Arlo Pro 2 Clarity

[Jerryek]

I recently relocated one of our cameras, I put it along our driveway about four feet from ground level to capture the license plate number of any vehicles that drives onto our property.

I can clearly see the vehicular but unable to read the plate number even though the vehicle is only 8 feet away from the camera.

I find this very strange not to be able to read the plate number.

This is happening during day time hours.

[jguerdat]

That's the nature of these cameras. Even set to the best quality, that's only a 2 megapixel image from a very wide angle lens that's then significantly compressed. Without compression you'd probably be able to read the plate with no issue but you can't change that. The compression is used to minimize data and disk space usage.

These aren't ID cameras...

[jiwon]

I have 2 parts question:

Does the compression also occur even I am recording locally on the Base Station?

Also, I just bought Arlo Pro2 with Base Station model VMB3500. The 1080 quality is mediocre, although some of the cameras are connected using the power charger and WIFI signal is strong.

I am attaching a picture that I have downloaded from video on Arlo servers. The camera is 10 feet away from the door and I cannot read the pink sign on the door, although the sign is written using large font. Picture also is pixelated.

I have replaced the base Station 3500 with same model, but it's the same quality.

Please advise. Thanks

[StephenB]

---

@jiwon wrote:

Does the compression also occur even I am recording locally on the Base Station?

---

Yes.  The compression is done in the camera hardware.

---

@jiwon wrote:

I am attaching a picture that I have downloaded from video on Arlo servers. The camera is 10 feet away from the door and I cannot read the pink sign on the door, although the sign is written using large font. Picture also is pixelated.

---

Of course the jpg you posted is doubly compressed, which adds some loss over the original.

That said, the entire pink sign on the door is only 80 pixels wide in your jpg.  The top row of text is about 50 pixels wide.  It's harder to gauge the height, since the text is slanted due to the perspective.  But it looks to me like there are about 5 pixels of height for the characters in that row.   "No Soliciting" has 13 characters, - so each character has only 4x5 pixels. It is not very surprising that text cannot be read.  Even with no compression it would be hard to make it out at 1080p.  

Overall, I wouldn't describe it as overly pixelated, though it is obvious that the compression has blurred out quite a bit of detail - quite noticeable on the plants.  The backlighting doesn't help.  In general, if you go frame-by-frame through the videos, you'll find that the clarity varies frame to frame, especially when there is motion (as there is in this case).

FWIW, I would like to see an option to increase the bitrate (and have mentioned that in some other posts).  It is clear that the bitrate is limiting the quality, and if the camera is reasonably close to the base it should be possible to increase it w/o packet loss.  But I think the sign really needs more pixels.  BTW, I measured the pixels with the ruler function in Microsoft Paint (also turning on gridlines).