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Author Topic: Long Time User - IP Camera Stream Issues - Sporadic Delays/Lags  (Read 12435 times)

cmnyc

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Long Time User - IP Camera Stream Issues - Sporadic Delays/Lags
« on: December 14, 2011, 09:17:49 PM »
Hello!

I've been a long time user of iCam, and have just recently began to see issues. My setup is a follows:

iCamSource 2.4.1 running on OS X 10.6.8
3 IP Cameras:

On each camera, the date/timestamp is embedded within the stream/image.

Upon initial iCamSource startup, everything works great... within a matter of minutes, sometimes hours, sometimes days, within iCamSource, at least 1 of the cameras appears to be delayed - typically 30 seconds behind.

I've also seen random error messages within Preferences, such as:
  • 404 - Webcam URL Not Found - Please click ...
  • Cannot find JPEG data. Your network IP Camera may not be supported...
  • Or Something about the audio stream
Regardless of the errors, everything seems to be working fine, except 1 of the feeds is lagging.

Quitting iCamSource and relaunching corrects the issue... but only for a matter of time. I believe 'stopping' and 'starting' may also address the issue in the same manner, similarly short lived.

I've also seen occasional instances where a particular camera's feed has 'flashbacks' to an image from earlier, every few frames... flickering back to an older image.

Please help, thank you!
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Stefan

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Re: Long Time User - IP Camera Stream Issues - Sporadic Delays/Lags
« Reply #1 on: December 14, 2011, 11:53:56 PM »
What frame rate setting do you have configured for each camera? If you connect to each camera directly from your web browser and look under the Video settings you should see a frame rate setting that is either set to Auto to 30 fps. With iCam and the iCamSource we recommend a frame rate setting between 2 and 5 fps. If you adjust the frame rate setting to be within that range for each camera does the performance improve?
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cmnyc

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Re: Long Time User - IP Camera Stream Issues - Sporadic Delays/Lags
« Reply #2 on: December 15, 2011, 10:05:59 AM »
Hello.

Each of the cameras was already set to 4 fps.

Any other thoughts?
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Jay

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Re: Long Time User - IP Camera Stream Issues - Sporadic Delays/Lags
« Reply #3 on: December 15, 2011, 12:00:40 PM »
Do you see this same behavior if you only run one of the cameras in iCamSource?

Also, does selecting JPEG mode in iCamSource (instead of MJPEG) have any effect on the problem?
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cmnyc

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Re: Long Time User - IP Camera Stream Issues - Sporadic Delays/Lags
« Reply #4 on: December 15, 2011, 01:52:39 PM »
I will test these to see the results, and keep you posted.

Before doing so, can you please clarify if there are any functional differences between utilizing the camera in MJPEG vs JPEG mode?
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cmnyc

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Re: Long Time User - IP Camera Stream Issues - Sporadic Delays/Lags
« Reply #5 on: December 15, 2011, 08:52:18 PM »
I dropped it down to a single IP Cam, leaving it as MJPEG. Within a few hours, I noticed the clock was about 10 seconds behind. iCamSource presented the 404 error within.

I've not tried the JPEG setting yet, because I believe doing that would then not allow me to have audio.

Please let me know next steps to help resolve this. Perhaps there is some debug logs I could provide?
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cmnyc

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Re: Long Time User - IP Camera Stream Issues - Sporadic Delays/Lags
« Reply #6 on: December 15, 2011, 08:57:36 PM »
FWIW, I have a web page that shows the 3 cameras, that doesn't seem to have any issue with the camera streams.

