I have WYZE Cams and Pan Cams. They catch motion and events properly. However when I have looked at unknown vehicles down our long driveway on our more rural property, if they are in motion I am unable to read the license plates even 10ft away from the camera, and this is in HD mode. If the vehicle is stopped, the license plate is barely readable. Is this due to low bit rates on the video recording?
It’s very frustrating to have a WYZE cam that captures a jeep doing a donut and burnout right in front of our house gravel driveay, tearing it up, license plate in plain view of the WYZE Pan Cam less than 15ft away and it’s just a blur because the vehicle was moving. I pulled the mSD card off the cam and even on the PC the plate numbers are unreadable. Sure I can see the vehicle and color but that’s it. Not the best for security. I’m running the app on Android.
There’s no easy answer for this. When I look at the specs for Wyze Came V2 and Wyze Cam Pan, I’d have to say these cameras are not meant for ‘long driveway’. You’ll set a better understand if you google
'focal length and aperture size vs photo sharpness
Video Resolution vs FPS (Frames Per Second)
I’ve use manual cameras for a long time to become somewhat cognizant of some of the camera settings and will try to offer my layman’s understanding of how two terms related to your problem, hopefully without tripping over my tongue.
I have installed two Wyze Cam V2 that has a view of our street 35+ ft away and they don’t give me a clear view of the license plate of cars passing our house, I am quite convince that I’d need a better security camera (also more expensive). If you need a clear picture of a car in your street with a camera, it needs have a zoom length that has a maximum aperture of F 4 to F 5.6. That zoom lens can maximum the size of a man but show less of his surroundings within the camera frame and make the background blurry. The Wyze Cam V2 and Wyzw Cam Pan has fixed aperture of F 2.0 and F 3.5 respectively. That makes that man much smaller but show more of his surroundings, what the Wyze cams are meant to do. To read the license plate of a car that far away, Wyze Cam needs to have a zoom lens (big piece of glass at ~$300). For enough light to enter the camera so that the license plate is not blurry, the lens needs to be big enough to need a tripod (big and heavy piece of glass at $1000+). Don’t think Wyze Cam or most door-bell security cameras are meant to do that. Without those big piece of glass to let in the required lighting, a camera shutter needs to stay open longer to capture sufficient light for a sharp picture. Keeping the shutter open longer will give a blurry picture of a moving object. Professional photographers use this trick to take a picture of a speeding race car and produces a blur for its wheels and a trailing blur of the car to better emphasize its speed.
I think many of us are familiar with the quality of our iPhone’s videos. According to an article on ’ Video Resolution VS. Frames Per Second’ on Video Resolution VS. Frames Per Second — Thin Pig Media
An iPhone offers these options for video resolution and Frames Per Second:
720p HD at 30 fps
1080p at 30 fps
1080p at 60fps
4K at 30 fps
Wyze Cam V2 and Size Cam Pan both advertise a daytime FPS of 15 fps, Minimum video to be considered HD is 720p, and an iPhone captures 30 frames per second. The Wyze Cams capture frames at 15 fps will produce a blur (pixelated video frames).
Bottom line, there is not much you can do with the Wyze Cam’s that is probably built to catch trespassers trampling your flowers or stealing your Amazon shipments.
@coffeesnob Thanks for the great reply. That helps a lot since I am not a professional photographer. No street by my house, more rural, but same concept. 15fps certainly won’t give the resolution needed for a license plate even 10ft away if in rapid motion. That make sense. Would be nice if it recorded at 60fps to the SD card, but lower bandwidth signal over the net. Oh well, I’ll make the best of them for now.