Arlo Pro 4 - Please add a feature so videos are browser compatible

[Rrlo]

Can Arlo please process videos so that I can play them in Firefox, rather than downloading them to my computer first??

I love being able to quickly review my Arlo Essential videos. But reviewing my Pro 4 videos is annoying -- I wish I never bought these "better" Pro 4 cameras.

Can't you just put a setting on the website to reduce 2K videos to something browser-compatible?? It doesn't seem that hard.

No, I can't use Edge (it won't run on my computer... And who wants to use Edge)

[StephenB]

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@Rrlo wrote:

Can't you just put a setting on the website to reduce 2K videos to something browser-compatible??

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Though not very intuitive, if you turn on Auto Zoom & Tracking, the recordings will be made at 1080p.

I agree it would be nice to be able to set the resolution of the camera.

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@Rrlo wrote:

And who wants to use Edge

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That was my opinion of the old Edge too.  The current Edge uses the same code base as Chrome.  Chrome is still my main browser, but Edge seems to work just as well on the sites I've tried.

[Rrlo · Accepted solution]

1) Even when I turn on Auto Zoom & Tracking, the Arlo website still pops up message that the video is unplayable in the browser. And those Arlo Pro 4 videos still have to be downloaded, whereas Arlo Essential videos play fine. Plus, that AutoZoom and Tracking makes videos jarring/jittery to watch.

2) Even if Edge is a good browser now, it doesn't work on my operating system.

Basically, it would just be great if Arlo would add a feature on their website to downsize videos to be all-browser compatible. It shouldn't be that complex, as even many simple websites have video-resize functionality.

[StephenB]

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@Rrlo wrote:

Basically, it would just be great if Arlo would add a feature on their website to downsize videos to be all-browser compatible. It shouldn't be that complex, as even many simple websites have video-resize functionality.

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It's not as easy as resizing (which is already being done btw).

The 2K and 4K videos are compressed with HEVC/H.265, and the main reason that they don't play in FireFox or Chrome is that neither browser supports HEVC compression.  So the cloud would need to convert them to 1080p H.264 before sending them to the browser.  That would reduce the quality (transcoding always does), and the quality is already on the edge, because the bit rates are so low.

That said, I agree they should let you select 1080p, which already uses the older HAVC/H.264 compression.

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@Rrlo wrote:

1) Even when I turn on Auto Zoom & Tracking, the Arlo website still pops up message that the video is unplayable in the browser.

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To be clear - videos already stored in the library will still need to be downloaded.  But newly recorded videos should play.

[Rrlo]

Regarding: "To be clear - videos already stored in the library will still need to be downloaded. But newly recorded videos should play."

-Yes, I turned on Auto Zoom & Tracking, and then recorded some new videos. They arrived with tracking working, but still had to be downloaded before viewing.

Regarding: "I agree they should let you select 1080p, which already uses the older HAVC/H.264 compression."

-Yes, absolutely. The 2K might help the sales pitch, but if the videos can't be viewed conveniently on average browsers, it really detracts from the usefulness of the cameras.