Video encoding
Background
The video encode quality setting allows you to configure the camera to create smaller video files with the trade off of sacrificing video image quality. Click on the wrench in the web user interface button box and select the Preferences tab to change the video encode quality.
The supported video encode quality settings include High (default), Medium, Low, and Custom. Medium offers around 20% file size savings compared to High and similarly Low saves around 30%.
Video encoding supported configurations
| User Encoding Setting |
User Video File Format Setting |
Notes | Encoding string |
Supported playback frame rates |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| H264LOW | ||||
| H264MEDIUM | ||||
| 1 | H264HIGH | |||
| H264LOW_MP4 | ||||
| H264MEDIUM_MP4 | ||||
| H264HIGH_MP4 | ||||
| MJPEGLOW_AVI | ||||
| MJPEGMEDIUM_AVI | ||||
| MJPEGMEDIUM_AVI | ||||
| MJPEGHIGH_AVI | ||||
| RAW | ||||
| 2 | DEFAULT |
Notes:
- Factory default is H264 high quality saved to an .mov file.
- Only available with a user supplied pipelines_custom.txt configuration file.
Video encode quality implementation
For most users, leaving Video Encoding set to High is the best option. The Medium and Low are available for you to use as needed.
The other setting, Custom, is for those who want to control the camera's video processing pipeline. The pipeline is described in a text file which can be provided by the user in the form of a configuration file.
The video processing pipeline file used by the camera can be retrieved from:
replacing 10.11.12.13 with your camera's IP address as necessary.
Upon pipelines_factory.txt examination, you can see that the High, Medium, and Low video pipelines are identical except for the H.264 encode compression setting. This is also the file that controls the text color and other Video overlay settings.
If you want to make more dramatic changes to the video processing pipeline, you can provide a pipelines_custom.txt file, with an example file found at
replacing 10.11.12.13 with your camera's IP address as necessary.
See Pipeline support for information on the contents of a pipelines file and how to create and install your own file.