Subscriber Discussion

Pixelated Video On Camera Feed UHD Display

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William Erskine
Aug 02, 2017

Has anyone else had this problem and cured it?  I have a couple of customers that have upgraded their displays to UHD and the images are way worse than they were with the 1080 displays.  I thought the first time it was due to OLED display but I just did a LED UHD LG and it looks pixelated also.  Video cards are both capable of handling UHD, and both systems are being fed by Milestone Express streams.

 

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Brian Karas
Aug 02, 2017
IPVM

What is the new resolution of the actual output image vs. the old display (not the display resolution specs, but what Windows is actually driving it at)?

Does anything else look off? Text, other images, websites, etc?

 

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Josh Hendricks
Aug 02, 2017
Milestone Systems

If the current resolution in Windows matches the native resolution of the display, then I would assume everything else in Windows looks okay?

If the issue is only the quality of the video within Smart Client, then I'd be interested to know what the source resolution is from the camera(s). If the cameras are outputting 1080p but the display is UHD/4K, then the video may be upscaled to fit the resolution of the screen, in which case you should expect to see some amount of pixelation.

Does the video look okay if the cameras are in a 2x2 (4 camera) view layout?

There's also an option while in setup mode in Smart Client to change the image quality. If it is not "Full", make sure to change it to full, as well as "unlimited" frame rate and try again. Changing these options results in conversion of the original video to MJPEG as the specified quality/framerate.

WE
William Erskine
Aug 05, 2017

Thanks for the reply's, It really a mishmash of resolutions some cameras are at 2048x1536 and some are at 2688x1520, the video card is outputting at 3840x2160 which matches the TV's resolution.  

Milestone is set to output at FULL and yes windows apps look great on the display and the image pixelation happens in a 2x2 layout but seems quite a bit better on a 1 camera view.  I know my customer does not want to replace 18 cameras with 4K's.

I plan to get back to the site Monday and see what the images look like not going through Milestone, which might be interesting but not particularly useful since this customer loves the Milestone interface and is not about to change without a compelling reason.

 

Thanks 

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Josh Hendricks
Aug 05, 2017
Milestone Systems

If you find that the image only appears degraded in the Smart Client, please send me some comparison screenshots against another application like VLC or the web interface, while the view areas are roughly equal in height/width.

I wonder if it's an issue of aliasing, where without some light image processing, lines in a downscaled image can look jagged. I can't promise anything as I don't know what is involved from a programming or CPU/GPU perspective to perform anti-aliasing, but if that's the issue I'd like to forward the information to the relevant team.

I can be reached at jh@milestonesys.com.

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