Advanced Camera Settings

The camera settings page has some advanced settings depending on the camera type. Normally these settings don't need to be touched for most scenarios. But they are available if you do need to tweak things.

Stream Type

The stream type is the type of encoding used for your camera's video stream. IPCams supports RTSP, MJPEG, & HLS stream types.

What are the different types?

There are four different stream types IPCams supports. RTSP, MJPEG, HLS & Web.

RTSP streams are the most common stream available with cameras today. It is a more modern protocol that carries audio with modern encoding.
MJPEG streams are older stream types usually used by older (or inexpensive cameras). MJPEG streams are simpler in that audio is not included with the stream, but they usually load faster.
HLS streams are plain HTTP live streams that are similar to RTSP streams, but they are not usually supported by most cameras. This stream type can more commonly found with NVR software. It will also sometimes be referred to an H264 stream. If the HLS stream type doesn't work or you, try RTSP as that is usually more compatible.
Lastly IPCams offers a Web Page stream type. This isn't actually a streaming protocol but an option to add a web page from your camera to IPCams. This can be useful if you want to add a settings page from your camera for easy access.

How do I know which stream type to use?

You can usually find the stream type of your camera in your camera's manual, or on its manufacturer's website. If you can't find it there, you can usually find it via an internet search when searching for your camera's URL info below. If you still can't find what type to use, leave RTSP as the default as it works with a wide majority of cameras.

Secondary Stream

The secondary stream option is for providing a secondary lower quality stream for your camera. This stream can then be switched to from the camera viewer and can be handy on when viewing the stream on a less than stellar connection. The secondary stream will also be used from dashboards as well to ensure IPCams doesn't utilized as many resources when viewing your cameras all at once.

This field can either be provided with just a path, where it will inherit the rest of the URL from your camera's main stream. Or you can provide a full URL if things are different. For example you might need to provided a different scheme if your secondary stream is MJPEG while the primary is RTSP.

Snapshot Path

The snapshot path is an optional field for providing a URL from your camera that provides a still JPEG snapshot. This is primarily used for Apple Watch support as the Apple Watch cannot natively decode RTSP or HLS streams.

As with the secondary stream option above you can provide just a path where IPCams will inherit the settings from the primary stream URL, or you can also provide a full URL if needed.

Image Settings

Rotate 180º: This option can be used to flip your camera's image if it is mounted upside down

Custom Aspect: Some cameras provide a stream uses non square pixels. This usually results in a stream that is stretched or distorted. By providing a custom aspect, you can override what IPCams displays so it uses the right aspect ration. For example if you want to ensure the stream is displayed in a 16:9 ratio, divide 16/9 and enter the result 1.777 in the custom aspect field.

Audio Settings

If your camera stream includes audio, but you don't ever want to hear it. You can disable the audio stream here.

RTSP Transport Protocol

The transport protocol option is a way to change the protocol used for RTSP streams. By default IPCams will use UDP and fallback to TCP if UDP is not available. For certain cameras or networks, you might need to force TCP (or HTTP) to ensure a smoother stream.