Camera picture Glitches

[Max&Leo]

Yeah I have this problem in a bad way. Upgraded all 4 of my cameras last week since the Sighthound software says it supports Foscam 9821W. Looks like that's not the case yet.

Ryan, please keep us updated. Is someone at SH coding for this problem?

[ryan]

We had a number of users reporting the 9821 worked fine with the app, I'm guessing they may have significantly changed their onboard firmware/software. This would not exhibit itself if you use an MJPEG stream from the camera, so that is one option with these models. I'm currently waiting for a response from Foscam.

[Max&Leo]

We had a number of users reporting the 9821 worked fine with the app, I'm guessing they may have significantly changed their onboard firmware/software. This would not exhibit itself if you use an MJPEG stream from the camera, so that is one option with these models. I'm currently waiting for a response from Foscam.

Would using an MJPEG stream sacrifice HD quality? What is the max resolution of an MJPEG stream?

[ryan]

In general MJPEG will use more network bandwidth to broadcast but less CPU on your computer to decode, while mpeg4 and h264 are the opposite. The resolutions available to each should be the same.

[Max&Leo]

In general MJPEG will use more network bandwidth to broadcast but less CPU on your computer to decode, while mpeg4 and h264 are the opposite. The resolutions available to each should be the same.

Please direct me to instructions for enabling MJPEG streaming using the FI9821W cameras. Might be best to put that info right here for others to use as a workaround in the meantime. Thanks.

[jeremyclark]

Here's some instructions on Foscam's forum:
http://foscam.us/forum/how-to-fetch-sna ... t4328.html

From what I recall when I experimented with this in the past, setting the streams to MJPEG limit your output options to VGA (640x480) or QVGA (320x240) but I could be (and would love to be proved) wrong.

[Max&Leo]

Here's some instructions on Foscam's forum:
http://foscam.us/forum/how-to-fetch-sna ... t4328.html

From what I recall when I experimented with this in the past, setting the streams to MJPEG limit your output options to VGA (640x480) or QVGA (320x240) but I could be (and would love to be proved) wrong.

This was my understanding as well, this my surprise at Ryan's suggestion.

[Max&Leo]

Called Foscam today. They've never heard of Sighthound and didn't mention getting back to anyone from here. I understand the new cameras are different, but they work fine using the Foscam interface. The only issue is when they're used with SH. So, looking forward to a solution offered from SH.

[ryan]

I gather that your comment is implying that we haven't contacted Foscam, but I assure you, we have. I wouldn't expect a given employee at any camera manufacturer to know what Sighthound is. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, the cameras exhibit the same glitchy behavior in other software, as well as in FFmpeg (http://ffmpeg.org/) one of the most widely used video parsing applications in existence, whose codecs our video libraries are based on. If you visit the Foscam forums FFmpeg is actually the tool I've seen people most frequently recommending to grab video streams.

The recent Foscam models are the only cameras we are aware of that have exhibited this issue. I would love to have a solution for this, and I have contacted Foscam several times and each time provided the information they requested to pass on to their engineers. We have no manufacturer bias, it is only in our best interest to work with any camera we possibly can.

[Max&Leo]

Sorry didn't mean to imply you have not contacted them, rather that this agent's search of support tickets revealed no one at Foscam is doing much to figure out the issue.

For what it's worth, I chose the 9821 because there was an entry in the SH setup screen for it. I took that to mean the camera would work with SH. My recommendation would be to remove the listing until you can truly support the camera, regardless of who's at fault for it not working with your software, or at the very least, a giant caveat that functionality is impinged.