Q-See Camera Quality Issue

[KerryL 0]

Hello,

 

I recently purchased two QCN7001B cameras and installed them at my home. Generally, the image is OK, but I frequently get digital blurs (as shown in attached image - shrunk to meet forum size restrictions) or mysterious large grey boxes that take up maybe 50-60% of the image. These anomalies only last a couple of seconds, but it makes event detection impossible. Has anyone else had similar issues? Anyone with the same camera who can comment on the quality they experience? I know it's a cheap camera, and I bought a cheap 10/100 PoE switch (see a pattern?) to power them, but these two cameras and one PC for monitoring are the only things attached to the switch, so it should have plenty of bandwidth.

 

Anything I can do to improve the quality without replacing hardware?

 

Thanks!

 

-Kerry

[MaxIcon 0]

This is usually caused by dropped frames or network packet loss. Dropped frames look a bit different, so I'd suspect network problems.

 

Do both cameras do the same thing? What software are you using for them, and do you see the problem on the browser?

 

If it's both cams, it may be a POE switch problem, the connection from switch to PC, or a network hardware/driver problem in the PC. If it's just one, it could be a bad cam or cable.

 

Try running Wireshark to see if it sees corrupted packets coming from the cameras.

[RichardK 0]

I have a pair of QCN7001B cameras that have the same issue. There is a thread on the Zoneminder forum that indicates that there may be a firmware fix (for the Dahua branded version). I'm about to contact Q-See support to see when it will be available for the QCN7001B.

 

http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=21055

[RichardK 0]

I made an attempt to get updated firmware from Q-See. It took three weeks of clueless first level support people repeatedly sending me the link to their old firmware before someone stepped in, decided there really was a problem and got me a new version (build date of May 2013). The firmware they provided was http://www.q-see.com/files/firmware/QC-IPCAM-FW-20130517_CoruptFileFix.zip - it's still there. The actual firmware is General_IPC-HX3(2)XXX_Eng_NP_V2.210.0001.0.R.20130517.bin.

 

Unfortunately the file they provided would not install on my cameras, it uploaded successfully but produced an error on install. I'm giving up and returning the cameras. The Swann / Hikvision bullet cameras have better image quality anyway. And running with the same settings as the Q-Sees were using (1280x720, 20 fps, 4096 Kbps) I see no corrupt frames in Zoneminder, while I was getting dozens every day with the Q-Sees.

 

BTW, RTSP camera feeds that use ffmpeg decoding in Zoneminder often benefit from adding ?tcp to the source URL - to tell ffmpeg to use tcp instead of udp. Otherwise you may get corrupted frames even if the camera is working fine.