Author Topic: HORRIBLE sound quality and latency...  (Read 3712 times)

ideletemyself

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HORRIBLE sound quality and latency...
« on: August 19, 2012, 03:43:22 AM »
So far I'd love this app if it weren't for the simple fact that the sound quality and latency is just unusable. Is that why there's an option to turn it off?? LOL! Not only can I not be heard at all barely when screaming from 1 foot away, the latency is so bad it makes badly dubbed Chinese action films look like they are Oscar worthy...

A) I am simply using my iPhone 4 with ipCAM
B) Accessing the webpage via the local ip and while the picture is great again the audio is TOTALLY UNUSABLE!!!
C) Why I tried using my expensive music studio quality microphone with my M-Audio Fast Track Pro... no dice...

It seems when you use the IPCAM config that the user is stuck with this totally unusable audio, when the mic on the iPhone is by FAR sufficient considering I use the speaker option all the time with no problems. Then the audio latency timing with the iPhone is excellent due to the vast amounts of wonderful music apps avail on iTunes for the iPhone, iPod & iPad. So, it really does baffle me to no end that this is somehow a problem???

Any explanation WOULD be happily appreciated, I plan to use the app often and tell friends but not until I get answers on this issue or it's resolved completely...

Isn't that the fun part about being able to do all this on ONE device. I mean great for those with real Web Cams but then why even use this app, iCam maybe but ipCAM is for the iOS devices as well as Android and they should be completely fully functional for a paid app. Please tell me you aren't another company who tests on their customers after releasing products. Or if you are at least make sure the basics of your app actually works before selling it as a "Can do app" b'cuz frankly right now it's worthless unless I want to leave my iPhone around as a security camera. LAFF!

Stefan

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Re: HORRIBLE sound quality and latency...
« Reply #1 on: August 19, 2012, 08:59:53 AM »
ipCam was primarily developed in response to a large number of our iCam users wanting to use their old iPhones, iPads, and iPod touches as cameras for the iCamSource.

The feature set was modeled after other network IP cameras available on the market, specifically the ones made by AirLink101, TrendNET, and Foscam, which are the ones primarily used by other iCam users.

All of those cameras support audio using the ADPCM codec which was developed as a low-bandwidth codec used in early voice over IP (VoIP) applications. It is a low-quality protocol.

The latency you are experiencing is an issue with your web browser. The browsers seem to want to cache the HTML 5 audio until it feels it has enough to start playing instead of playing it as soon as it receives it. Unfortunately there is nothing we can do about that issue. There is very little latency when using ipCam with iCam and the iCamSource.

There are higher-quality audio encodings available, but most of them are nowhere near real-time. (MP3, AAC, etc.) Using full, uncompressed, high-quality PCM would have extreme bandwidth limitations.

The one codec natively supported by Apple's iDevices that would be better suited for real-time streaming audio is iLBC but no web browsers support it. (That is the codec we used with iChatr.)