IP camera image quality question

Hi, I’m having a bit of an issue with my IP camera quality settings.

If I accept the default settings in my Amcrest control panel, an excellent quality video image is displayed, but when I view it on the website, the image only displays for about 6-8 seconds and then goes blank.

If I lower the quality settings, the image stays there, but the quality settings are horrendous. There is lots of pixelation and I can’t clear it up.

I’d like to get an excellent quality picture at 640x480 but I can’t get the settings right.

What do the different encoding modes mean? I have a choice of H.264B, H.264, H.264H and MJPEG. Could one of these settings be my issue?

Thanks to anyone who can help.

Dan

Wait… I think I got it…

Can someone please check it out for me and let me know if it’s clear for you, and stays on the screen for awhile?


Capture.PNG

Not working now in Chrome, it was earlier.

Try this setting:

Encode : H264
Frame Rate (FPS) : 10
Quality : 6(Best)
Frame Interval :10

Thanks all, I’m having a problem trying to re-connect to my IP camera. I’m on vacation next week and can fiddle around with it then.

Until that time I’ve re-set up my Logitech webcam and put it in the window sill (which I hate doing), but any port in a storm I guess.

There is also no live video until I can get the IP camera running again.

Dan

Ok, so this is a little frustrating needless to say…

I’ve been trying to get my wireless IP camera working since yesterday morning and I’m not having any luck. Here’s what I’ve done:

  1. Unplugged the camera and plugged it back in again (this may serve as a hard-reboot, though I have not proven this - instructions do not say to do this if you’re having a problem)
  2. Uninstalled and re-installed the software
  3. Gone into the Amcrest IP Config software, where I see the camera image, and can see the local IP address of 192.168.1.101 showing up with port 37777 being used
  4. Configured two Windows Server firewall rules and opened up 37777 and 377778 both internal and external using TCP
  5. Configured my TP-Link router to open 37777 and 37778 range on 192.168.1.101
  6. Configured the URL in the PHP page to go directly to the camera with the correct settings to embed the live image into a web page
  7. Gone into the settings in the camera software and selected “reset” to reset it to the default values and configuration settings
    8 ) Set Webcam Capture v 10.23 to use my IP cam to go to directly to the camera URL with user ID & password. The cam’s log file says “[ERROR] URL async connection cancelled”, “[INFO] asynchronous URL connection in progress”, [ERROR] failed to start preview" and “[ERROR] failed to connect to” (but what, I don’t know)

It’s still not able to load the image in Chrome, Firefox, IE, or Edge. When I hit refresh in my browser, the progress circle keeps turning and turning, then eventually times-out. I’ve also tried putting the URL directly into the browser address field and it also times-out.

I’m not entirely sure why the camera just “stopped” on me yesterday morning, but I believe I have made a little progress - at least I can see the camera in the IP Cam software now and I can connect it to my own WIFI and the image is nice and clear. I can also see the image clearly on my iPhone.

Anyone know what I’m missing? This wasn’t so hard the first time I set it up.

Thanks,
Dan

To see the live video external to your local network (i.e: on your website) you may need a fixed IP address and then add the port number to the end: 70.168.11.210:37777

For Webcam Capture you’ll need to find out the URL of the image created by the camera, each manufacturer is different but on my Hikvision webcam it’s: http://192.168.1.125/Streaming/Channels/1/picture

Hope that helps a little. :wink:

Yes, already did this. I changed the default port to 4012, but it makes no difference, you can use any unused port. It was working properly before the camera stopped displaying an image.

For Webcam Capture you'll need to find out the URL of the image created by the camera, each manufacturer is different but on my Hikvision webcam it's: http://192.168.1.125/Streaming/Channels/1/picture

Yes, my URL goes something like this, taken from the Amcrest website for my camera model:

http://192.168.1.101:4012/axis-cgi/mjpg/video.cgi?camera=1

Hope that helps a little. :wink:

Thank you for your help, it looks like I’ve already done what you have suggested with no success. I’ll keep at it though. I think it might have something to do with the firewall.

Dan

What i used to do was setup either a noip.org or dyndns.org and create a dns that would be something like
[email protected] you get the idea, i never had a problem…

When you click on http://192.168.1.101:4012/axis-cgi/mjpg/video.cgi?camera=1
Can you see the video?

Running an Amcrest webcam here ok. If I can help let me know…

Thanks for your suggestion, I’ve set up a dns entry to point to my webcam but not sure how I should be using it. Can you enlighten me? :slight_smile: I’m already using dyndns.org for my dns entries.

When you click on http://192.168.1.101:4012/axis-cgi/mjpg/video.cgi?camera=1 Can you see the video?

No, that’s the odd thing. I’ve even temporarily turned off my firewall thinking it was something in the firewall that was preventing me from seeing the image in the console, but that doesn’t appear to be the problem as the image is still not being displayed.

In the attached image, would this happen to be the correct URL?


cam.png

Would there be anyone who would be interested in a TeamViewer session with me on this? Maybe I need a new pair of eyes to look at it. Please contact me via pm. Thanks.

Hi Dan, just sent you an email.

Hallelujah!!!

Gentlemen, it’s working again. The issue is that I was entering a port number in the webcamcapture app, when it didn’t really need it. I found this out quite by accident by trying different connection URLs as shown on the Amcrest website and when I entered one but didn’t put the port number in, the image showed up! This is quite perplexing because I always had the port number in there before. But, if it works like this, then I’m going to leave the port number out of the URL. I’ve been watching the page now for about 5-6 minutes, and so far it hasn’t timed-out and is keeping pretty good time.

lgRich, I took your advice and tried to set my cam settings to the ones you suggested and after I click the “Save” button to save the changes, it changes back to MJPG, 720P, 10 FPS all by itself and I’m not sure why, but like I said, if it works with these settings then I’m going to leave it alone for awhile to see what it does.

Thanks to everyone who helped me with my settings and helping me to get this back up and running. It’s been an experience, I can tell you! Now I can go to bed happy. :slight_smile:

Cheers,
Dan

I can’t see it but that’s because the webpage is trying to show your local IP http://192.168.1.102/axis-cgi/mjpg/video.cgi?camera=1

Hmm. Works internally but not externally. I tried my IP address, my domain name, and the DNS entry I created yesterday for my webcam and it still won’t show.

Well, back to the drawing board, as they say. :frowning:

Gents, I’ve given up on this for now. It’s too frustrating to try to get a live image going again. Works locally but not externally. I’m on vacation next week so may spend more time with it then. In the interim, I’ve gone back to 1 image and the daily video.

Thanks for all your help.

Dan

Lots of moving parts in getting the outside world access to your internal net. What problem are you having? I do use teamviewer.

Live camera is working now. Would someone care to try it?

Mozilla just updated Firefox just updated to a new version and it seems to be working in Firefox now as well as Chrome.

Dan

Not going to work…

http://192.168.1.102/axis-cgi/mjpg/video.cgi?camera=1

You need a real IP for anybody to reach your cam…