720x405 resolution of live stream snapshots - why

On my Android phone, starting in March 2020, the resolution of snap shots taken during “Live Stream” (“take photo” button) dropped from 1920x720 to 720x405. The phone app has automatic updates turned on (currently at 2.16.23).
On my Android tablet the photos grabbed during “live stream” have remained at 1920x1080. This device is NOT doing app updates (still at 2.8.24)

So the huge drop in resolution of saved files is due to a change in the APP, not at the camera or Wyze servers. Has Wyze permanently degraded the photos (snapshots) taken by the app or I am missing some new setting introduced in March? I don’t see any setting difference that seems relevant.

Stuff that might be relevant. Yes, on the live stream it says “HD”. I have 4 cameras and all have “live stream” set at HD, on both devices. If I record video (“o” button) the result is reported as 1920x1080. I tried switching to SD mode and back to HD to see if that forced a reset. I have hardware decoder option on the phone (not on tablet), but turning it on/off does not improve resolution of saved images.

Welcome to the forum.

It kind of depends on your device resolution.

Are you in landscape?
What is the screen resolution of your phone?

My phone resolution is set to 2960x1440
A landscape snapshot is 2792x1440
Portrait is 1440x810.

That is the situation. If I save with my phone in landscape mode, I do get more resolution.
Frankly that was a dumb change. If someone is saving an image, it is because they want to save a copy of what the camera sees. It is not because they want a copy of the app display!

I strongly recommend a change back to behaviour before March 2020.

Thanks.

As far as I remember it’s always been the same.
I found some old pics from Nov. 2019. Same resolution as my screen.

Oh, based on the phone’s resolution? I didn’t know that. Compare and contrast:

No, what I meant is that I use the snapshot feature of tinycam to get a snap from the live feed, which is 1920x1080, since I cannot rely on the wyze app any longer to do this. It’s always this resolution regardless of display mode of phone (landscape/portrait). At least the dev is reachable for that app.

1 Like

Yes, but this thread is different. The poster is using the Wyze app and getting different results, somewhat but not entirely similar to your original report in your thread.

The change for me took place on about March 13 2020. Before that all snapshot images of the live stream on both my devices were 1920x1080 in PNG format. My phone gets updates, so I assume it got an update about that time. After March the phone’s images are JPG and seem to depend on phone orientation. My tablet does not get updates and it still makes snapshots at 1920x1080 (camera resolution) in both orientations in PNG.

@angus.black I specifically checked images from Nov 2019. The Wyze images do not have meta data headers with source information so I don’t know which device wrote my images. Nonetheless all examples I looked at are at the camera’s resolution (1920x1080) in PNG,

→ Former behaviour on my tablet was correct. Current app behaviour on my phone is wrong.


Here are experiments I did today. I did snapshots of live stream on both devices in both orientations. I also recorded video of live stream in both orientations on the phone. The recorded video is always full resolution of the WyzeCam but the “thumbnail” that accompanies the video depends on camera orientation.

Phone: Xcover screen 1280x 720
Tablet: Nexus 7 screen 1920x1200

Tablet snap shot portrait 1920x1080 png
Tablet snap shot landscape 1920x1080 png

Phone snap shot portrait 720x405 jpg
Phone snap shot landscape 1280x720 jpg

Phone movie (both orient) 1920x1080 mp4
Phone movie “thumbnail” portrait 720x405 jpg
Phone movie “thumbnail” landscape 1280x720 jpg


BTW My job includes approving software changes. This app change looks to me like classic lazy, short cut programming. Of course I don’t know what constraints there are on Wyze programmers, so maybe that is unfair.

My device back in Nov. 2019 had a screen resolution of 1080x1920. The Wyze images that I found had that resolution so I assumed it was because of the device resolution. It was not. The images are .PNG and I doubt they were all saved while the phone was in landscape mode.

I don’t know for sure how Wyze does their programming but I always get the feeling that it’s not in-house. Any reference I ever seen to programming from Wyze employees always seems like they are not in the ssme building. I suspect not in the same Country. Phrases like, we’ll try to get that info to the engineers.

1 Like

I got confused answering as I didn’t notice this was a different thread.

In fact, taking snapshots within the Wyze APP, I am getting different results, and they are now JPG. I have been taking snaps for over a year and they have always been PNG at 1920x1080, recently (when I posted) I noticed that they are JPGs and at different resolutions.

Why would you want something upscaled or downscaled when the expected behaviour is that the snapshot at the same resolution as the stream? Wow, unbelievable!