Cam magically not reporting correct FPS/Key. Tried everything

Corvus85

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Hey all,

All of a sudden, one of my cams is now not reporting the correct FPS/Key in BI for both the mainstream and substream.
In the web settings of the cam, I have it running at 2688*1520, 30fps and an iframe of 30. These are the same settings I use on all of my cameras.

Since this is a Dahua cam (just like the other 8 I own and which are working perfectly), this should give me an FPS/Key of 30.00/1.00 right?

Except it doesn't. Instead, it reports it as 25.00/0.84.

1669211144772.png

The weird thing is, when I set the cam to 25fps and an iframe of 25, BI correctly reports this as 25.00/1.00!

Here's my video settings.
1669211213901.png

The 'video' tab of the camera is even set to 30.000fps.

I've tried everything.
  • Restarting camera in BI.
  • Rebooting camera through the web interface.
  • Restoring to default settings.
  • Restarting the BI PC.

Any ideas??
 

sebastiantombs

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I suspect the CPU in the camera is maxing out. There is no need for 30F/ps in a surveillance camera. Hollywood uses 24F/ps for their "epics". 15F/ps will capture what is need for surveillance easily.
 

Corvus85

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I suspect the CPU in the camera is maxing out. There is no need for 30F/ps in a surveillance camera. Hollywood uses 24F/ps for their "epics". 15F/ps will capture what is need for surveillance easily.
Nope. It was working fine for over 12 months at 30fps, and I've made zero changes to it. Not running any smart/AI stuff within the camera itself either.
The others which most are identical models are also working just fine at the same settings.

Next?
 

Corvus85

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Ok, I must have stumbled upon the most stupid bug of all time.

GaryCAa inspired me to just 'toggle' the video standard from NTSC to PAL, save settings, and then change it back from PAL to NTSC again - just for kicks.

...

It worked.

BI is now reporting 30.00/1.00. I didn't even need to reboot/restart anything.
:banghead:

So no, it wasn't the camera's CPU 'maxing out', nor was it because I selected the unholy frame rate of 30fps which must never be spoken.

It's this kind of stupid stuff that really disillusions me from running a DIY system. What are the odds that somebody would inspire me to try toggling this of all settings? It very easily could've turned out that I would never have solved this, ever.
 

sebastiantombs

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Did it ever dawn n you that the CPU may be failing or some other critical component may be failing? Nope! Go back and try again. The fact that if you lower the frame and iframe rates demonstrates that there is now a problem, internally with the camera. The comments about frame rates still apply. Have fun trying to be Cecil B DeMille with security cameras, a guaranteed failure.
 

TonyR

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+1^^.
Hardware can fail, overheat and throttle down, the CAT cable to a specific, troublesome cam can have kinks.....any of those can produce bandwidth/performance issues.

I'm puzzled why you are so disillusioned with your "DIY system" even when you had an issue that you got resolved in a matter of hours. I've been on this forum for over 8 years and have learned a lot and am still learning, hence I keep coming back. One thing that stands out to me is that it doesn't matter if it's a DIY or a boxed system from Costco....they ALL can have issues and be troublesome.

It's forums like this that exist for a good reason: to help one another. Now be honest......based on what you found out today, would you be able and willing to pass that on to help someone on this forum in the future? I know I will be...I learned some thing from this.

“Once you stop learning you start dying”
― Albert Einstein
 

Corvus85

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The fact that if you lower the frame and iframe rates demonstrates that there is now a problem, internally with the camera.
I'm just wondering, did you leave out a part of this sentence by any chance? I've read it multiple times and still not sure what you mean. I've tried lowering and raising the frames/iframe after doing this toggle fix, and now any combination has the expected result - including 30/30.

In retrospect, toggling the video standard kinda makes sense in a buggy kind of way - since PAL is traditionally 25fps and NTSC is 30fps - it's far more plausible that the camera somehow 'switched' from one to the other, even thought the webUI showed it hadn't. To add credence to this, I've had another problem with another camera of this nature, where it would randomly enable BLC throughout the night, even though the webUI showed it hadn't. Loading default settings and tweaking the cam again fixed it - again, not a result of running 30fps (it was running 15fps at the time).

I'm sorry if 30fps makes you react on such a visceral, emotional level, but I'm entitled to run it on such a high-powered system, and there are many examples of other people running it sucessfully for years without issue. It really shouldn't affect you on a personal level, nor should it automatically be the cause of the problem just because of your personal aversion to it, as I've successfully demonstrated it wasn't by arbitrarily toggling the video standard.

Have fun trying to be Cecil B DeMille with security cameras
Lol come on, this is childish.
 
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Corvus85

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Hardware can fail, overheat and throttle down, the CAT cable to a specific, troublesome cam can have kinks.....any of those can produce bandwidth/performance issues.
Yeah that's true. However, it clearly isn't the case here if a simple setting toggle can fix it. I'll be monitoring it over the next week, so we'll see if it's fixed permanently, or if the problem rears its head again. If it does, that's when I'll have to consider it's something more hardware-based. However, my previous experience (see my reply to sebastian above) leads me to believe that these cameras do have their fair share of bugs that necessitates toggling/defaulting settings every now and then.

