Best use of C920

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1

I recently got octoprint up and running (via the octopi image), but I'm not happy with the quality (FPS, resolution) of my C920 webcam. How can I get maximum quality out of it?

I've done some research, and from what I see the C920 has built-in h.264 encoding - so ideally the raspi barely has to do anything (I have a 3 B+, and ocotoprint is the only thing I plan on doing with it, so I have some headroom). My questions are, then:

  1. How do I make use of the H.264 encoding built-in to the C920? I'd want to have a 1920x1080 30fps stream, and my home network certainly has the bandwidth to support it.
  2. Are there downsides? I have read that browsers can't stream an mp4 (h264) without a plugin - I wouldn't REALLY have a big issue adding a plugin (though I haven't even begun exploring options to view/control octoprint from my iPhone), but I want other things (like octolapse, etc) to not have issues
  3. Where will the network connection over wifi to the 3b+ cap, and will it cause issues if the webcam is using all/most of it? I'm running 802.11ac, I've got 700mbps down through wifi on my laptop, but I very much doubt that kind of throughput is possible over the pi's wifi. Basically I'm asking "where am I going to run into issues"?

Thanks!

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2

any one?
Im stucked one default low resolition to =(

3

Any updates on this . I also have a c920 and I'd like to use h264.

4

I'm sure the original folks on this thread have moved on in the last couple of years, but for anyone stumbling by, setting camera_usb_options="-r 1920x1080 -f 10" in /boot/octopi.txt will get you better resolution. When upping the framerate, I found the preview in the browser to stutter and lowered it back down. I don't need high fps, so I have not troubleshot whether it was the browser or the Pi that was unhappy with 30 fps.

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