Trail camera's AVI video quality

Oldman2

Oldman2

Oldman2

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Not too far from Ron in Kent
You can write on a postage stamp what I know about video formats and containers, I hope this is the right place to get some insight.

I have 2 trail cameras, first one PR5000 spec is 4K 60MP with 46 off 960NM low luminous non emitting LED for night vision.

The second camera RS12 spec is 4K 48MP with 26 off 850NM IR LED for night vision.

PR5000 video codec info is: H264-MPEG-4 AVC (part 10) (H264) I use 1920 x 1080 with 30fps. Audio is araw mono 1600Hz bit 16.

RS12 video codec info is: Motion JPEG Video MJPG I use 1920 x 1080 with 30fps. Decoded format planar 4:2:0 YUV full scale & colour space ITU-R BT.601

The PR5000 uses around 60MB per minute of video with audio. The same 1 minute of video on the RS12 is near 300MB

Both camera's record video in 4K, 2K, 1080P & 720P I don't currently take any still photo's with either camera.

Both produce acceptable grey scale video at night of local wildlife.
The RS12 drops into colour randomly at night but does it badly, too dark and has a shimmer to the video.
The PR5000 also drops into colour at night randomly but has a brightness and colour that quite acceptable.

At night there are several LED security lights which cover the area I place the camera's in so the IR night vision is aided by these.

Am I correct in thinking that the PR5000 video software is better quality than the RS12 and the fact it uses 5x less memory to do a better video too?
IF I wish to show either camera's video on say facebook I have to use VLC player to convert the video to MP4, is this normal?
 
Some extra info I just got from the RS12 seller re the large video file size per minute.
This is mainly due to the device utilizing a CPU-based program without employing H.265 compression, resulting in relatively large file sizes at higher resolutions.
 
So your PR5000 camera will have a H.264 encoder chip in it that does the video encoding, this is just a way of compressing the video data into something more manageable. If you have options on the camera you can see if you can change the audio codec from ARAW to something like AAC, this will mean you won't need to do any further conversions to get the video onto Facebook, it'll just work as is.

The RS12 based on what you've said doesn't have an encoder chip, so it literally just takes 30 JPEG images at a certain quality level every second and stitches them together into a Motion JPEG, which is less efficient than using H.264 hence the larger file size but it is much less work for the camera to process. With this format you will then need to convert to H.264 to upload to Facebook, you can try a program called Handbrake, which is simpler to use than VLC for the MP4 conversion. Just to clarify MP4, is what is called a container and holds the video and audio. H.264 is a video codec, which goes into the container. ARAW and AAC are audio codecs and they also go into the MP4 container.
 
I have just had to convert 20 seconds of video to MP4 before I could put it on Facebook. So its just the sound that's stopping it from being facebook acceptable? And I guess the 300+MB per minute file size.
I checked and the only sound options are off and on plus 3 volume levels.
Here is a link to that 20 sec video, its pretty shimmery. viewable once the moderator has cleared it.
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=456143974035674
 
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Oldman2 said:
I have just had to convert 20 seconds of video to MP4 before I could put it on Facebook. So its just the sound that's stopping it from being facebook acceptable? And I guess the 300+MB per minute file size.
I checked and the only sound options are off and on plus 3 volume levels.
Here is a link to that 20 sec video, its pretty shimmery.
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=456143974035674
Click to expand...
For the camera that records to H.264, you said the audio codec was ARAW, which is what will be stopping that one from being uploaded to Facebook without a re-encode, in Handbrake you should be able to set it so it doesn't re-encode the video and only re-encodes the audio to something like AAC.

The one that records to Motion JPEG will need re-encoding to H.264 as you won't be able to upload that.
 
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Both camera's are in fact araw audio.
The above 20 sec video I recoded in VLC and it now has the following:
codec:MPEG audio layer 1/2 (mpga)
and
Codec:H264-MPEG-4 AVC (part 10) (avc1)
So in theory I think once the mods viewed it in Facebook it should be available here.
I will take a look at Handbrake, though so far ive been comfortable selecting portions of my 1 min video's and converting them via VLC.
Thanks for the help.
 
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