I'm puzzled why you are so disillusioned with your "DIY system" even when you had an issue that you got resolved in a matter of hours.
Don't get me wrong, I love the system. The part where I get disillusioned is that in some cases like these, the 'solution' doesn't make any logical sense and is often arrived at through sheer luck. It's obviously not enough for me to abandon the whole thing entirely lol.

One thing that stands out to me is that it doesn't matter if it's a DIY or a boxed system from Costco....they ALL can have issues and be troublesome.
Yeah for sure. We all know that boxed systems come with their own caveats and limitations which leads us to pursue a DIY solution.

Now be honest......based on what you found out today, would you be able and willing to pass that on to help someone on this forum in the future?
Yeah absolutely. I know for sure I'll be suggesting someone with a similar problem to toggle the video standard switch in the webUI if I see them having the same problem. It's also why I decided to post the solution - so that people who may have that problem in the future might be able to have a possible fix.

I learned some thing from this.
Same! It's a weird problem that I haven't encountered in my search yet.
 

wittaj

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Yet you seem to come here the most with problems LOL....HDD maxing out, AI missing, etc. etc. etc....

You seem to have a lot of issues with AI as well - I noticed on my system that lowering the FPS actually allows the system to see differences easier....You have AI misses and I don't.... Mine would miss a big ole yellow school bus at 24 FPS, but lowered to 15FPS and hasn't missed it....Imagine that...

Why do you think it is plausible that your camera just magically switched from one setting to another...probably because you are maxing out the freaking little processor and it tried to compensate and started changing things to not burn out.... A computer will throttle CPU when it gets hot, so what makes you think these cameras will not do something similar to try to not explode on itself?

Running a camera at every rated spec can cause other issues and impact image quality.

Keep in mind that these type of cameras, although are spec'd and capable of these various parameters, real world testing by many of us shows if you try to run these units at higher FPS and higher bitrates than needed that you will max out the CPU in the unit and then it bugs out just long enough that you miss something or video is choppy or pixelated or you get lost signals. My car is rated for 6,000RPM redline, but I am not gonna run it in 3rd gear on the highway at 6,000RPM...same with these types of units - gotta keep them under rated capacity. Some may do better than others, but trying to use the rated "spec" of an option available is usually not going to work well, either with a car or a camera or NVR.

Or growing up and my parents are driving on the highway up a steep grade, in the summer we would hit the turbo button (turn off the AC LOL) on our little 4 cylinder so that we could stay the speed limit going up the hill. Same thing running a camera at rated spec.

Look at all the threads where people came here with a jitter in the video or video dropping signal or IVS missing motion or the SD card doesn't overwrite or despite the proper shutter speed they can't get a good freeze frame picture and they were running 30FPS and when people tell them to drop the FPS and they dropped the FPS to 15FPS the camera became stable and they could actual freeze frame the image to get a clean capture. The goal of these cameras are to capture a perp, not capture smooth motion. When we see the news, are they showing the video or a freeze frame screen shot? Nobody cares if it isn't butter smooth...getting the features to make an ID is the important factor. As always, YMMV...

Further, these types of cameras are not GoPro or Hollywood type cameras that offer slow-mo capabilities and other features. They "offer" 30FPS and 60FPS to appease the general public that thinks that is what they need, but you will not find many of us here running more than 15 FPS; and movies are shot at 24 FPS, so anything above that is a waste of storage space for what these cameras are used for. If 24 FPS works for the big screen, I think 15 FPS is more than enough for phones and tablets and most monitors LOL. Many of my cameras are running at 12FPS.

In fact, many times if a CPU is maxing out, if it doesn't drop signal, then it will adhere to the FPS but then slow the shutter down to try to not max the CPU or cut bitrate or be slow to detect an object, etc, which then produces a smooth blurry image..that is the video my neighbor gets who insists on running 60FPS. He gets smooth walking people but you can't freeze frame it cause every frame is a blur, meanwhile my 12FPS gets the clean freeze frame. Shutter speed is more important the FPS. We both run the same shutter speed by the way, but his camera CPU is maxing out and something gotta give when you push it that hard.

Sure 30 or 60FPS can provide a smoother video but no police officer has said "wow that person really is running smooth". They want the ability to freeze frame and get a clean image. So be it if the video is a little choppy....and at 10-15FPS it won't be appreciable. My neighbor runs his at 60FPS, so the person or car goes by looking smooth, but it is a blur when trying to freeze frame it because the camera can't keep up with his other settings.. Meanwhile my camera at 15FPS with the proper shutter speed gets the clean shots.


So a few of my cams have a system status screen, and they call it a CPU, so that is why I am calling it a CPU, but this shows this camera running at 8192 bitrate, H264, CBR, and 12 FPS is hitting the camera processor at 47% and jumps to 70% with motion. If I up the camera to 30 FPS, the usage is in the high 90% range, but then with motion, it maxes out and would get unstable. DO YOU THINK THIS IS A PROBLEM?

