Local Recordings Not Watchable

[SteveWhite]

I have had the Arlo system for almost 3 weeks. I have 2 base stations and 5 cameras in a 3/2 split. Today I decided to look and see how the local videos would play. I unmounted the USB drives only to find the video resolution of the local recordings is 16x32 and they look so blocky and distorted they are useless. Both base stations are doing this.

I find this completely unacceptable. What's worse is that I have a basic account so I have lost a few videos I wanted to keep. The USB copies are worthless.

Anyone else seeing this? Until this issue is fixed Netgear should comp us for paid service. I have invested over $800 on this system. Between bad cameras, choppy video and broken recording I am strongly considering returning everything this week.

[TomMac]

What format do your files end in...it should be mp4.

I had no trouble playing the usb videos on my system and they were full size or about 1MB per 10 secs

I do use VLC player , but they played fine on win 10 also

Also, What size and class usb speed stick ?... 2tb is the limited size and formatting needs to be Fat32

[SteveWhite]

Hi, thank you for the response.  The drives are both 8GB PNY, about 2 years old.  Both were formatted by the base stations.  The files had the correct mp4 extensions and were about 1.7MB average for 15 seconds.  The size indicates that there should be 15 seconds of content.  The files are unplayable on VLC Windows 10 or Mac, or on Quicktime for Mac, or on my iPhone or iPad.  Oddly, since my last post I tested my $79 el-cheapo Android tablet and that can play them without issue.  I am guessing the files have bad EFIX metadata that's breaking the players.

[TomMac]

i would try and format them in the PC... and not the base and see if that helps any... interesting problem if not for the headache...sorry

PS, my speed sticks are lexar and I believe class 10... 32 gb versions

[jguerdat]

If you lie, make one avail for download so we can check them out on our systems. If you want, I can PM you my email address so you can send it directly.

[lostchild]

I used a 2GB usb thumb drive (sandisk) that's really old.. like 8 years... and the videos look just like it does on the cloud.   I format it also on the base station.   The videos were played using the default Win 10 video player.. I think it is call Movie & TV or something like that.

[BansheeRider]

Until Arlo supports onboard camera memory the files will always be compressed before being recorded on the base station. It would be nice if the Pro camera's had onboard recording.

[SBNP]

I have the same issue. Is ther any fix? This was the one feature that made this system worth it. 

[jguerdat]

Check the video properties to see if they really are that resolution. Try a different viewer, such as the free VLC.

[ckdxxx]

I've run into this before... it's a codec issue. macOS, as well as some other operating systems, does not include the codec Netgear uses, but as someone mentioned earlier, VLC (http://videolan.org) is a free player that has the necessary codec built-in.

[m_z]

Thanks, I had the same issue on MacOSX, but indeed, watching these videos in VLC works properly!

It kind of sucks, as browsing through a large collection of videos becomes much trickier, but at least it works.