To get Smoother Video – bandwidth, camera, lighting

[hs-tenm3]

A quick test to see how smooth a video are you getting – point the camera at a TV channel and see the corresponding TenM3 LIVE-feed (this assumes you have setup a LIVE-feed with that camera in your TenM3 account).

A LIVE-feed that is playing at or close to 30 fps (frames per second) will show a smooth video.

To get smooth video with the TenM3 service and the Panasonic network cameras, the three important factors are

1) Internet Upload bandwidth – Higher upload (UL) bandwidth will give smoother videos. Get the highest UL bandwidth Internet connection (from your ISP) that is available at a reasonable price – e.g. 512 kbps, 1 Mbps, 2 Mbps UL etc.

Note: The UL bandwidth has to be constantly available. For connections, where the full bandwidth is only available for short durations, the video quality will get impacted.

2) Camera setting – The Panasonic camera ‘Image Display’ parameter should be set to match the scene as described here
http://www.tenm3.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=26 .

For high-motion scenes, the ‘favor motion’ setting will give the highest frame rates.

3) Scene lighting – The scene should be properly and evenly lit. i.e. try to avoid any large dark or bright patches in the scene (E.g. bright sunlight in part of the scene and normal lighting in the rest).

* To the camera, the dark or bright patches appear as static areas in the scene and this will impact the frame rates.

* For indoors, (if needed) add more lights to make the scene evenly lit and (is possible) minimize having dark and bright objects in the scene at the same time. Employ tricks used by professional videographers to spread more diffuse light in the scene.

* For outdoors, a scene lit by sunlight, will usually give good video. However, if the scene is too bright, adjust the camera White-Balance. Minimize shadows and brightly lit areas at the same time.

Each of the above may require some experimentation to find the best parameters for that scene.

Note: If other factors (e.g. Clarity in a static scene) are more important than getting the smoothest video, then the camera settings in #2 can be adjusted differently.

Once the camera settings and scene are properly adjusted, you should see smoother video.

To setup LIVE-feeds and Record using the TenM3 Internet service, check here

http://www.tenm3.com/blogs/?p=247
http://www.tenm3.com/blogs/?p=176


And check the camera quality here
http://www.tenm3.com/blogs/?p=1256

[hs-tenm3]

After powerup, sometimes, the Panasonic camera goes in a state that reduces the fps from the camera. This will result in video that is not smooth.

Rebooting the camera will make it again operate at full performance.

Follow the steps listed here to reboot the camera
http://www.tenm3.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=34