Troubleshooting image pixelation or poor image quality of cameras in Security Center - Security Center 5.7 - 5.12

Applies to
Security Center 5.7 - 5.12
Last updated
2023-02-10
Content type
Troubleshooting
Language
English
Product
Security Center
Version
5.12
5.11
5.10
5.9
5.8
5.7

Troubleshooting image pixelation or poor image quality of cameras in Security Center

If you experience pixelation or poor image quality when viewing live video in Security Center, you can perform troubleshooting steps to determine the cause and fix the issue.

What you should know

This information was previously found in the deprecated knowledge base article KBA-00984.

Procedure

  1. Check if the video quality issue is happening on all or most of the cameras.
    • If the issue is happening on all or most cameras, continue with the next step.
    • If the issue is only happening on a few cameras or one camera, go to step 6.
  2. On the server hosting the Archive role that manages the video units, open the Windows Task Manager.
  3. Click the Performance tab, check the CPU and memory usage, and end any process that have high CPU or memory usage.
  4. In the Windows Task Manager, click the Networking tab.
  5. Check if the network usage for the network adapter is over 300 Mbps, or over 100 Mbps if you are on the Directory server.
    If the network usage is high, reduce the number of cameras to below 300 on the Archiver role (below 100 if the Archiver role is on the Directory server), or reduce the video quality settings on the cameras in Config Tool. If your quality issues persist, continue with the next step.
  6. On the server hosting the Archiver role, check if there are many RTP Packet Lost events in the Archiver role logs in C:\ArchiverLogs.
  7. Verify that Security Center supports the video unit, and that the unit is running certified firmware.
    For a list of video units supported by Security Center, see our Supported Device List.
  8. On the camera web page, view the live video and check if the image is pixelated there also.
    • If the image is pixelated, there are issues with the camera hardware. Contact your camera manufacturer.
    • If the image looks fine, continue with the next step.
  9. On the Archiver server, view the recorded video and check if the playback image is also pixelated.
    • If the image is pixelated, follow the steps in KBA-00546 to troubleshoot and resolve the issue.
    • If the image looks fine, continue with the next step.
  10. In Security Desk, check the video stream information of the camera as follows:
    1. Open a Monitoring task and view the affected camera in a tile.
    2. Press Ctrl+Shift+A or Ctrl+Shift+R to see the video stream statistics and the RTP Packet Lost value.
      If you see that many RTP packets were lost, follow the steps in KBA-00875 to try to resolve the issue.