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Recording h.265+ to an SD card in a Milesight camera

Phil

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Just a quick note on settings and behaviour observed in tests with a 5MP Milesight Pro Bullet camera this week.

Milesight's version of h.265+ seems to work very well.
You select h.265 as your Video Codec, and then enable Smart Stream (don't forget to click Save).
By default the compression is set at 5 on a scale of 0-10.
See the example below.

Milesight h.265+ smart stream settings 21-3-18.png


During some tests this week with recording h.265+ to a microSD card I experienced some issues with erratic behaviour in saving to and playing back from the microSD card.
This behaviour turned out to be due to a mis-match between the h.265+ high efficiency streaming and the file size settings.
By default the storage file size setting is 256M (MB).
Even with relatively high stream settings e.g. 5MP and 20fps, h.265+ is such an efficient CODEC that it will take hours and hours to build and complete a 256MB file size.
The problem with that is - the timeline in Playback mode is not updated, and your ability to play back the most recent recordings is not enabled, until the file is completed. This results in what seems erratic behaviour. It looks as if the camera is not actually recording. The timeline does not update for very long periods.

I found that by reducing the file size from the default 256M to just 32M the file took approximately 15 minutes to complete and become available for playback / show on the timeline.

Milesight storage file size setting 21-3-18.png


You can actually verify at any time that recording is continuing, by checking that the free size is reducing and the used size is increasing:

Milesight SD card free size and used size 21-3-18.png


You can also explore the SD card's files. There should be a 'Parent Folder' for each calendar day, containing all of the files recorded that day:
(the file sizes will be consistent, and approximately what you set e.g. 32MB in my example)
[the time/play duration that the file lasts will very according to the complexity of scene, variation in image, light, movement etc.]
{from this view it is very simple to tick-select rows and download files. They are .avi and play in VLC for example}

Milesight SD card explorer files and sizes 21-3-18.png


The sharp-eyed amongst you may have noticed that I'm currently testing this 5MP camera with a 256GB Samsung micro-SD card.
As is the way with technology, bigger capacity storage cards have become more cost-effective.
Milesight say they have not yet tested and approved 256GB cards - their info says maximum 128GB cards.
In the same way that almost every manufacturer's NVR datasheets still say max. 4TB HDDs.
So far, so good - I'll confirm that all is well in a Post in due course.
So far, in over 24hrs of recording, I have used a little over 3GB of the available 238GB.
This equates to almost 80 days of in-camera recording!
I know that h.265+ is very efficient, but these numbers are simply too good to be true.
I think that I'm probably achieving this 'too good' performance due to the camera being indoors, on my desk, pointed at a plain wall - no data to encode / record.
We'll see how it performs when we mount the camera outdoors.
 
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