Is Your Avigilon Live View Constantly Buffering?
A smooth, uninterrupted live video feed is critical for effective security monitoring. When your Avigilon live view starts buffering, freezing, or lagging, it compromises your ability to respond to incidents in real-time. This issue can be frustrating, but it's almost always solvable. Buffering is typically a symptom of a bottleneck somewhere between your cameras and the screen you're viewing them on.
This guide will walk you through the most common causes of Avigilon live view buffering and provide clear, actionable steps to resolve them. We'll cover everything from network infrastructure to server performance and client-side settings.
Common Symptoms of Live View Buffering
Before diving into solutions, let's identify the common signs that you have a buffering problem. You might be experiencing one or more of the following:
- Choppy or Stuttering Video: The video plays for a second, pauses, and then jumps forward.
- Frequent Freezing: The image freezes on a single frame for several seconds before resuming.
- High Latency: There is a noticeable delay between real-world events and when they appear on your screen.
- Pixelation: The video quality drops significantly, becoming blocky or blurry as the system struggles to keep up.
- Slow PTZ Response: Pan-Tilt-Zoom camera controls are delayed or unresponsive.
- Error Messages: You may see specific errors in the Avigilon Control Center (ACC) client related to bandwidth or connectivity.
Step-by-Step Troubleshooting Guide
Follow these steps in order to diagnose and fix the root cause of your Avigilon streaming issues.
1. Analyse Your Network Infrastructure
The network is the most common culprit for video buffering. Your video data travels from the camera, to the server, and then to your client computer, and a weak link anywhere in that chain can cause problems.
- Check Bandwidth: Ensure your network has sufficient bandwidth. A single high-resolution camera can use a significant amount of data. Multiply that by the number of cameras being viewed simultaneously. Use a network performance tool to test the throughput between the viewing station and the Avigilon server.
- Switch & Router Performance: Ensure your network switches and routers are capable of handling the load. Use business-grade, managed switches where possible. Check the switch's CPU and memory utilisation if possible.
- Avoid Wi-Fi (If Possible): For critical monitoring stations, always use a wired Ethernet connection. Wi-Fi is susceptible to interference and is less reliable than a physical cable, which can lead to packet loss and buffering.
- Quality of Service (QoS): On managed networks, implement QoS policies to prioritise video traffic. This tells your network hardware to give preference to the Avigilon video streams over less critical data like emails or web browsing.
2. Optimise Camera Settings
The settings on the cameras themselves directly influence how much network bandwidth they consume.
- Frame Rate (FPS): Does the scene you're monitoring require 30 FPS, or would 15 FPS be sufficient? Halving the frame rate can nearly halve the bandwidth required.
- Resolution: While high resolution provides more detail, it also demands more resources. Consider if a lower resolution, such as 1080p instead of 4K, would be acceptable for certain camera views without compromising security objectives.
- Image Quality/Compression: In the camera's settings, you can adjust the image quality. A slightly lower quality setting can significantly reduce bandwidth with minimal noticeable difference in the video feed.
- Keyframe Interval: Ensure the keyframe interval is set to be the same as the frame rate. A mismatched interval can cause decoding issues and lead to choppy video.
3. Evaluate Server and Client Performance
The hardware running the Avigilon server software and the client software must be powerful enough to handle the video streams.
- Server (NVR) Load: On your Avigilon server, open the Windows Task Manager. Check the CPU, Memory, and Disk usage. If any of these are consistently running at over 80-90%, the server is overloaded. It may be recording too many high-resolution cameras or performing other tasks. You might need to upgrade the server's hardware or add another server to distribute the load.
- Client Workstation Performance: Similarly, check the Task Manager on the computer you are using to view the live feed. A weak CPU or an underpowered graphics card (GPU) can struggle to decode multiple high-resolution streams at once. Ensure the client machine meets or exceeds Avigilon's recommended specifications.
- Secondary Streams: For multi-camera views (e.g., a 2x2 or 3x3 grid), configure ACC to use the camera's secondary, lower-resolution stream. This dramatically reduces the load on the client PC. When you double-click to view a camera full-screen, ACC can automatically switch to the high-resolution primary stream.
By systematically working through these areas—network, cameras, and hardware—you can identify the bottleneck causing the buffering and take the necessary steps to achieve a smooth and reliable live viewing experience with your Avigilon security system.