App snapshot - PNG now JPG?

I’m on Android 9 and will probably be at 10 some time soon.

I always try to remember how little we paid for these things. The fact that we can easily grab snapshots is enough and I don’t particularly care about the file format. I suppose you’re right that it’s dependent on an underlying OS function.

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The best way to get info from Wyze on this is to contact Customer Support (206) 339-9646 Monday - Friday 5 am - 6 pm PT and Saturday 8 am - 4 pm PT

Thanks @Loki, I thought you were able to go back and ask Wyze directly on stuff like this to post here. Surely others would be interested in this change, but maybe not since noone else brought it up.

Do you know where the release notes for the app versions are? I would like to check through there, usually they are in a central location where one could check, but not always.

Thanks

Is the app hardware encoder playing a part of this? Is it enabled or disabled? My testing in the culver’s drive thru is limited right now, I’ll try later. I know the hardware encoder plays with picture resolution but I don’t know about format.

Edit, looking back in my Snapshot gallery I do have a mix of. PNG and. JPG photos. I’ll have to look into it more to see what the differences between the cameras that took the photos.

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@Omgitstony could you please check the resolution of your snapshots?

The resolution should be nothing outside of 1920x1080, certainly not 2073x1080 …what is THAT?
If the stream is in HD, all snapshots should be 1080p, regardless of hardware encoding.

Your portrait mode result is strange too. I just verified that my portrait and landscape results are identical, 1920 x 1080 PNGs.

They are all 1920/1080. In testing, my v3 s and V2s take pics in jpg, but a WCO takes snaps in .png. just replicated.

Wow this is weird.
Well I now take snaps using TinyCam pro, the Wyze app and this latest “feature” have basically made the app unreliable and I can no longer rely on it, at least for this.

WyzeFrederik recently disclosed that they have been soft launching WebRTC to some cameras and I’m speculating that just maybe that has something to do with this.

I’m using the rtsp firmware on my cams, not sure it’s that unless somehow the cloud broker affects this, which I would find surprising. I have only recently updated the app thinking it was that, but it was not. Where does that API sit exactly?

WebRTC, to my understanding, is being deployed in the camera firmware and used as the protocol to stream directly between the camera and other devices (including Wyze app on phones and Alexa units).

No idea how using Wyze RTSP firmware relates to your sizing issues but it has to be a factor.

I don’t know either, it’s not the rtsp firmware I’ve been using this for a year and haven’t had this issue till recently when I posted, so not the firmware. Really it’s unclear and since nothing’s changed wyze side I can only conclude it’s some weird android related issue

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Any link to Wyze saying this?

Yes there is. Here:

How is this deployed “silently”. If it’s not via firmware upgrade, is it through some back door? Is this going to give way to be able to log in and view your camera via a web browser, real time with no lag? I would like to look at my camera in a browser window when I’m in my house, not another device, will this allow it?

  1. I assume he means through the regular automatic firmware update mechanism. (?)

  2. Backdoors are always possible but I don’t think so?

  3. Yes, I think they have implied in the past that once they complete the shift to WebRTC the long-awaited browser view MIGHT edge closer to a reality. But I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Meanwhile, if you haven’t, consider dedicating an Android device to running TinyCam Pro in web server mode. This will let you get exactly the local browser view you’re talking about. (Not reachable via Internet unless you port forward.)

@Customer

I have a x86 Android VM running, have used that in the past, but it’s not great (I mean the layout of the web server on tinycamPro - maybe it’s changed recently, it’s been a while). I have a L2TP VPN server set up, so no need to port forward, I would recommend against port forward if you can set up a VPN server. Most newer routers have this option these days.

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Stumbling on to this year-old question, I assume this isn’t a case of pseudo-JPG files (false extension names) that are actually space-wasting PNG files, given their limited resolution. At sizes often exceeding 2 mb for 1920x1080, it’s not very efficient to default to PNG.

When I view them on a PC with IrfanView, it warns of this and renames them as PNG files. Maybe phones mask this somehow? This happens with all versions of Wyze cams I’ve owned, including the very latest v2 pan.

Verify that they don’t just appear to be JPGs with false extensions, per my other answer here. Phone apps may lack the ability to make this obvious, since their image details are sparse by design,

I assume you know that PNG files are lossless with a much bigger footprint, especially given the marginal quality of a typical 1920x1080 camera-grab. Get enough PNGs in a folder and it really adds up.

I learned this when discovering that the Wyze app saves pseudo JPG files that are really PNG files with wrong extensions for some reason. A simple phone image viewer may not differentiate them with a warning.