Camera resolution is HOT GARBAGE, forget "hd" and "2k", think potato

Cameras
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21

Sounds like you have a defective camera or an issue with the device you’re watching the feed on. It should not be hazy or choppy.

The real question is, why are you and the workers using 2.4Ghz for that bandwidth intensive stuff? If you’re in the same room as the AP, does it not have a 5ghz band? With networks, the highest bandwidth devices tend to get priority and choke out lower bandwidth ones. But if it still does it when nobody is there and nothing is saturating the bandwidth, it likely isn’t related to the wifi in that case, you’ve got some other issue going on if things are as bad as you say.

22

I have the same issue. Just purchased 2-v4s and the quality doesn’t compare. I have one of each(v3 & v4) mounted outside next to one another, latest firmware on both, latest app installed. The v4 covers the entrance area to the building and the v3 covers the area outside of the FOV of the v4… with some overlap. If I looks at still objects within this overlap the v4 is grainy and, dare I say, unfocused. The v3 in this area is crisp. Like night and day.

20240925-184716

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How is your wifi signal in that area? Even though it says 2.5K, it really does not look like it is anywhere near that. The v4 will need more bandwidth than the earlier ones, but not a ton more.

That image almost looks zoomed in or stretched, I wonder if it is some sort of display issue on the app/device. What does the image look like if you use the take photo button instead of taking a screen shot?

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I’m not saying it’s not possible but if the issue turns out to be wifi with these, then maybe I should make a thread about how Wyze devices have worse wifi than any other iot device.

I have my 2k wyze v4 line of site with a commercial access point that using wired backhaul to the router which has dual WAN connections to the internet. If my wyze cam liked movies it could be streaming HD video from netflix. Now, I realize that upload bandwidth is much less than download for almost everyone but there is still plenty to go around. I have security cameras in the same building that if I log into them I can read people’s name tags as they walk by. Wyze cameras I have at a different location also have an issue with choppiness and motion meltdown, and sometimes can be even hard to load at all.

Regardless of what excuses there might be, something isn’t right with these cameras. I wish someone at Wyze would realize that and look into it. Maybe they could add an advanced troubleshooter that could give us a hint of what’s going wrong so we can move on to being happy with them. Or just give us an intermittent freeze frame option with zero compression.

Sorry for the rant, I hope you can figure it out plsreplyproperly. Like you I’ve leaned towards viewing my pan cam v3 instead of my v4 because even at the lower “resolution” the image is better. What’s especially odd is that sometimes it gives me a good image for a split second when I first load it before going fuzzy.

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Wifi signal is one possible explanation. Keep in mind 2.4ghz wifi is congested, no matter how strong the signal is, or how fast your internet is, there could be low bandwidth available on the wifi band/channel, especially now that you’ve added two new cameras. But like I said, just one possible explanation.

Assuming you’re talking about wired, closed circuit cams, that has nothing to do with this, they of course will have much higher quality, they aren’t compressing the video 99%+ like cloud cams are.

Choppiness is almost always to do with wifi signal/bandwidth. “Motion meltdown” if you’re referring to blur/blockiness, that’s the compression you’re seeing. When I evaluated several cams, the v3 had the worst ghosting/blur of them all. Wifi signal can also worsen that effect if there isn’t enough bandwidth.

I don’t have a v4 but the images and comparisons I’ve seen it is on par/slightly better than all the other cameras image quality wise, so unless some new firmware issue has been introduced that isn’t impacting everyone, I don’t think it is a design issue with the camera. Others here have posted favorably about the v4.

There are various wish list topics about allowing lower compression on the SD card or for image capture. The would probably never be zero compression, file size would be huge and it would be an issue for most people’s wifi, but lower compression would be a huge improvement. Honestly, I’m not holding my breath though.

That is definitely pointing towards wifi signal/bandwidth. The cam is coming on at full resolution then having to scale back due to congestion. If you change the v4 to 1080P resolution, does it become better/equivalent to the v3 (actually I’d suspect it would be a bit better).

Keep in mind too the v4 uses 802.11AX (Wifi 6) on 2.4 ghz, where all the previous ones used Wifi 4 (802.11N). If your router/access point supports that, it could be trying to use some of the new features like beamforming, MIMO, etc and sometimes those can actually make things worse. So toying with/tweaking your wifi settings could yield positive result.

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Could it ever be that the camera lens is out of focus?

