Poor Live and Recorded Video Quality

[Coppertop]

I've have 5-cameras installed around my house (inside and outside) and they are great pieces of kit. One major issue I am experiencing is with regards to both live and recorded video quality.
All cameras show a strong wireless signal and battery. However viewing live or recorded images from cameras mounted outside result in lots of pixelation. My green lawn flips between crystal clear to a green sea. Similarly at times I can make out the individual paving block in my driveway and in the same video/live recording it turns into a sea of grey. All cameras are set to record at the Highest Video Quality

Any suggestions would be most welcome; as unless I can find a solution I may be forced to return the cameras for a refund

[jguerdat]

I agree that the compression level is the biggest quality issue.  I'd prefer a setting that allows me to choose to some level.  Even so, however, HD TV is not really a high resolution view.  Yup, I certainly prefer it to SD but attempts to zoom in results in much pixelation, even at high bit rates.  When editing my own 21MP camera pictures (not videos) it's still easy to get to the point of pixelation. Since these cameras have very wide angle lenses (wireless equates to a 15mm lens on a full-frame digital or 35mm camera and the Q equates to a 10mm fisheye), zooming is potentially important for identification.  If only we could take the image and clean it up like they love to show on cop TV shows...  😛

[Prolixium]

FWIW, I occasionally get the same tiling and compression artifacts (the kind the original poster mentions) from one of my two outdoor cameras. I have a feeling it is a distance issue and the Wi-Fi signal strength indicator is inaccurate. The camera that suffers from this problem only started experiencing this issue when I moved it to a location farther away from the base station. The Wi-Fi signal indicator is at 100% but I never got the tiling and pixelization when I had it closer to the base station.

[Hokallabird]

Check the video instead! 🙂

Pixeling and stutter... 😕

https://arlo.netgear.com/hmsweb/users/library/share/link/FA69E0215B7B4D00

What do you think?

Anders

[hokeysmoke]

Anders, that video looks normal to me for Arlo typical quality.  The "stuttering" is the updating of the i frames of the H.264 stream.

[jguerdat]

Agreed. You should see some of my videos - pixelation that renders the scene totally blurry and stuttering that has the object move a couple of feet between frames. I don't know what's causing it since its not consistent but my 1Mb upload speed may be part of the problem, especially when 2 cameras are streaming at the same time.

[Hokallabird]

Ok! 

I hope the netgear will make some settings for compression of the video also = )

[bbaxter256]

Hi All.

I'm experiencing the issue with green bars and heavy pixelation of movement.  Its to the point that its almost useless to have the camera.  It wasnt always like this and doesnt seem to depend on batteries.  Brand new batteries do the same thing.  Also, cameras arent really that far from the basestation so I cant imagine its the RF link.  I will test with setting a camera close to the basestation to remove the RF link from the equation but honestly one of them is pretty much line of sight at 30 ft.  If it cant do that reliably then there are bigger issues.  When I first got the system, everything worked flawlessly.  This drop in performance has occurred over time.  I wonder if its related to internet connectivity or Netgear server activity?

Has anyone that actually had this problem been able to solve it?  I will not recommend Arlo to anyone else until this is fixed because what's the use of having a camera if someone breaks in your house and all you see is a green bar and 10 blurry pixels? And after all that quality, I'm having to buy and replace expensive batteries!? Useless.  Netgear, Please help.

BB

[JamesC]

bbaxter256,

The symptoms above could be caused by WiFi interference. Have you introduced any new wireless devices to your network recently that could be interfering with the connect between the camera and base station?

Moving the base station closer to the cameras, while limiting the proximity of nearby wireless devices is a good start to further isolate the issue.

JamesC