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  1. We purchased a high resolution security camera (960 x 720 @ 15 fps). I am using software that allows lots of settings but i have no clue how to end up with the best quality surveillance videos.

    we have the 'image format' set at 960 x 720 but not sure if we should set the fps at 15 which is what is listed in the camera specs or 29.97 NTSC - which we have chosen for now...i dont understand which is better. (?)

    also under the recording function we can choose as an AVI or WMV. (I've always thought that AVI was better however the WMV options does have lots of settings that could be changed - I assume to make it better (?)

    the AVI compression has three options - H264 - H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, or MJPG - Motion JPEG, or XVID - MPEG4 with 'Quality' settings (currently @ 70%) and 'Key frame interval' (currently at 30).

    WMV has options such as Buffer window (currently at 3000 msec) Keyframe each: 8, Bitrate 192 kbps - Quality 100% there are other audio settings but not as concerned about audio at this point.

    We would like the best quality for both recording and saving. We have a pretty good pc set up Windows 7, i5 Sandy Bridge CPU with 12GB ram - GTX 560-ti video card and a total of 5 TB of hard drive space available.

    If you would PLEASE help me get this set up for the best quality recordings and saving the videos I will be very very happy. Thank you in advance!
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  2. I'm a MEGA Super Moderator Baldrick's Avatar
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    H264 - H.264/MPEG-4 AVC with highest possible bitrate/quality settings without making the output too big.
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  3. Member edDV's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by so View Post
    ...
    If you would PLEASE help me get this set up for the best quality recordings and saving the videos I will be very very happy. Thank you in advance!
    "Best quality" depends on how you want to view the footage. First the trade-offs.

    FPS - 15 fps will be a bit jerky for playback vs. 29.97 fps but reduces storage by half.

    MJPEG records a sequence of full frames but consumes the most storage. The compression inside the frame can probably be adjusted.

    All the other formats use variations of MPeg compression based on groups of pictures (GOPs). Only one full frame is recorded for every GOP. The rest are change data. So, you need to decide if the increased compression for MPeg or wmv is worth the frame reconstruction to view all frames in the GOP. Typical GOP length (keyframes) for broadcast is 15 for NTSC or 12 for PAL. If you set "keyframes" to 30, you get more compression but only one full frame gets recorded out of every 30.

    Within the GOP based formats, H264 - H.264/MPEG-4 AVC will give the highest quality for bit rate tradeoff. You probably can set several variables within the h.264 setting to trade image quality vs. bitrate (storage consumed).
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