ACTi E33 Video Encoding

[wilheldp 0]

I have an ACTi E33 hooked up to a Synology D213j running Surveillance Station. Everything is working well, and the Synology records based on motion from the E33. The problem I'm having is viewing recorded video on my iDevices via the DSCam app. I can view live video, I get push notifications on motion detection, and I can see the recorded video files. When I click on a recording, a blank screen comes up and the video progress indicator at the bottom of the screen moves (without displaying any video).

 

I have contacted Synology support, and they say that it is a video encoding issue. Apparently, the ACTi is outputting video in H.264 High Profile 5.1 and iOS only supports up to High Profile 4.1. Synology says that the profile should be adjustable in the ACTi setup software. I see lots of encoding options, but the H.264 profile doesn't seem to be among the settings. Does anybody know how I can make the H.264 video from the ACTi compatible with High Profile 4.1?

[buellwinkle 0]

I have an ACTi E33 hooked up to a Synology D213j running Surveillance Station. Everything is working well, and the Synology records based on motion from the E33. The problem I'm having is viewing recorded video on my iDevices via the DSCam app. I can view live video, I get push notifications on motion detection, and I can see the recorded video files. When I click on a recording, a blank screen comes up and the video progress indicator at the bottom of the screen moves (without displaying any video).

 

I have contacted Synology support, and they say that it is a video encoding issue. Apparently, the ACTi is outputting video in H.264 High Profile 5.1 and iOS only supports up to High Profile 4.1. Synology says that the profile should be adjustable in the ACTi setup software. I see lots of encoding options, but the H.264 profile doesn't seem to be among the settings. Does anybody know how I can make the H.264 video from the ACTi compatible with High Profile 4.1?

 

Interesting. I've been using Synology with an ACTi E32 and it worked fine, played video fine but I was doing it from a PC, not my Mac. I have not seen this option on the web interface but that does not mean that you can't set that, typically done via an URL command. I don't see one in their manual to do this but maybe support can provide you a command to set this. Also, it may be possible to get 5.1 decoders on the Mac, like from these guys - https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/24173/x264encoder

[wilheldp 0]

Thanks for the quick reply.

 

I don't have any problem viewing the recorded video on my Mac, it's my iPhone and iPad that are having the problem. The technical specs for iOS 6 specifically state that High Profile 4.1 is the highest profile supported by the OS. I have asked some people that have iOS 7 Beta, and they say it doesn't add support for Profile 5.1, so I need to find another solution.

[buellwinkle 0]

I watch my ACTi E32 camera via Synology's app with my Android phone without a problem both live and recordings. I have an iPhone for work, but have not tried the app on it because it's slow, 3G (I'm waiting for the 5s next month to upgrade). Also, for what it's worth, moved my cameras from Synology to Milestone Essential, about the same price and it's been better all around and pretty stingy with CPU use.

[wilheldp 0]

Is there any way to get Milestone or anything else to run on the Synology? There is a lot about Surveillance Station that I don't like, but it was extremely easy to set up, which I liked. If I could get something else to run on my server, I'd jump on it. I don't really want to open up one of my computers to the cloud like that though.

[buellwinkle 0]

It's basically a Linux operating system so products that run on Linux may run, but the caveat is the CPU which is typically an Atom processor. For example, Zoneminder runs on Linux but is very CPU intensive, so one camera may work, beyond that not sure.