Best quality for low bandwith

[NLAnaconda]

Hi,

I have a Dahua DH-SD49425XB-HNR running as a wildcam in the middle of the forest streaming to Youtube.
I use a directional antenna because there is barely any 4G coverage. With the pointing antenna I go from 80Kb/s upload to 700Kb/s.

Now, the Dahua has so many settings. How can I force the best quality stream out of that bandwith?
Is for example a higher resolution with lower bitrate better then a low resolution and high bitrate?

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Stream:

 

[wittaj]

They go together and one impacts the other.

You could run 4k (well not with this cam LOL) and a 256 bitrate and it would suck compared to a D1 and 8,000 bitrate (which would be overkill for that resolution).

Given your location and your swing of bandwidth, you would probably be best running 1080 or 720 at 4192bitrate at VBR. Given your scene, the VBR could drop the bitrate down until there is some action.

Others will chime in with their thoughts, but every situation is different, and the best is to try perhaps my suggestion and then go up or down from there based on your bandwidth limitations.

 

[bp2008]

Hi.

I suggest you use the camera's native resolution. A 4K stream can look decent (for an IP cam) even on a few hundred Kbps if the encoding settings are done properly and the scene is mostly static.

There are a few tricks to improve the quality on low bandwidth.

• Lower the frame rate. The lower the better.
• Use H.265 encoding (more bandwidth-efficient than H.264).
• Turn on Smart Codec. Some client apps like Blue Iris may have a problem with this, but it helps reduce bandwidth usage if everything is compatible.
• If you can't use Smart Codec, then try a longer I Frame Interval. If you have I Frame Interval equal to the frame rate, then you have one I-frame per second which is too much for limited bandwidth and will make your video quality suck. Try 10x the frame rate. E.g. frame rate 3 FPS, i-frame 30. Streaming may take longer to start, but it will have much fewer pulses of bad quality.
• Use VBR encoding and set the max bit rate lower than the capacity you can rely on having.
• Don't set the quality to max. Maybe one or two below max. If the quality pulses bad on keyframes and that bothers you, then reduce the quality even further. The reason it pulses is when your encoding settings allow the quality to increase beyond what your bit rate is fully capable of supporting.

 

[bp2008]

Also, if you are primarily streaming to YouTube, I think their streaming limit is 1080p so you might as well set the cam to 1080p.