I have a Pan Cam V4 that won’t stay on 4K resolution even though it is connected at 5GHz and only 6 feet from the router with maximum wifi signal strength. Why is that occurring?
@carverofchoice posted this from the AMA meeting. I think it’s a good thing.
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That implies that 4K is the best setting, so switching back to auto is bad. Either a bug, or the camera is detecting throughput issues (could be wifi, could be internet upload speed).
Interesting that they do NOT answer the question of what bitrate the camera is streaming in. The 1080P and 4K cams seem to be somewhere around 1 to 1.25mbit/second (which is confirmed by the fact that my SD cards record about 8 to 10 megabytes per minute).
Would like to see actual numbers posted, I definitely won’t have any interest in the 4K cams if they aren’t a significantly higher bitrate. Ideally at least double.
Just my observations.
Data point–Auto has also been appearing (rarely) on my regular Cam v4’s. I wasn’t sure what Wyze was doing. I think I know now.
I agree, it would be nice if they included the bit rate, ie Auto 4k or Auto 360.
I have the Pan V4 installed in our shed. The shed is at the edges of wifi coverage. There were initial startup issues with wifi but those have settled down and it’s been running solid for 3 days now. There are other issues with how the “home” function works but the wifi has been good. I’m not a big believer in the 3 bars or even the newly added toggle showing the received signal level but for reference I’m showing 2 or sometimes 3 bars and received level of - 58dB (hmmm, should that be dBm).
The unit has come up on Auto 100% of the time. I see no difference if I select 4k, even when digitally zoomed. I do see an image degradation if I select 360. Other than Auto the selections do not persist. Next time I view the camera it’s back to Auto. Of note there are only 3 selections–Auto, 4k, 360.
The image quality is the cameras strong point. My interest in getting it was so I could read the displays of some of the test instruments in the shed. Although not perfect it is a an improvement in this area over its predecessor, the pan V3.
Still testing.
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My Pan Cam V4 is 6 feet from the router on 5GHz WiFi with full strength signal. When I select 4K resolution it almost immediately changes to Auto. I would like to know if others are experiencing the same problem. If others are, then Wyze needs to fix it. If others are not, then the camera must be faulty.
Mine sticks. It doesn’t persist session to session but if I click on it it stays during that session.
What happens if you select 360?
Is 4K video really 4K at those high compression levels?
If the camera is on Live View the selected resolution “sticks” only until exiting Live View or closing the app. When Live View is resumed, the resolution shows it was reset to Auto. Wyze should fix the resolution setting so it persists at whatever is selected. I think Wyze is enforcing the Auto resolution setting to save itself bandwidth and storage not because of signal strength. I haven’t determined if the “Auto” resolution setting is always lower than 4K. Wyze has stated that recording locally to an SD card is always at 4K but that is not acceptable for me because I am not interested in spending more money on a high capacity compatible SD card to ensure the camera is recording 4K for at least as long as Wyze cloud storage especially since I am already paying over $100 for the cloud storage service from Wyze. So, it appears that the Pan Cam V4 is capable of 4K resolution but even with a high strength high strength WiFi signal it may not be recording in 4K.
That’s how mine works. I’ll leave the sd recording rate to those that have better insights than I have.
I don’t think it’s a conspiracy. I would wager a large percentage of support calls are network related (I would believe it if it’s over 50%) and each call costs money. If it’s a conspiracy it’s to reduce the support calls.
Support call frequency should not determine the camera’s resolution setting. Wyze advertises the Pan Cam V4 as a 4K camera which is what the resolution setting should persist at when selected. If the camera’s WiFi signal is not capable of accommodating 4K the app should warn the user about that and recommend setting the resolution on Auto or 360P (1080P and 720P should also be available for Auto and manually selected resolution). I have a Ring door camera that does that, it has a WiFi signal strength test that makes recommendations about the quality and effect of the measured WiFi signal strength. Wyze needs to enable persistent selection of resolution and provide WiFi signal strength quality with resolution setting recommendations.
For whatever it’s worth, LifeHackster mentioned in his review that uploaded footage is in 4K resolution.
That has also been my experience. My perception with the on-screen resolution control is that it determines the feed quality on the Live Stream screen at that time but that it doesn’t really change what the camera is doing otherwise (i.e., quality of uploaded videos or video saved to microSD). I’ve never actually tested this, though.
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Test it.
Be my guest. I have other priorities.
Then don’t post suppositions about camera and recording resolution persistence.
I was sharing an information source and clearly stated that I hadn’t tested it myself. I appreciate the advice, though.
Let’s all be civil here.
I have “visually tested it”. As I posted earlier I have not seen any difference in image quality when switching between auto and 4k, even when zoomed maximum digitally. I have seen a difference when switching between 360 and auto. It is degraded.
Would we like more information. Sure. I would like to see the output from the various stages of the QAM decoder. Much better than a received signal level that everyone is in love with.
Should it persist. Yes. If you select it that’s what you should get. If it’s sloppy should you be warned. I’m OK with that. More info is always appreciated until you get someone on the forum complaining that there’s to much info.
I’m waiting for @dave27 to get one of these and determine what the SD card is recording at. Sorry @dave27
The camera used H265 compression which reduces file size by 25-50% so it may be impossible to exactly determine the camera’s true resolution from the recording bitrate.
I guarantee you they’re using a much higher compression level than that. The 1080P and 2.5K cams use over 99% compression. But that doesn’t matter, the resolution will be right in the video file on the SD card.
Though with my regular v4, no matter what quality I set the live feed to, the video recorded to the card is always full resolution (2.5K in that case). I’m more interested to see the bitrate. The 1080P and 2.5K cams both use around 1 to 1.2 mbit/sec. I’m hoping the 4k cams have at least doubled that, preferably quadruple or more, but I’m not holding my breath.
From reading the info on the cam, the preferred/default setting is Auto, which will choose the best resolution for your network environment. If you have plenty of bandwidth, then it should be doing 4K when set to auto.
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I tested SD card on the regular v4 and changing the resolution of the live view does not change the SD card, it is always 2.5K. Not sure if it would scale that down if you had a really slow SD card or something.
Don’t know about uploaded videos since I don’t have a subscription. I would think there is potential for it to match those to the live view, since they probably don’t have much onboard buffer so videos would get backlogged and possibly lost (since the wifi is obviously not keeping up with full res).
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I’m waiting for the bugs to be fixed and for more info on the compression before I even consider it. If it is compressing down to the same bitrate as my Panv3, not much reason to upgrade in the spots I’m using them. The regular v4 was a worthwhile upgrade, and the image is sharper than the OG that was in its place, so the 2.5K does help even though the compression is higher to maintain the same bitrate.
But at the price point of the Panv4, I’m not jumping in until things are a bit more clear.