This is a great idea and it could prove to be more useful than the timelapse feature. The images are often very blurred, especially in low light.
If any of you have done the webcam software mod Wyze released, you can see a big difference in video quality. Hopefully Wyze enables this video quality for the normal firmware because the webcam one doesnāt work with the app
1 Like
I would love to be able to manually set the bitrate to get higher quality video. Even if it meant I would have to sacrifice uploading event clips to the cloud.
1 Like
This is in my opinion, the number one feature wyze cameras are missing. I would absolutely love to see this implemented.
I am really disappointed at the compression of my v3 camera. It kind of makes me angry that these are 1080p sensor cameras but then the compression is so high that it looks really bad for any details (faces, etc).
Honestly they could have just used a 720p sensor if they were gonna compress this much.
1 Like
I agree and the v2 camera is even worse. Less compression and a higher frame rate at lower resolution might improve the quality greatly.
1 Like
To put it into perspective, a DVD has a bitrate over 5 Mbps. Wyze compresses to 100 Kbps.
So yeah weāre not even talking 720p, quality wise youād be better with an uncompressed 480p stream.
1 Like
Adding my vote, honestly Iām surprised this isnāt a much hotter topic and hasnāt gotten any comments in years. The compression is horrific. I understand they need to keep bandwidth low for streaming through their servers but what is the point of 1080P if every time something moves it gets blurry and blocky. This is on several different cameras, Pan v3, OG, OG Tel, and the Cam v3 is by far the worst (returned that one).
Even if I have to remove the SD card to be able to get a full quality video (to read a license plate or see a face) that is better than not being able to ever see it at all. The dash cam in my car is 720P and it writes around 10MB/sec (and it does use compression). By comparison all my wyze cams write under 10MB per minute at 1080P. That is massive compression.
I guess maybe the compression happens in the camera chip itself before even hitting the SD card or stream but hopefully not. This is a major issue with the full line of Wyze products. I certainly hope people arenāt paying double for the ā2Kā (1440P) cams hoping for better quality. Maybe on still objects, but not moving ones.
1 Like
Agreed. I will not buy another one of these as the compression is so high it is useless. Had a theft in my garage, Camera could not pick up the guys face 12 feet away. Cops couldnāt ID him with the useless footage. I will pay more money for better software. The camera is fine itās the software compression for streaming that ruins it. If they allowed less compression sent to SD that would be great. SD is cheap, AWS is expensive for storage.
I very much agree, being able to select the compression rate would be a game changer. Having a great 1080p lens or 2K lens is really hindered by the amount of compression applied to the streams/recordings
1 Like
Actually believe it or not AWS is insanely cheap for storage. Even bandwidth inbound to AWS is pretty cheap, it is bandwidth out that they get you on. But yes, same point, lower compression will cost them more. Usage based billing is going to result in streaming quality being as low as they can get away with. Iād even be fine with having to pull the card out of the camera if I needed higher quality after an incident. Or even better, a way to access the card directly from a PC (which has been requested in another thread). I did pull the card out and it seemed the quality was a bit better, but it may have just because it was on my bigger clearer computer screen with better hardware decompression etc.
The 1 minute files on the card are about 9 megabytes in size for daytime recording (it varies a bit depending on how complex the recording is). Thatās an average of 157 kilobytes per second or 1.2 megabits per second. Full 1080P at 20 FPS uncompressed (assuming 16 bit color depth) is about 664 megabits per second. Thatās about 99.8% compression ratio. MPEG4 can be crystal clear at pretty high ratios, but not 99.8%. I think even 1 megabyte per second would be a night and day difference, even if that is only for local storage. Though on the flipside your SD card would only hold about 1/6 as much, but it would be useful data, rather than 6x as much somewhat useless data. Iād be fine with getting about 4 days out of a 256G card or investing in 512 or 1TB cards if needed (not officially supported but reported to work).
There is software out there that can help to undo some of the compression, using algorithms. It is hit or miss, and may or may not be admissible in court, but as long as they can confirm it with fingerprints or other evidence for a person, or make/model of car for a plate, should be useful.
I guess for the price I canāt complain too much, probably should have just bitten the bullet and gone for a good hardwired NVR solution.
I wonder back when the cameras supported RTSP what bandwidth they streamed that at. Sad that they got rid of that to force people to the subscription model. I might even be willing to pay for a subscription if it meant I got better quality.
I have several Wyze V3 Cams and Cam Pans and actively watch them via live view through my phone app, such as for watching when a package is delivered or when a food delivery arrives.
I understand from reading here that when I am in Live View to monitor my feeds, if I change the quality setting (to save on bandwidth), that actually affects my Recording Quality, too. I wonāt comment on whether that makes sense or not, but I would like to request that there be a separate recording quality settings page (with the other recording settings) and to keep this setting for the Live View only.
I truly hope you will consider this. (Note: This was merged and is a slightly different ask than the OP, but Iād be happy with this, too - or a variation of it.)
Thanks for your time!