Or if I keep it at 12 FPS and use the camera motion detection, the CPU in the camera goes to 60% idle.

This would be nice if all cams had this so we could see how our settings impact the performance of the camera. I think running these cams close to capacity is probably harder to overcome than a computer spike at 100% CPU.

At the end of the day, if the consumer wants cameras that can do 30FPS, they will not look at any cameras that do not have that rated spec, so some companies will throw that in to appease the person looking for that. Unfortunately, that is marketing. It takes someone with experience in the industry to know for sure if it is really capable of what marketing says.

And in a few scenarios maybe you can squeak 30FPS out of these cameras - maybe without using IVS or motion detection and just watching a simple feed. But maybe when two users log in, it can't handle it for example. The more features you use, the less likely it will work as one expects.

And if the complaints get bad enough, we have seen firmware updates to popular models that do just that - cut FPS or some other feature...

1669249263454.png

We wouldn't take these cameras to an NBA game to broadcast, nor would we take the cameras they use at an NBA game to put on a house. Not all cameras are alike and the approach of "a camera is a camera" mentality will result in failure. Another example, I can watch an MLB game and they can slow it down to see the stitching on the baseball. Surveillance cams are not capable of that, so more FPS isn't needed and is simply a waste of storage space and potentially causing something to be missed while the camera CPU is maxing out.

Watch these, for most of us, it isn't annoying until below 10FPS, and certainly sufficient enough for anything these cameras are intended to capture...and certainly enough for what you want to capture. But hey go for blur and 30 FPS and the constant problems with your system that nobody else seems to have LOL....






We are simply sharing with you lessons learned - now of course you can and have tossed them all aside LOL
 

sebastiantombs

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While your PC may be "high powered" the CPU in the cameras, which is the critical point, are not high powered. Run 30Fp, maybe try 60F/ps. Have a good time. You're the one who said you dropped the frame rate and it magically lined up, 25F/ps, iframe 1.0. Have fun, you've got a camera with a problem is the simple bottom line.
 

fenderman

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Hey all,

All of a sudden, one of my cams is now not reporting the correct FPS/Key in BI for both the mainstream and substream.
In the web settings of the cam, I have it running at 2688*1520, 30fps and an iframe of 30. These are the same settings I use on all of my cameras.

Since this is a Dahua cam (just like the other 8 I own and which are working perfectly), this should give me an FPS/Key of 30.00/1.00 right?

Except it doesn't. Instead, it reports it as 25.00/0.84.

View attachment 146404

The weird thing is, when I set the cam to 25fps and an iframe of 25, BI correctly reports this as 25.00/1.00!

Here's my video settings.
View attachment 146405

The 'video' tab of the camera is even set to 30.000fps.

I've tried everything.
  • Restarting camera in BI.
  • Rebooting camera through the web interface.
  • Restoring to default settings.
  • Restarting the BI PC.

Any ideas??
I am willing to bet all my marbles that this is related to the exposure settings. Either the camera is manually set to 1/25 or its automatically adjusting to it. If the camera is set to auto, simply manually select 1/30 and see if you get 30fps.
 

Corvus85

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So a few of my cams have a system status screen, and they call it a CPU, so that is why I am calling it a CPU, but this shows this camera running at 8192 bitrate, H264, CBR, and 12 FPS is hitting the camera processor at 47% and jumps to 70% with motion. If I up the camera to 30 FPS, the usage is in the high 90% range, but then with motion, it maxes out and would get unstable.
What cameras are those? Unfortunately it looks like the Dahua models I have don't have this feature. It would be useful for me to compare and see how the CPUs in my cameras are affected.

Thanks for your lengthy, detailed response.

I already know the theory and pros/cons of the frame rate differences. I get it. I do.

But after running these for months in the real world at 30fps, I honestly haven't seen any artifacts, pixellation, or any other glitchy behaviour in the day-to-day running of them. If I had, then I would've immediately stepped back to 15fps, but it seems to be running them pretty smoothly. Occasional bugs like these also came up from time-to-time back when I was running at 15fps too.

As for the AI consideration, could you explain why the frame rate is relevant if the AI is independently set to take snapshots within predetermined intervals? It's not like the AI is analysing sequential frames anyway.

I can successfully pause any of my recordings at any point and get a clear, detailed image of moving targets with no ghosting - even at night - so the snapshots it does take are also pretty clear.
 

Corvus85

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I am willing to bet all my marbles that this is related to the exposure settings. Either the camera is manually set to 1/25 or its automatically adjusting to it. If the camera is set to auto, simply manually select 1/30 and see if you get 30fps.
That's an interesting idea, although it was already running at 1/30.
 

bp2008

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It's this kind of stupid stuff that really disillusions me from running a DIY system. What are the odds that somebody would inspire me to try toggling this of all settings? It very easily could've turned out that I would never have solved this, ever.
I never would have guessed a bug with the PAL/NTSC choice!

Unfortunately, more consumer-friendly plug and play devices like a Ring camera are just as likely to have bugs, but you're less likely to be able to work around them due to a lack of control.
 
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