Good day All,
I am a novice integrator and wondering if there is any easy way to check the bitrate consumption of a camera.
I know that some cameras can tell you the used bitrate from their web page, but with the cameras, we are working with (HIKvision) I could not find this anywhere.
Any help will be highly appreciated.
Thank you.
You can check through the NVR/VMS, most show you what the streams are using. You can also run it through VLC if you have neither or if it doesn't support it.
Hi Vincent,
Thank you for the reply.
We are using Milestone VMS, we can see a KB above the camera's feed but it seems too low, for example - I have a camera set on 640X360 that takes 1Kb. Can this be only for one frame? (even though it sound pretty low as well).
In the Milestone software, the value above the cameras feed in the Management Client is the value per frame in KB (Kilobytes). To convert it to Kbps, multiply that value by 8 (converts from Kilobytes to Kilobits) and then multiple it by the frame rate of the camera.
For example, if the value is 1KB and you are recording 15fps then your bitrate would be 120 Kbps (1KB * 8 * 15). It is going to be an approximation because if the preview is showing 1KB, that means it could be anywhere between 0.5KB and 1.4KB. Because of that, your bitrate would more accurately be somewhere between 60 Kbps and 168 Kbps if your framerate was 15fps.
Milestone's Express+, Professional+, Expert, and Corporate have performance counters that can be used in Windows Performance Monitor to show a more accurate bitrate of the cameras.
Thank you, Jared, for the detailed answer.
We are using the corporate version. How can we utilize this counter?
In my quickness of responding to the last post, I forgot about another area in the software that provides this information. In the Management Client, click on System Monitor in the tree on the left. Then, under the Servers tab, select Recording Servers from the drop-down menu. Then, click the "Details" link for one of the Recording Servers.
The bottom of the next page will have a Cameras section and the last column shows the bitrate of the cameras.
Let me know if you have any questions.
I would use the System Monitor feature highlighted by Jared as it is more accessible and user-friendly. If you want to leverage the Windows Performance Monitor Counters (maybe for a 3rd party monitoring tool like PRTG), here's a screenshot showing the counter/value names in Windows Performance Monitor...
You can use your VMS (exacq shown below)
AVInaptic can also show the bitrate. More information on can be found here.
Like Vincent metioned, you can also get the information from VLC within the Media Information / Statistics.
Some cameras can display this as an overlay on the video as well. I know you can do it with axis cameras; under overlay settings where you can add text - there are wildcards listed under the camera help and you can do bitrate (and fps if you like).
I usually use the #b and #r for the overlays.
Note that not all of the Axis cameras support this. I recently got their 4K cam and it unfortunately does NOT support those wildcards.
Also...be sure to 'space over' the tags so that the VMS' own overlay does not block the info you are trying to see.
Are you more concerned with streaming or recording?
Both will be nice to know.
Usually, we are pulling the same stream from recording and live view and we prefer using VBR, so I would like to figure out which cameras are major bandwidth drinkers.
I would suggest using recordings in the native format as a method of comparing bitrate across time slices instead of live view streaming displays. Day / Evening / Night.
The math is pretty consistent and you will have something to go back and look at.
Look at the IPVM comparison reports.
Video is subjective.
To answer your original question, Hikvision does not have a way of displaying bitrate on the stream, nor is it shown in the web interface. I also double checked iVMS-4200, iVMS-4500, and a Hik NVR, and none display bitrate of connected cameras.
So you'll have to check it via a VMS or VLC, as others have suggested. And looks like Jared has already helped out on that front with Milestone.
Task Manager : if you're using PC-based VMS.
or snmp software.
Any good manufacturer, you can see the Bite rate on the camera itself, of course, that is a good manufacturer.
I do not know if Hik has this, I know that Panasonic, Axis, Vivotek have this function.
Axis Cameras allow you to put overlays of the bit rate on the image. Here is an FAQ from Axis on this.
A brute force way to see this if it is not in the VMS info is to use Wireshark and just grab the stream that matches the port used by the camera of interest.
The trick is to know which TCP connection port it is.
You would use 'netstat -an' to get a list before and after you start the camera to see which one is the new port.
If others have a more elegant way..please chime in.
I use Wireshark, however I typically apply an IP filter before I capture and then filter by source port 554, the RTSP port since most IP cameras stream using this port. You can then go to Statistics> Summary. The bitrate is displayed at the bottom of the page. This is good for a snapshot, but SNMP is of course better for the bigger picture.
I commend you on the netstat -an. I didn't even think of it, but it is a good way to see the sockets between the server and cameras.
I've noticed that a lot of Hikvision cameras actually consume all the bandwidth you set in the settings. Even when I have 3 megapixel camera and I set 16384 limit, my switch shows me that camera eats all the 16 mbps.
I use SNMP to get stat data from the switch, I also used windows perf monitor to confirm those numbers. Than I tried different hik cameras, 4, 5 and 8 megapixel ones and all the cameras performed the same.
I've never had that issue with real brands like Samsung, bosch, sony or axis. If you set 2 megapixel, h.264, you have 2-3 mbps, not 16.
If you have a network monitoring tool such as Nagios that will work just as good or better.
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