I just wanted to share a crude methodology which I stumbled into while trying to figure out why my live feed/videos were always oddly pixelated - almost as though the lens was being hit with a fine rain mist. You could see it everywhere, but certain places in frame it was annoyingly evident.
This became my approach -
I'm certain as a lay person I didn't stumble upon the best methodology for this, but it served it's purpose. I am sure I will get back at it to refine it a bit more but for now everything looks so much better than prior and I have to magnify things beyond x12 to begin seeing ugly pixelation degradation.
This is where I'm at now - I dropped the FPS recently after once again reading on here that maxing out FPS was just a huge waste. I'm down from 30 to 20. That appears to mitigate stuttering as well. And once my FPS dropped to 20, it issued a new bit rate of 6400, which I have just left. I will begin using my approach to hone in on the perfect image Q in the days to come. For now I'm happy. *It also appears my Synology NAS, and camera are happier when the iFrame rate is 2x the FPS for some reason. I didn't input this; I noticed the camera software jumped it up while I was adjusted the bit rate, and when I dropped FPS down to 20, I looked down and there was a new iFrame rate of "40", again 2x the FPS.
Here, below, are the various settings that I've landed on. If anyone sees anything which catches their eye, like a setting which seems way off just holler. I am all ears, and happy to entertain changes in my .. journey towards clarity.
And a screen shot from just now -
Peace
This became my approach -
- I had already added a time overlay to my camera feed, and I noticed that the seconds would freeze, then accelerate .. back and forth.
- Based off the above observation, I soon realized that some of that seemed tied to the 'rain mist' pixelation in my frame.
- I did the usual chasing of my tail, and I was probably into my 3rd hour on my second day when I realized something. The pixelation was repetitive, and predictable. You had to blow it up sometimes to really observe that, but it was clear.
- Once I saw it was repeating in a cyclic fashion I also caught on that the longer the pixelation duration, the worse the image quality was. More mist/pixelation/focusing-unfocusing and so on, however you want to describe it.
- So I decided that if I could somehow gradually shorten it's period, the pixelation might gradually diminish.
- I soon realized that raising the bit rate was slowly shortening the pixelation duration.
- I kept it in H.264, General, 4K res, CBR, Custom bit rate with 30FPS (which I have now dropped to 20)
- I set about raising the bit rate - first by 1024, then 512, 256, 128, 64, 32 and then 16 over the course of a hour or so. Each time I'd blow up the same section of the frame to see how a section of blowing grass looked.
- As I raised the bit rate, the grass crept towards being 'quieter' with less noise, and clearer motion, without as much pixelation and stuttering. *And the out-of-focus/pixelation phase was becoming shorter and shorter.
- I stopped when I was satisfied and had a bit rate of 6696 to show for it. Each blade of grass was clear, and it's waving motion was smooth, and that cyclic focus/defocus/pixelation was minimized. I did all this at night as well.
I'm certain as a lay person I didn't stumble upon the best methodology for this, but it served it's purpose. I am sure I will get back at it to refine it a bit more but for now everything looks so much better than prior and I have to magnify things beyond x12 to begin seeing ugly pixelation degradation.
This is where I'm at now - I dropped the FPS recently after once again reading on here that maxing out FPS was just a huge waste. I'm down from 30 to 20. That appears to mitigate stuttering as well. And once my FPS dropped to 20, it issued a new bit rate of 6400, which I have just left. I will begin using my approach to hone in on the perfect image Q in the days to come. For now I'm happy. *It also appears my Synology NAS, and camera are happier when the iFrame rate is 2x the FPS for some reason. I didn't input this; I noticed the camera software jumped it up while I was adjusted the bit rate, and when I dropped FPS down to 20, I looked down and there was a new iFrame rate of "40", again 2x the FPS.
Here, below, are the various settings that I've landed on. If anyone sees anything which catches their eye, like a setting which seems way off just holler. I am all ears, and happy to entertain changes in my .. journey towards clarity.
And a screen shot from just now -
Peace
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