FPS and quality, how important?

[DogCatcher 0]

Hi All,

 

Am I correct in assuming that the FPS is basically a data storage issue? In that, the more FPS the smoother the motion but no difference in picture quality. But, the higher FPS eats up more hard drive. I have the system set up for motion activation and I gotta say, even though the pic quality is less than I expected the Motion control set up and operation is awesome.

 

I have an option for "Quality" and I set it first to "High" then "Highest" and I can't tell any visual difference. I also tried it at various FPS and there seems to be little, if any difference.

[ljarrald 0]

FPS is the speed, stands for Frames Per second.

check out this video for comparison

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quality is just the compression, the lower the quality, the more 'pixalated' the image will be.

[DogCatcher 0]

Thanks, but the video simply indicates what I am asking. Changing FPS does not do anything for the quality. Therefore a slower FPS will use less disk space but not degrade the quality other than smoothing motion.

 

Having been a computer programmer for 30+ years I understand the difference in quality due to compression algorithms.

 

I was asking the question as experimenting here I could not discern any difference in picture quality at various Frame rates. Given that it was a very limited test, I was looking for confirmation (or not) that there was no real advantage in using a high Frame rate other than for smoother motion.

 

I had read in a review of this unit that picture quality deteriorated above 7-FPS but I could not see it in my test. Nor can I understand how Frame rate would affect detail, well not until it rose to an extreme rate that the electronics could not cope with.

[ljarrald 0]

unless you need to identify people moving fast, the frame rate will be fine at 7FPS (or lower) at the moment i have 5 cameras on my system (10 more to go) and all of them record at 1FPS normally and then bump up to 4 when they detect motion. the reason for this is that i never want the cameras to not be recording. but i dont need them to be recording at a high speed when nothing is happening. i currently get a month of storage.

 

you may not notice any quality difference but if your dvr has a digital zoom feature, use it. you will see a less clear image with the lower quality setting.

 

so yeah, framerate is speed, quality is the image quality. to get the longest amount of record time, you would put the FPS to the minimum and you would put the quality to the minimum too

[Soundy 1]

Thanks, but the video simply indicates what I am asking. Changing FPS does not do anything for the quality. Therefore a slower FPS will use less disk space but not degrade the quality other than smoothing motion.

That is correct. There's a great little demo here, that lets you compare side-by-side: http://www.panasonic.com/business/security/demos/PSS-recording-rates.html

 

I had read in a review of this unit that picture quality deteriorated above 7-FPS but I could not see it in my test. Nor can I understand how Frame rate would affect detail, well not until it rose to an extreme rate that the electronics could not cope with.

The review is incorrect.

 

I have an option for "Quality" and I set it first to "High" then "Highest" and I can't tell any visual difference.

That will depends somewhat on the content of the scene (and to a very small degree, maybe, on the framerate, depending on the type of compression - I-frame vs. image-based). If the system is using a CBR (constant bitrate) codec, you may see no difference at all until things start changing rapidly in the scene. If it's a JPEG-based compression, noise and artifacts in higher compression levels may only be noticeable if you have a lot of smooth areas. And so on...

[DogCatcher 0]

Thanks guys, I appreciate the time you guys take to answer in detail. Much appreciated.