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It’s possible, would have to be a manufacturing defect, seems less likely if it is both cameras though.

The image doesn’t look out of focus though, it looks distorted and low res.

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Night and Day V4

Night
Night1577×878 329 KB

Day
Day1274×720 313 KB

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Looks good to me.

30

Someone needs to stop turning the wheel when the car isn’t moving :slight_smile:

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Those tire marks are from a rental I had, a 2025 Toyota Camry Hybrid. I washed all the other marks off the other day. My wife’s Prius is worse at leaving tire marks even if it is driven straight in after it has been driven for a while and the tires are warm or hot.
Of course it could be that the concrete is hot enough to fry bacon on some days. :grin:

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1727552701970

D03-F27897453-1727552684664
D03-F27897453-17275526846641920×1080 656 KB

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That looks fine (and a lot better than your previous post). Though the v4 image appears to be much smaller than the v3, but that can happen if you take the image from the “events” tab instead of the live view, it saves a much lower res one in that case (at least with my cams it does).

Take a “picture” from the app on both the v3 live view and v4 live view, not a screen shot using your phone, but the actual “take photo” or whatever button in the app. See what the properties of the downloaded picture are. If the v4 isn’t 2560x1440, something is causing it to scale down to lower resolution, usually bandwidth.

34

These are take a photo. See only the timestamp in the corner? Once zoomed in the timstamp goes out of frame. My phone connects to my router @1+Gbs, my tablet at 350Mbs. I get the same v4 resolution when I leave only one hung on the network. All firmware and app latest.

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Looks better bc they are not zoomed to show images in the common overlap area though that shouldn’t matter unless the resolution is not even across the entire frame, and we know it is so when I zoom into the left edge of a v3 and the right edge of a v4, the images are comparable?. screenshot or not. Yes?

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The timestamp can be there on take a picture or screenshot if you cropped the screen shot, just making sure.

When you view the properties of the image you saved from the v4, what are the dimensions? If less than 2560x1440 then something is causing it to scale the resolution down. I don’t want to rely on what the forum is showing as it may be reducing the size of the picture when you upload.

Keep in mind wifi connection speed has nothing to do with actual available bandwidth on the wifi. And I’m guessing your phone and tablet are using 5ghz, not 2.4.

If you reduce the V4 to 1080P resolution (HD or FHD, not sure what they call it), does it look the same, better, worse?

37

The v3 is a 711kb jpg and the v4 a 109kb jpeg.

So there’s bandwidth for the 711kb file but not the 109? :thinking:

My v3s use 40-160kbs/each whitle streaming and I had 5 hung on the network at one point with very little use of my monitored bandwidth.

From where I’m sitting this is a firmware, app or both issue.

38

This is an original photo from my critter V4 it is 4.73MB.

WYZE_1727555678.6813421
WYZE_1727555678.68134211920×1080 457 KB

Properties
Properties484×633 67.2 KB

Screenshot (810)
Screenshot (810)495×633 18.5 KB

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Look at the dimensions, not file size, but obviously based on the file size, it is definitely not doing 2.5K resolution.

Like I said, try dropping the v4 down to 1080P to match the v3 just to see. It is possible if it is having congestion (or even SD card) issues it is dropping it to the lowest, probably like 360P, resolution to try and overcome that.

The wifi chipset in the v4 is totally different. Maybe it has a worse antenna, transmitter/receiver, or is just angled differently than your v3s? Or maybe your router isn’t handling the 2.4ghz Wifi6 signal correctly (the v3 uses older 2.4Ghz Wifi4). It could certainly be firmware or app but others are getting full resolution with the same cam/firmware/app. I’m just focusing on things other users may be able to help you with, and we can’t do anything about firmware or app, so looking at other possible causes.

Again though, try not to focus on whatever your router is saying for bandwidth (either connection speed or in use speed), that’s not going to give you a reasonable view of what is actually available/usable on the 2.4ghz wifi link.

To clarify, your v3s are likely using 40-160KBps not Kbps. Typically each v3 will need around 1-3 Megabits per second depending what is in the frame, or about 100-350 KiloBytes per second. Bytes = 1/8 of bits. Sometimes it will go lower or higher but that’s a rough range. Since the available bandwidth for the v3 on 2.4ghz with one antenna is probably going to be 30-40 Mbits at best (often much, much less), you’d be surprised how quickly it can start to become an issue.

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It is both of my v4 cameras.