I have 2 v3s, and lately the video quality has become unacceptably bad. Anything beyond about 10 ft looks like it’s out of focus. The cams have the latest firmware and are set to HD. I’ve cleaned the lenses, power cycled them, tried the suggested night vision cycling, and swapped locations. Nothing makes any difference.
The cams are about a year old. They used to be much clearer, to where I could zoom in and see details 50 ft away. Is there anything else to try, or is this just symptomatic of cheap crappy cameras?
I guess it all depends what the cams were exposed to like direct sun or anything other elements? I’ve had this V3 since February 2, 2021 installed under the roof eves and it still works fine. Other members have had issues where the cam was good close up but not good at a distance?
This is pretty typical. The road is about 40 ft away, but even the grass up closer is very out of focus. The cams are under large overhangs and completely out of the weather.
The v3 firmware release notes state there may be bugs in v3 firmware 4.36.11.4679. I would try manually flashing back to older firmware as a next step.
Before you flash back… What firmware version are you running?
Also, it appears that you are posting a screenshot of an Event Upload Video being played rather than a snapshot picture directly from the cam. There can be major differences in image resolution between the two because of the Video Decoding going on with the download stream to the device you are running, which looks to be a Tablet or Tablet Phone.
In your Account tab, App Settings, enable the Hardware Decoder and then verify the cam is in HD. See if that makes a difference.
Thanks for the suggestions. I attached screenshots of the live image. The first one is from the web viewer on my laptop (similar to the previous image I posted). The 2nd one is a capture from the phone app. To me, they both look fuzzy, with maybe a slight edge to the laptop.
Hardware Decoder was not enabled, but both of these are after I enabled it.
You may need to wait until tomorrow to do a comparison as low light conditions in color mode will cause more digital pixelation distortion as the starlight sensor tries to fill in the missing gaps.
But again, these are screenshots, not a snapshot taken from the cam. Use the photo button from within the app to take a snapshot and then compare that to the screenshots of the live stream in full light.
The screenshot from the Web View site really isn’t something that you want to use for gauging quality. The image quality can be greatly affected by the upload stream to the Web Server and the download stream to your device.
The second screenshot looks better. That is a direct Peer to Peer stream from the cam to the device. But again… it is a Screenshot. The Video Processing capability of the device you are using is in play. The phone or tablet may be part of the problem.
Where is the snapshot from the cam?
I just reread that. I think I misunderstood. The second is a snapshot photo from the cam?
I believe that is as clear as it is going to get. There was much discussion a long time back about the video resolution degrading with a firmware update. That may what you experienced recently. I just checked my V3 running Beta FW in HD and it is comparable to yours. If you believe it was Firmware based, you always have the option to flash back. I did that when the discussion came up last year and couldn’t see a difference 10 versions back.
This isn’t a problem with resolution or clarity. You have extremely high contrast scenes, and although I love my little Wyze cams, they aren’t capable of high dynamic range processing.
Check out some footage that isn’t taken around dawn, noon, or dusk, when the sun is casting glare… and try to find a better angle for the cam so it’s not getting blasted with porch light reflecting off the wall and eaves at night. Basically the sensor is having to compensate for high contrast and loses detail across the full tone map because of it, so anything you can do to cut down on the intense light hitting it will improve the amount of detail it can capture,
The update is what I said before - that these are not expensive high dynamic range (HDR) cameras. Point a flashlight at the lens and, shockingly, the image will look terrible.
If you have an extraordinarily bright light source in the camera’s view, it will throw off the exposure of the entire image, and badly exposed images lose detail. That’s the entire story.
If you have an example image that shows what you’re describing and does not have an extremely bright object (or reflection) in the image, please share it and we can evaluate.
