Different Codec values received from "Get-VmsCameraReport" and "Get-HardwareSetting" using the Milestone PSTools Module

Hi All,

I was looking at the various codec values we have for a camera, and I wasn’t sure if this was a discrepancy due to the method the setting was obtained, or if I was doing something wrong.

Here is the following behavior I see

Running Get-VMSCameraReport shows

CurrentRecordedCodec : MPEG

CurrentLiveCodec : MPEG

However, Get-HardwareSetting shows

CodecType : H264

In the management client, I see the same result as “Get-HardwareSetting”, which shows a Codec Type of H264. I also go on the cameras web interface, and the “Coding Standard” is set to “H.264”.

Any idea what could cause this difference in reported settings?

Hi @Dylan Mak​,

The difference between the “CurrentRecordedCodec” and “CurrentLiveCodec” properties in Get-VmsCameraReport and the values from Get-HardwareSetting or Get-VmsCameraStream is the latter retrieve the configuration from the Management Server and the former are retrieved directly from the recording server by calling the GetVideoDeviceStatistics method on the RecorderStatusService2 API.

I don’t recall off hand in which release it changed, but it used to be that the GetVideoDeviceStatistics response only provided a general “MPEG” or “JPEG” response and didn’t differentiate between different MPEG based codecs like MPEG4, H264, and H265. Until the site is upgraded to a newer version, the RecorderStatusService2 will unfortunately not get any more specific than MPEG.

Thanks Josh! Good to know of this specific difference - I was very confused by the discrepancy and difference in behavior.