Amcrest DVR camera integration with home assistant - giving very strange/distorted images

Third party integrations
1

I’m getting some strange images from my amcrest DVR. Not always, just sometimes.

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Here’s my config for getting the snapshots from each camera in the dvr
camera:

  - platform: ffmpeg
    input: rtsp://admin:[email protected]:554/cam/realmonitor?channel=1&subtype=0
    name: Camera Front Door
  - platform: ffmpeg
    input: rtsp://admin:[email protected]:554/cam/realmonitor?channel=2&subtype=0
    name: Camera RV North
  - platform: ffmpeg
    input: rtsp://admin:[email protected]:554/cam/realmonitor?channel=3&subtype=0
    name: Camera Bandroom Ext
  - platform: ffmpeg
    input: rtsp://admin:[email protected]:554/cam/realmonitor?channel=6&subtype=0
    name: Camera Shop Ext

Anyone have Any ideas for me to try?

Jeff

2

Try changing the subtype to 1… slightly lower quality… I had the same issue at one time… I can switch to high quality now without the issue but I also have turned off snapshots all together… I think it was just too much processing for my nvr or something

3

"Turned off snapshots… " expand on that, if you would. I don’t have snapshots turned on anywhere that I know of. Meanwhile, I’ll try the other sub-stream on half of the cams and see if that helps.

4

I don’t know what model you have but should be somewhat close… the snapshots never worked for me… they looked like your example even in a direct email from the nvr… also mentioned a lot on amcrest forums… I don’t know if resolved with newer firmware or anything though…

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This feature has it save still images either all the time or when motion detected depending on how you have it set… just ate up video space for me so turning it off let me save a few more days of video

5

Aha. Yeah I’ve never used that snapshot feature and the lower res cams now seem to work better.

6

I had the same problem before. I switched to using the generic platform vs ffmpeg for my case. That seemed to do the trick. I also kept the ffmpeg: integration in my configuration - not sure if that matters.

For the still image, I used the path from their HTTP API (e.g., http://x.x.x.x/cgi-bin/snapshot.cgi?channel=#)

For the stream source, I used the rtsp path (same as your example).

More documentation here: https://support.amcrest.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001770132-Amcrest-HTTP-API-SDK

- platform: generic
  still_image_url: !secret camera_url_front_door
  stream_source: !secret camera_stream_front_door
  name: Front Door
  username: !secret camera_username
  password: !secret camera_password
  verify_ssl: false