Arlo Pro saving in lower bit-rate to local storage when not subscribed to Arlo Secure

[Broadd]

I guess this issue has been discussed before, but just wanted to express my disappointment in Arlo to discover on using local storage that the bitrate/quality also seems to be crippled there unless you have an active subscription.

I have best quality selected on my Pro for both cloud and local storage. The saved files are exactly the same: blurry. A 30s night-time shot is only 1.1mb, and a day-time 30s shot is only 2.1mb.

It has been well-discussed that Arlo reduced bit-rate on older models, but I always assumed that was limited to the cloud.

The official Arlo doc says "Your Arlo Wire-Free, Pro, and Pro 2 camera’s bitrate is reduced if you do not have an Arlo Smart plan. To increase the bitrate on these camera models, you must add the cameras to an Arlo Smart plan."

Surely that only makes sense to reduce cloud bit-rate, but no - they are reducing all bit-rate.

B

[StephenB]

There is only one stream coming from the camera.  The smarthub is writing that stream to the attached storage, and forwarding that same stream to the Arlo cloud to be stored there. Both copies will have the same bitrate.  I believe the bitrate will be higher if you have a subscription - but it will still be the same in both the local storage and the cloud.

One tool you can use to confirm this is MediainfoXP:

• https://www.videohelp.com/software/MediaInfoXP

Try downloading a video from the cloud, and copy the corresponding video clip from the base station storage.  Then right-click on both files, and look at the video bitrate reported by the tool.

[Broadd]

Thanks, yes, I know they are exactly the same. That's my complaint.

I don't mind so much if Arlo wants to do stuff once it gets the files in the cloud (ie. re-encode to smaller files), but I bought hardware capable of saving locally at a higher bit-rate, and Arlo has crippled it.

I just subscribed to Arlo Secure for a month as a test, and the uploads are now about 33% higher bit-rate (30s day-time file went from 2.1mb to 3.3mb): this is both to cloud and locally of course.

B

[StephenB]

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@Broadd wrote:

Thanks, yes, I know they are exactly the same. That's my complaint.

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Well, my point was that they have to be the same.  It's impossible to raise the bitrate on one without raising the bitrate on the other.

I don't know what would happen if you stopped storing in the cloud and only stored locally with a legacy camera.  That would require having more than 5 unsubscribed cameras in the account.

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@Broadd wrote:

I bought hardware capable of saving locally at a higher bit-rate, and Arlo has crippled it.

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Actually we agree here.  The cameras are capable of capturing much higher video quality (even if you have a subscription).  They are definitely being throttled by Arlo.  While some folks need the low bitrates due to their internet speed, I have more than enough upload bandwidth.   Personally I'd like an option to shorten retention in exchange for a higher bit rate. Maybe 4x the bitrate with 1 week retention.  I don't really need a month, and I'd much rather get better video.