Video artifacts/freezing

[Retired_Member]

My new Wire-Free doorbell seems to be having issues. This happens every other recorded video or every fourth video or so. The video that’s recorded shows artifacts or the video freezes. When the video freezes, either the person or vehicle detected appears “frozen” in the video, or they disappear as if the video skips to the moment the detected object leaves the field of view.

I have a very new router and have gigabit internet. Upload speed is over 43 Mbps. The router and base station are about 20 feet away, the signal shown by the camera is always maximum and none of my 3 Arlo Pro 4s that are further away have this issue. Switching to 720p doesn’t even seem to help along with disabling Auto HDR or night vision.

When I’ve contacted Support, they can’t seem to do anything except copy/paste info that I doubt will fix the issue since it doesn’t look like anything is at issue on my end.

[JamesC]

zwtjq,

The symptoms you've described are often related to WiFi interference or poor signal strength. Even though the signal strength icon shows full, there could be an interference issue that is causing the distorted image. If possible, try elevating and moving your router closer to the doorbells location and test again to see if that improves the behavior.

JamesC

[Retired_Member]

Hi James,

Thanks - I can’t really move my router much closer. I might be able to move it a couple of feet or so, but that’s about it. I’ll try a WiFi extender instead since my router is about as close as I can get it to my doorbell. I guess I’m unclear as to why my doorbell is having issues while my Arlo Pro 4 cameras don’t and the doorbell is closer to my router than all of them.

I’ve already done a factory reset in addition to all other suggestions that Support provided (such as uninstall and reinstall the mobile app), so I guess that means I’ll return everything and go with a competitor’s solution.

What I also find strange is that live streaming never has this issue while recorded videos do. And again, not all videos are affected. I can also pause an affected video and manually scroll using the playback bar and see portions that are “frozen” or distorted during normal playback.

[Retired_Member]

Hi James,

I have added a WiFi extender that’s less than 5 feet from the doorbell and I’m still having the issue. It seems like it’s either a bug with the app (video playback) or some server side issue. Arlo Support is now asking me to connect the doorbell to WiFi directly (why would that be better than connecting to the Smart Hub?) and send them a speedtest.net result (for about the 3rd time - it won’t be different than the last couple of times).

Unless something happens differently soon, I’m returning everything and going with something else.

[OCArloFan]

I’m having exactly the same issue. I’ve been troubleshooting and I can definitively say that in my case it’s not the router signal. I have a wireless ultra set up in the same place and the signal is very strong. The router is 12 feet away, no wall interference, just a wooden front door. I also have a WiFi booster. There is something else going on with the device. Not sure what, yet. I’ll keep troubleshoot and post when I have more info.

[DRSwift]

Exactly the same issue here. Wire free doorbell is only 10 feet from Arlo base, and wire free cameras are 60 feet away.  Only the doorbell video is flakey.  Tried everything to resolve as well.  We need better answers.

[jguerdat]

There's lots of reasons for a poor signal starting with a faulty camera. House construction, nearby wireless devices, etc. all get into this. One way to test is to pop the doorbell off the mount and take it inside or at least to a different location (near one of the cameras?) to see what happens.

[KaitlynB]

I am having this issue now that I got a new router and linked it to my hub. When I had my doorbell directly linked to WiFi i never had this issue. I’m going to reset and hook back to WiFi directly as I pretty sure that will fix the problem. You are probably getting internal interference from your other cameras.

[ZiggyStardust24]

Has anyone found the issue for this? Arlo had me do all the steps and even sent a new camera and it is still doing the streaking and video fragmentation. I am using 3 Arlo Pro 4 cameras, a Arlo Pro Floodlight and the Video Doorbell and its just the doorbell. I used a Google Nest camera for years with no issues.

[KaitlynB]

Reset up your doorbell and connect directly to your wifi not the HUB and it will be fixed. I had the same problem. With other cameras and stuff going to the HUB it causes interference. Doorbell directly to wifi is the way to go. Good Luck! 

[StephenB]

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@KaitlynB wrote:

Reset up your doorbell and connect directly to your wifi not the HUB and it will be fixed. I had the same problem.

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@ZiggyStardust24: If you have a base station/smarthub, then this is worth trying (though you would then be unable to use direct access to local storage with the doorbell).

But this is not a sure-fire fix.  The issue is generally caused by loss/interference on the connection.  Switching to a different WiFi network, or even just moving the base can resolve it, but it depends on the details what is causing the loss.

[Navamuel]

I had the same issue videos freezing when connected to base station, I reset it to connect to WIFI no freezing at all over the last 2 days.

[Kmm1482]

I’ve only just now been experiencing this issue as well. I’ve rebooted the hub multiple times with no luck.