Arlo Go Poor Video Quality

[Rsimm009]

 

I’ve seen this thread often and Arlo support has told me that the video quality looks fine to them. I recently had to use video footage for a trespassing court case and the quality was so poor they couldn’t read a license plate from a car that was less than 5 feet away from the camera… and the car wasn’t even moving. My phone is on the same carrier and I can stream excellent quality video from this location. So disappointed in the price for what we’ve got. Video quality set to best quality in this photo. SD card inserted. 

[StephenB]

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@Rsimm009 wrote:

I recently had to use video footage for a trespassing court case and the quality was so poor they couldn’t read a license plate from a car that was less than 5 feet away from the camera… and the car wasn’t even moving. My phone is on the same carrier and I can stream excellent quality video from this location. So disappointed in the price for what we’ve got. Video quality set to best quality in this photo. SD card inserted. 

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Are you talking about the Go 2 or the original Go?

The original Go is a 720p camera with a wide (130 degree) field of view.  This isn't well suited for license capture.  Normal recommendations for license capture is that you need a camera that gives you about 100 pixels horizontally across the plate, and about 80 pixels vertically.  If you capture a snapshot from the camera, you can measure the pixels covering the plate using most photo editing software (the old Microsoft Paint program will also do it).

Lighting is also an issue for reading plates at night - glare often makes the plate impossible to read.  Motion blur is a third factor that gets in the way if the vehicle is moving.

Your screen shot has been re-sized (only 400 pixels across, while the original would be 1280).  I see about 8-9 pixels horizontally, so only 25 pixels across the plate in the original. Nowhere close to 100.

FWIW, none of the Arlo cameras are well-suited to license capture.  There are companies that make cameras specifically designed for that application.  They generally have much smaller fields of view, so placement of the camera is an important consideration.

That said, there should have been enough pixels at 5 feet.  The issue there might have been focus (the plate being too close to the camera).  Was the vehicle moving? You could post a link to the video if you'd like folks here to take a look.