Axis Camera Companion will not play back 2048 x 1536

[ianspector 0]

I have just bought 5 Axis P3346 VE cameras for home security. I have a dedicated subnet with a Synology DS1512 with 5 3TB discs as RAID 5. I am testing the cameras prior to installation and have the cameras all set to MJPEG at 20fps and native resolution of 2048 by 1536 with audio switched off. Live view all works but first one then a second camera now gives 'camera error' on playback from within Camera Companion. The MKV files play perfectly externally, as do they if I play from the camera's event log so it is just a playback issue. There is no problem at 1920 by 1080 but the problem persists in H.264 at max resolution. If I use Axis Camera Station Client then recordings and playback are perfect.

 

I see in the 5.4 firmware known bugs that 'Local recording playback fails when using Motion JPEG + audio with resolution 2048x1536 and higher'. My problem sounds similar but persists with H.264 and no audio. I really do not want to be forced into adding another server in the mix as this is what attracted me to the web server in camera solution.

 

I would really appreciate any help.

 

Many thanks,.

 

Ian

[ipcameran 0]

Since 1080p work, it feels like there is a bottleneck somewhere.

 

Probably the NAS, try and turn off the playback thumbnails (in customize) to see if it puts lesser load on the NAS during playback.

 

Does it work OK to export the video and then view it?

[ianspector 0]

Thank you so much for taking the time to reply. I am not too sure about the NAS being a bottleneck as it is the same if I have one camera attached or all 5. The video will play back directly from the MKV with no problem. I tested the NAS throughput and it happily read and wrote to the drive at 103MB/s over 40GB. There is something that Camera companion does not like about the output from these 2 cameras.

 

Ian

[voip-ninja 0]

Synology supports a max resolution of 1600x1200 so Synology is probably turning down the resolution on the cameras and/or doing other things that are playing havoc with the camera settings insofar as camera companion is concerned. Have you inquired with Axis if what you are trying to do is supported?

 

You can see if the camera logs give you more info about what is occurring.

[ianspector 0]

Thankyou for your reply. You are correct in that Synology Surveillance app only supports a limited resolution, but I am not using it; I am just sending it data. The files created can be played back properly using other applications, or if recorded using Axis Camera station at full resolution at the highest frame rates. I am in contact with Axis and they are reviewing the log files. It seems the problem is linked to MJPEG only; even though I had changed the cameras back to H.264 they did not change until I did a reboot some days later.

 

Thanks again for your help,

 

Ian

[hotwire 0]

http://www.axis.com/techsup/faq/index.php/index_axis.php?action=artikel&cat=105&id=115497&artlang=en&search=

 

I think you are on track with the problem being MJPEG.

[ianspector 0]

Good find. I think that may have been on an early release as they have noted a known bug in the last two releases that says it will not playback MJPEG in 2048x1536 with sound enabled. It will write it happily just not play back. There is no disguising the difference in quality between the two codecs.

 

Thanks,

 

Ian

[ipcameran 0]

Using 5 cameras with 3 Megapixel MJPEG @ 20fps will produce enormous amount of data.

[voip-ninja 0]

Using 5 cameras with 3 Megapixel MJPEG @ 20fps will produce enormous amount of data.

 

Well if he is dumping to a Synology 1512+ it can handle a 200MB/s read/write speed assuming he installed 7200 RPM disks in it.

 

He would also have 10TB of formatted storage assuming he built it for loss of up to one drive for redundancy.

 

In other words, he's probably covered.

[ianspector 0]

Yes, it is quite a lot of data but I have as you say 10.73 TB on the dedicated RAID on the subnet and another 0.2PB on two 36bay Synology NAS units on another network segment. The real issue is network bandwidth as around a third of my GB network was consumed by the cameras, thus the separate segment. At this stage I am setting up all the equipment and experimenting before the cameras are installed. I may choose H.264 for continuous and MJPEG for movement.

 

What do other people do at 3 or 5MP?

 

Ian

[ak357 0]

 

Well if he is dumping to a Synology 1512+ it can handle a 200MB/s read/write speed assuming he installed 7200 RPM disks in it.

 

 

You mean 200 Mb as megabits

not MB as megabytes

Right ?

[ipcameran 0]

Why on earth would you want to use MJPEG at all?

[ianspector 0]

Using one connection on the Synology DS1512 I get constant read and write rates of around 105MB/s. Were I to bond the second interface I can get around 200MB/s. However I actually use the second interface to connect directly to my other Subnet so that I can pull data off and have no impact to my write speed.

 

In answer to the question of why MJPEG is that at the moment I am just experimenting with different options to understand the compromises; whilst I would have thought that H.264 would have little impact on image quality, it seems to have a significant difference. Strangely, it seems that Camera Companion is inferior on all settings to Camera Station but I have to make really sure that I am measuring like with like. I would love to here other people's views.

 

Ian

[ipcameran 0]

Using H.264 compared to MJPEG should have no impact on video quality. Are the settings the same?

 

Also in what way is Camera Station better? If the same camera settings are used, the same video quality should be achieved?