Arlo app and system problems

[gbaranko]

I am using the latest Arlo app as of 1/24/20 with Android version 10 on a SM-G977U phone, a Samsung S10 5G. I have two Arlo-Q cams.

I uninstalled the Arlo mobile app and reinstalled it. I restarted the phone.

The filter on device does not maintain camera selection when viewing in portrait or landscape mode on the phone. For example, if I go to the Devices tab and select a specific camera, I get an initial list of videos just from that cam, but after I view one and swipe to the next video, videos from the other cam get inserted into the timeline of videos for viewing.

The rest of the issues are design deficiencies with the latest version of the Arlo mobile app and the Arlo system:

The date/time is displayed in portrait view on the phone but not displayed in landscape view. This is a change from the previous version of the mobile app and is a design defect.

The scene is dimmed when controls are displayed, e.g. when fast stepping through a recording by tapping ahead on the video progress line. I may want control of the playback in this way for an initial quick review of the video, or to view a given frame of the video, and want the full brightness of the video while doing so. This is a change from the previous version of the app.

THE DATA COMPRESSION IN RECORDINGS IS SO BAD, ESPECIALLY AT NIGHT, THAT THE 1080 HD RES CAMS MAY AS WELL BE 20 YEAR OLD CAMS. This data compression (averaging of unchanging areas of a scene) occurs when Arlo stores videos in the library. Image quality and motion are blurred by this. This has always been a problem with the Arlo system.There's no point in having good resolution cams if your data compression algorithms just obliterate the camera's inherent resolution.

There is no fast or slo-mo viewing. I may want to view a video at a faster than normal speed once, then go back and switch to normal or slo-mo if there was something of interest. There are no controls for doing this.

The "favorite" selection is now in a menu rather than on screen in the previous version. It's annoying to have to drop down a menu. This should be an option to put controls in view. This is a change from the previous version of the app. You used to be able to touch the image and control features such as a favorite "star" would appear that one could select without having to drop down a menu.

There's no way to "select all" for video deletions, or after having done so de-selecting the few videos I then want to keep. You have to individually select each video you want to delete.

There's no way to reject or save a video to the library at time of recording based on image type. That is, all types are initially stored and then I have to do the selection by type on all of them. If I don't want to keep vehicles, for example, why can't I make that a storage selection to begin with.

[StephenB]

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@gbaranko wrote:

There's no way to "select all" for video deletions, or after having done so de-selecting the few videos I then want to keep. You have to individually select each video you want to delete.

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Actually you can do this (but only for one day's worth at a time)

For instance, with the Android app, you select one video, and you will see a square with 4 solid squares inside.  That selects all the videos for that camera for day.  You can then touch individual videos to de-select them.  Alternatively, touch the other square at the top, which selects no videos - then select several by touching them.

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@gbaranko wrote:

There's no way to reject or save a video to the library at time of recording based on image type. 

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Personally I wouldn't want that.  There are mistakes in the classifications, so that feature would result in dropping videos I care about.  I think it's better to filter when browsing.

[gbaranko]

Thanks for the "select all" icon tip. I had overlooked it.

The function to save a video based on selected trigger object type could be made an option.

[StephenB]

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@gbaranko wrote:

The function to save a video based on selected trigger object type could be made an option.

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Yes it could.  

[webnut02]

Same compression problems with my cameras. Looks like Arlo is using a higher compression for lightening the load on their servers. May be to make the quality so bad that we all move to their newer cameras where you have to buy  their subscription to fully utilize all the features.