Code: [Select]
<html>
<head>
<title>Web Cameras</title>
</head>
<body>
<center>
<IMG SRC="http://guest:password@192.168.1.9/cgi/mjpg.cgi" HEIGHT="300" width="400">
<IMG SRC="http://guest:password@192.168.1.15/cgi/mjpg.cgi" HEIGHT="300" width="400">
<br/>
<IMG SRC="http://guest:password@192.168.1.12/cgi/mjpg.cgi" HEIGHT="300" width="400">
<IMG SRC="" HEIGHT="300" width="400">
</center>
</body>
</html>
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cmnyc

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Re: Long Time User - IP Camera Stream Issues - Sporadic Delays/Lags
« Reply #7 on: December 15, 2011, 09:31:42 PM »
i've added all 3 back with the URLs as specified originally, and switched each toggle to JPEG. it wasn't long before the issue occurred again... and again, the camera that had lag also presented the 404 error.
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Stefan

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Re: Long Time User - IP Camera Stream Issues - Sporadic Delays/Lags
« Reply #8 on: December 16, 2011, 10:30:05 AM »
Do you leave the web page open with the cameras consistently connected to see if those streams also lag after a while?

When the stream is behind, is it still updating, just delayed?

Have you tried cycling power (unplugging and re-plugging in) the cameras?
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cmnyc

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Re: Long Time User - IP Camera Stream Issues - Sporadic Delays/Lags
« Reply #9 on: December 16, 2011, 11:10:41 AM »
The webpage is always accurate/timely, regardless of how iCamSource is performing.

When iCamSource is behind, yes - it still streams, but is delayed. If I am on the host computer, interacting with iCamSource, switching between the cameras, all the streams are moving, however the affected streams are lagging in time. When I interact with iCam on my iPhone, iPad - the affected streams take longer to appear, I believe relative to the time the stream is delayed, but then 'move', again still lagging. i.e. if Camera 1 and 3 are ok, but Camera 2 appears 30 seconds behind... through the iOS interface, Camera 1 and 3 appear immediately, while Camera 2 takes that same amount of time (say 30 seconds), to appear. I believe iCamWeb behaves similarly.
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Stefan

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Re: Long Time User - IP Camera Stream Issues - Sporadic Delays/Lags
« Reply #10 on: December 16, 2011, 05:32:16 PM »
Is it always one of the wireless cameras that has the issue? Or is it also sometimes the wired ethernet camera?

If you try one of the JPEG URLs for TrendNET cameras from http://skjm.com/icam/mjpeg.php does the issue still present itself? (You won't have audio, but it sounds like the last time you used the JPEG radio button with an MJPEG URL it still caused the issue.)
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cmnyc

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Re: Long Time User - IP Camera Stream Issues - Sporadic Delays/Lags
« Reply #11 on: December 16, 2011, 05:35:15 PM »
Hi,

No, unfortunately the issue presents itself across all/any of the cameras. In fact, sometimes it's most often with the wired one (or perhaps it just feels that way, because that's the one by our daughters crib... which we tend to keep an eye on the most.)

I'll change them all to a JPEG url right now, and keep our eye on it.

Thanks
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cmnyc

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Re: Long Time User - IP Camera Stream Issues - Sporadic Delays/Lags
« Reply #12 on: December 16, 2011, 05:39:59 PM »
The 2 JPEG links offered on your tool didn't work, but this one does:

http://192.168.1.9/cgi/jpg/image.cgi

I'll keep it here and see if there is any change. (Not thrilled about the loss of audio, so hopefully this is short term!)
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Stefan

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Re: Long Time User - IP Camera Stream Issues - Sporadic Delays/Lags
« Reply #13 on: December 16, 2011, 05:47:54 PM »
If the JPEG image URL works better with your cameras then we should be able to restore audio as well with a new version of the iCamSource. (I will also add that JPEG URL to the list or URLs for TrendNET cameras.)

I look forward to hearing how it goes.
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cmnyc

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Re: Long Time User - IP Camera Stream Issues - Sporadic Delays/Lags
« Reply #14 on: December 18, 2011, 07:36:15 AM »
Hi Stefan,

Over 24 hours later, and all the cameras are still in sync. That's even with enduring a partial home network outage (due to a tripped breaker), etc... all resumed as normal, without any intervention.

Looks like this may be a plausible solution!

Can we work on adding the audio back now?? Maybe a pre-release build to test?

Thanks again!
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