The image stuttered, struggling to decompress the ancient data. Slowly, a frame assembled itself. It was a view from a high angle, looking down at a construction site. Men in yellow hard hats moved in jerky, stop-motion animation, the tell-tale signs of a low-framerate MJPEG stream.
To handle hundreds or thousands of viewers, developers use a in the middle. The server makes a single connection to axis-cgi/mjpg/video.cgi , buffers the data, and rebroadcasts it to multiple clients.
import cv2
Storing MJPEG video requires massive amounts of disk space. 3. The Core Axis CGI Endpoints for MJPEG
curl --anyauth --user "root:password" "http://192.168.0.90/axis-cgi/param.cgi?action=list&group=Image.I0" axis cgi mjpg
Always change root password. Use a strong password and create a dedicated streamer user with only View permissions.
| Feature | axis-cgi/mjpg/video.cgi (MJPEG/HTTP) | RTSP (typically H.264/H.265) | | :--- | :--- | :--- | | | Very High. Each frame is a full JPEG image, leading to large data sizes. A 640x480 stream at 10fps can consume several Mbps. | Low. Uses advanced compression (H.264/H.265), sending only changes between frames. | | Latency | Low. Frames are sent as soon as they are captured and encoded. | Low to Medium. Depends on the encoding settings (e.g., GOP size). Can be tuned for low latency. | | Compatibility | Universal. Any web browser can display it with a simple <img> tag. Works with basic HTTP libraries. | Requires RTSP Client. Needs specific libraries like FFmpeg, OpenCV, or VLC. Not natively supported in browsers. | | CPU Usage | Higher for decoding. The client must decode each JPEG independently, but this is computationally less intense than H.264. | Higher for encoding. Encoding H.264 is more CPU-intensive on the camera, but decoding can be hardware-accelerated on clients. | | Image Access | Every frame is accessible. Because each frame is a complete JPEG, you can easily save or analyze any individual frame from the stream. | Frame access requires decoding. You need to decode the compressed stream to access individual frames. | The image stuttered, struggling to decompress the ancient
| Parameter | Values | Description | | :--- | :--- | :--- | | resolution | WidthxHeight (e.g., 640x480, 1920x1080) | Defines the dimensions of the video stream. | | compression | 0 to 100 | Adjusts JPEG quality. Lower values (e.g., 10-30) offer higher quality but larger file sizes. Higher values increase compression (lower quality, smaller data streams). | | fps or req_fps | Integer (1, 5, 15, 30) | Requests a specific frame rate limit from the camera. | | camera | 1, 2, 3, 4, quad | Selects the video source on multi-sensor cameras or video encoders. | | rotation | 0, 90, 180, 270 | Rotates the image (requires square pixel mode). | | duration | Seconds (e.g., 5) | Limits the stream duration (useful for video clips). |
MJPEG is a video compression format where each video frame is compressed individually as a separate JPEG image. Unlike H.264 or H.265, MJPEG does not use inter-frame compression (predicting motion between frames). Advantages of MJPEG Disadvantages of MJPEG Extremely low latency High bandwidth consumption Low CPU overhead to decode Large storage footprint for recording Universally supported by web browsers No native audio integration in the stream High quality per individual frame Subject to network jitter The Core Axis MJPEG CGI URL Structure Men in yellow hard hats moved in jerky,
camera: - platform: generic name: Axis Front Door still_image_url: http://root:pass@192.168.1.100/axis-cgi/jpg/image.cgi stream_source: http://root:pass@192.168.1.100/axis-cgi/mjpg/video.cgi?resolution=640x480