • Happy to help! If you turn off audio in the camera's settings, then no audio will be sent, so you might want to do this if you haven't done so already. In general, H.264 is going to be much more efficient than JPEG.
  • I'm glad I popped in to read this. My frame rate's were dropping to 2 and 3 fps at night. I changed it to H.264 and I've got a dramatic improvement. Thanks.
  • OK now the downside to using H.264 is that the footage is really poor, blurry, slightly artifacted. So the mpeg4 setting is giving me a better framerate and much crisper footage.
  • Hi @peterdewolf - what camera make/model are you using here? It's usually possible to increase the camera's compression quality (bit rate), so try this to see if it sufficiently mitigates the problem. In theory, at the right compression quality, H.264 encoding should be no worse than any other format, however with some cameras we have seen that the quality setting simply doesn't go high enough to achieve good results, so this may be the case here.
  • edited November 2015
    Ben it's an avtech camera. I do remember an awful lot of tweaking of bit rates etc to get optimum footage and framerate. The framerate is dynamic when the camera is passive and can be as low as 3 or 5 fps especially at night even with quite a bit of ambient light so even though SS is told to record the footage at 25fps I think what's happeneing is that the 3 or 5 or 7 fps is simply transcoded to a file that is 25fps. But just experimenting in daylight the H.264 is definitely inferior to mpeg4 or jpeg. I took a screenshot but seems there's no option to upload pictures. The bitrate for this camera is a max 5000 ( which I assume is 5mb )

    Resolution
    Quality
    FPS
    Max Bit Rate
    D1
    BEST
    25
    5000
    CIF
    BEST
    25
    3000
    QCIF
    BEST
    25
    3000
    screen grab didn't work but I just copied the settings and pasted them here
  • hope you got that. Comments box is telling me 'Body is required' ?
  • would a drop to low framerates have anuthing to do with the drop in my broadband speed. It can be sluggish at times.
  • If the camera is connected to the Mac over a local network (wired ethernet or WiFi), then the speed of the internet connection shouldn't have any effect on the camera's frame rate. Most likely the camera is simply adjusting it based on different lighting conditions.

    Is there a VBR (variable bit rate) option for H.264 encoding? If you can specify a fixed frame rate, the camera must be set to CBR (Constant Bit Rate). VBR is generally preferable, because in this case the camera can adjust its bit rate dynamically in order to produce good results in a range of conditions. With CBR the rate is fixed and therefore it will be too low in certain conditions but unnecessarily high in others.
  • Thanks Ben, yep wired. I'll dig around and see if it's VBR ro CBR.
  • HHM camera the camera has CBR, VBR and LBR, never heard of LBR before ?
  • I've never come across LBR as an encoding option before - this could be Low Bit Rate? In any case you'll probably want to use VBR with a moderately high quality setting, as this is generally significantly better in terms of quality and bit rate than CBR.
  • thanks. I just found out that the browser confiuratiopns for the camera, in 'Video settings' are NOT being retained even if they are 'saved'. Thats' a pain. No matter what I do the camers is still in full HD mode and from dusk to dawn it drops to an average of 5fps. Tech support suggested I wait for a firmware update.?? So far their Tech support, which is a live chat service has been the best ever for a camera. Anyway, footage captured in late evening with lots of ambient street lighting etc compressed by SS in MPEG4 is 5fps, 7.9 mbit/s at 1920x1080
  • In H24 compression the FPS drops to 1.79 fps which is of course totally useless and the data rate is 8.5mbit/s
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