I have a v3 camera with the 2.32.2 iOS app and 4.36.9.139 firmware. The app is installed on both an iPhone and an iPad. I wasn’t aware until today that you can set different quality videos on different devices. For example, on the iPad video is set as HD and on the iPhone as SD.
What quality recording is being recorded on the SD card?
Am I missing something?
I’m setting the quality from the drop down menu in the live view screen?
Is there any other place to select it?
Thanks in advance
When you open the cam into Live View, the recording and viewing quality will be in green letters in the upper left in portrait, top right in landscape. This can be pressed to change the uSD and Cloud recording quality.
I get that, but on my phone is set to SD quality and on my iPad is HD, in both portrait and landscape. What I’m trying to say is, why when I set the quality on one devise it doesn’t get reflected on the other one? Also, what quality is being recorded on the SD card?
Good question. Not sure why the settings would change between devices. I don’t use 2 devices and don’t use iOS.
That setting is the uSD record quality. When I change that setting from HD to SD, I extend my uSD card capacity by twice the time within the same GB.
I’m not sure how the multi-device login settings work, especially if you can be logged in to two devices simultaneously, both with differing settings. Not sure which device wins that fight… the last one to connect? The first one? Which one?
You certainly do have a valid dilemma.
It would be nice if the watermark timestamp on the video were to show the video quality so it could be verified.
The settings don’t change on their own. This morning I change the setting on my iPad and noticed that it didn’t change on my phone. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t happening before the update.
All other settings are the same between both devices. I have instructed my iPad to not notify me of any events, so I only get notifications on my phone.
I hope someone on iOS might chime in and shed some light.
Thanks brother
Yeah. Understand that if you change it in one it should propagate to the other. But again, not sure how this works. I know that the settings are set in the cloud but they are also stored locally on the device. I only know this because clearing the In App Cache and the OS App Cache then logging back in will revert all the quality settings back to HD for every cam.
I’m not sure how the setting is stored in 1 Android device, so 2 iOS devices is a different multiverse for me… And, I don’t update the app unless I am being forced to at gunpoint. I am on the last stable version known to mankind.
Good luck!
Smart man, I only do it because I get tired of the stupid notifications and sometimes I’ll forget to deselect the app in the App Store when I update other apps…
I just tried it out on my iPad and iPhone using iOS 15.5, iOS app 2.32.0 (20) and got the same results as you. I cleared the cache from the app on both devices. Set iPad at HD and iPhone at SD. I forced closed both app opened both up and it the setting remained iPad HD, iPhone SD. I did not restart either device after I made the changes to see if that would work. Weird, but I leave the both on HD anyway using a 128GB card.
This is the response I got from Wyze Team:
Hi habib,
In your case here, the iphone and ipad are running on two individual and seperate streaming processes here with our server. Which means you can set the quality seperately on each device and that won’t affect the other existing one.
As for SD card recording. That is a sperate process from you live view and it is set to HD quality by default.
In your case the best way to set it record on SD would be change both iphone and ipad to SD. That would garantee you to record on SD.
As for which will dominant the other if we set one to HD and one to SD. I will have to test on my end and officially post it on the original ticket. Thanks for your question, I don’t think anyone ever think of this lol.
Thank you all for the info here. Just confirmed with team and test myself.
On the SD card it will always be HD 1080P video. No matter how you change on the live view tab from HD to SD or to 360P. The only difference will be if you change to SD on live then the recording file size will be smaller due to decreased bitrate. By testing here, with HD live view the recording file is about 5MB per minute, while for the SD live the recording file is about 3MB per minute. So @SlabSlayer is absolutely correct here about change to SD double his SD card recording time. So far I tested 360P live also have about 5MB file size for recording so no difference. If the camera location will always have some moving objects then I would recommend you still set to HD on live view for the higher bitrate.
There is a mistake on that website about changing recording quality:
and we will correct it as soon as possible. Thanks again for your help and info!
To me this sounds like an oxymoron. You are saying that no matter what we select the recorded video on SD card will be HD. But then you are saying that if we change the stream to SD it will record to SD???!!!
Can you please be more specific!
Also, never got a clear answer on multiple devises. Which one takes precedence?
I always been on continuous recording. Since January, the playback bitrates are always lower by around 30% than in the live viewing. The playback quality is lower than live viewing. Something changed in firmwares? It is like that on all my V2s and Pans V1s. Don’t have this issue on my V3s.
Hi habib,
So for wyze cameras, both “SD” and “HD” are 1080P resolution. “SD” just have lower bitrate to save both your bandwidth and SD card space. If you choose live stream to be “HD” or “360P”, then you will get 1080P recording with higher bitrate in your SD card (about 5.5MB/minute). And if you choose live stream to be “SD”, then you will get 1080P recording with lower bitrate in your SD card (about 3MB/minute). We don’t record 360P to SD card, only 1080P.
As for multiple devices viewing with different settings. It only depends on which one you change last. For example, Both phones are watching same camera with “HD” and then you change one to “SD”. Then your recording will change to “SD”. Since that is the last change you made. Again, here the “SD” still means 1080P resolution just with lower bitrate.
Thanks for clearing this out.
Hi gyzmo,
I tried on my end for both V2 and V3. They all have different bitrate when live or playback at the same time. Here is my V2 testing.
And could you please be more detailed about the quality drop? Any comparison if possible?
Thanks!
In live view, the bitrates are about 30% higher than when I watch the playback. Take for example that if I have around 100KB/s peak for the live view, if I watch the same sequence in playback, I will have around 70KB/s peak. It happened after a firmware update in January. I will try to find it. I have 8 V2 and 3 Pans V1 and they all have the same problem. My V3s don’t have it.
For the quality, since the bitrates are lower in playback, the viewing has more artifacts than live. If you zoom in a little, the difference is even more obvious. I have seen you example. They are the same but you are not in continuous recording. I don’t know if it is make a difference…
I see. What I can confirm for you is that the bitrate you saw in SD card playback has no relationship with the live view. To make sure V3 and V2 are using the same bitrate for recording, you could actually take out the sd card and check record file. Each record file is for 1 minute and if there is a big difference then they must be using different bitrates to record. I just checked my V2 and V3. Both record files are around 5.5-6MB which are for the same bitrate.
