peterdewolf

Thanks I'll have a browse at that

OK trawling for options here. Low frame rates, Megapixel cameras dropping to low frame rates and having to dumbdown the resolution to 'up' the framerate. What's the point of buying a megapixel camera if I have to do this to get useable video ? So I'm wondering if my rouuter is a bottleneck. According to an online calculater, for three 1 megapixel cameras, at full hd, 20 fps I need app 14MB/s. Surely my router can handle this easily. All cameras are wired to the router. My Macpro can access it wirelessly and wired ( makes no difference to performance ) . it seems I might be better off using an ethernet switch. Didn't know anything about them till today but been doing some research. would that help performance ?

yep looks like you're right. Tech support asked me for a screen grab of the footage then asked me to point it somewhere else to see if that resolved the problem !!! I was tempted to use four letter words. seems their support is fine responding off a chat sheet of known FAQs and standard answers. Everything about this camera, the build quality, the softwear compatibility, the networking sophistication, the wireless capability, th ease of set up, the phone accessibility etc are second to none, the one thing wrong with it is it doesn't take good video !!!!! Now if they get everything else so right how can they get this so wrong. I'm returning it.

thanks, I'll check that out

thanks I've been in touch with them, they also said to wait for firmware updates BTW ido you know if there any way to adjust the lens in this camera, in my avtech cameras I can take off the glass and manually turn the lens to adjust the fixed focus ( very handy ) . ALL the files that came with the CD are damaged so no infor there.

Foscam f19900p low frame rates This camera looks awesome in daylight but at night it's really disappointing. No matter what I do in Video setting to lower the bitrate or the resolution, the camera drops to 4fps as soon as it gets dark. I have lots of ambient lighting from street lights, cars, homes etc and even in infrafred it still drops to 4FPS. Even when a security floodlight is triggered the camera doesn't 'wake up' and stays at 4fps. It is wired directly to my router. Also the sharpness slider in the configurations does nothing at all. The footage always looks 'soft'. Not crisp. I have two 720p Avtech cameras that are far better than this camera at handling low light. Why does the frame rate drop so low. I've dropped the bit rate and the resolution in configurations, selected CBR but the camera seems to ignore everything an stubbornly reverts to 4fps in low light. peterdewolf Posts: 18 Joined: Sat Jan 15, 2011 5:03 pm

Tom, thanks for that advice, the camera is now sending audio along with the video. A couple of questions if you don't mind. This is a CCTV mic, powered with the same voltage as the camera. It seems VERY sensitive, ambient audio seems to be swirling around all the time as if the gain was maxed out and there is no way to adjust the gain. In Foscams browser interface the volume control does nothing. The interface can turn the audio off or on but the slider does nothing. Second question. Why does the camera have a P2P option. That's about file sharing isn't it. How would I use that option ? The CD they sent is useless, every file on it is damaged and won't open. Other than that is a belter for the money, got 8x optical zoom. The wireless capability is the best I've owned so far, no trouble seeing througn walls etc over 20ft away. So I'm impressed so far.

Darn it, never thought of that, thank you.

I just got a Foscam f19900p. It's an awesom wee camera for the price. It has an audio in phono/rca connection so I can hook a CCTV mic to it. So I hook a standard male Phono/rca cable to the mic Phone connection, a nice snug fit but the female RCA connection on the camera is too slack for my cable to fit snugly ? I've trawled a little and it sems there are 3.175 and 3.5 mm standards for phono connectors !! So it seems that the mic has 3.175 connectors which fit my audio cables perfectly bu the camera definitely has a larger dia female phono connection, probably 3.5mm dia ??? SHEESH ! I've trawled till im blurry eyed but I cannot find a phono connector that has 3.175 on one end and 3.5 on the other. Can anyone suggest a solution. Foscam so far have not commented.

I'm using Avtech IP cameras and Security Spy to control them. The motion detection has been unsatisfactory and support at SS tell me they ignore the camera's inbuilt motion detection and all 'motion' detection is based on analysis of pixels in the software. Can anyone tell me how the camera's inbuilt motion detection actually functions then ? Is it similar to a PIR system or is it also based on variations in pixel illumination ?

That was a long post . You have a good budget for several cameras. If it was me I'd forget a dvr system, who wants to go scrolling through all that footage every day. Personally I've settled on Security Spy to manage all my CCTV needs, they are compatible with a wide range of cameras and the system allows you to manage the whole thing, monitoring and recording from a laptop, which I take upstairs at night. Security Spy can record continually or upon motion detection and dumps QT movies into a separate folder for each camera on the system. The cameras are anybody's guess, but I wouldn't use wireless cameras, they have notoriously weak signals in my experience, don't like solid walls or metal studding in cavity walls. The footage lags and connections drop. As for covert warning, there are several products which use a simple PIR to send a signal to a receiver that will do a range of things like give you alarms or even switch on your table lamp in your living room for instance.

thanks for that, its something else i've learned today.

Security spy have been dogging away at my connection issues and non-compatibility with Security Spy for several days, with about 20 emails and they've cracked it. the avtech avn257 camera is now fully accessible with Security Spy on a mac with it's entire functionality including recording, I couldn't be happier and I've still not had a single email from avtech tech support. I've never encountered such determined, patient and responsive tech support in the 15 years I've been troubleshooting Macs and everything I've connected to them.

my problem all along was the port I had assigned to the camera. If it is being accessed through a browser it must use port 80, just stumbled on that this morning. I had assigned port 88 as eagleeyes grabbed that port automatically and I left it that way. Port 88 can be accessed through eagleeyes or videoviewer, no problem, but if you have to get into the camera to configure it then you need to access it via a browser and it must use port 80. I've changed the port and can now successfully access the camera and all its menus. Many thanks for your help, it all nudged me in the right direction.

yep something's screwed up but on 3 different pcs ?