Description
Whenever digital video is shown on a computer, various data formats for presentation and recording are available. These formats are known as ‘protocols’, and several standards are provided for different video purposes and systems. A range of small computer programs – ‘codecs’ – are used to decode the video information from the protocols and present them
on the screen.
Video consumes a lot of digital space, and raw video will soon fill a hard disk. For this reason, the video protocols provide different ways of compressing the information. Such video compression uses a coding technique to reduce redundancy in the video data, and thus reducing the file size. Large amounts of data may be eliminated while being perceptually indistinguishable. However, as in all compression, there is a trade-off between video quality, file size, and system requirements. Highly compressed video may present visible or distracting artifacts.
Details
Video Protocol
The video protocol is presently fixed to h264.
H.264 (also known as MPEG-4 Part 10 or AVC (Advanced Video Coding)) is a standard for video compression. It is currently one of the most commonly used formats for the recording, compression, and distribution of high definition
video. H.264 is perhaps best known as being one of the standards for Blu-ray discs. It is also widely used by streaming internet sources, such as videos from Vimeo, YouTube, and the iTunes Store.
Presently, only the h264 protocol is available.
Resolution
This parameter is used to determine video resolution during the live feed and recording.
The resolution provided by the camera is higher that than the options you are provided with here. However, the length and quality of your trawl cable may have a negative effect on the video feed, and reduce the video quality. To reduce the strain, you may need to reduce the resolution, as this will reduce the amount of video data to be transferred
from the camera up to the computer.
Compression
This parameter allows you to define the video compression.
A higher integer provides higher compression, but will also introduce more lag in the video feed. For best video quality, use a low number. The default value is 30, which is a good trade-off.
Rotation
If the camera mounted on the gear is not placed horizontally, you can compensate for this using the Rotation parameter.
Frame Rate
Frame rate (also known as ‘frame frequency’) is the frequency (rate) at which an imaging device produces unique consecutive
images called frames. Our brain can process 10 to 12 separate images per second, perceiving them individually. If you reduce the frame rate, you will see a loss of quality in the video, but the file size will be smaller when you are
making a recording.
Unless you have special requirements, use the default value of 15 frames per second.