TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin PTZ Cameras Often Out of Synch...

Being the avid aviation geek that I am, I love watching the planes take off and land in St. Maarten. Thank you PTZ and Sunset Beach Bar Webcam! I will often have all four cameras up at the same time (Sunset, Maho, SXM Island and yes, even Holland House to stare at the waves and cruise ships). I've noticed the SXM Island camera is often out of synch with the Maho Beach cam - has anyone else noticed it? This morning the Amerijet cargo plane rumbled down the runway at 9am and then at 9:04 it finally started to roll on the SXM Island cam. I have often thought the PTZ SXM Island Cam might also be on a pre-corded loop because sometimes the planes take off and land on the Maho Beach Cam and the runway is EMPTY on the SXM Island Cam. Hmmmm

I work in television so I guess it's a big thing for me. I'm entertained but perplexed at the same time. Anyone else notice this? Just curious.

OK, I will be the drunk knowitallandmore from the end of the beach bar. Good news and bad news. Good news. Its not your fault. Bad news. Not much you can do about it.

This is most likely do to video/stream latency. Rarely when you watch a streams like these are you watching them in real time. It takes time/computing power to capture the image, encode it for the internet, stream it, route it over the intergoogle, and display on your desktop. In short, there are many links in the chain to get it your desktop and the quality of the stream is dictated by the weakest link & number of users watching.

Latency (delay) is a fact of life. Is real time synched video possible? Yes, but it is expensive and requires specialized equipment. Most basic PTZ camera just take the stream and dump it our on the internet and will only support a limited number of Unicast streams (Viewers). So while one camera looks real time and while another is minutes behind is due to the capability of the camera, links in the chain, and number of users looking at the camera stream...blah blah blah

I work for a video streaming equipment manufacturer..so I could go on for ages ...(while my wife smiles politely trying to get me to shut up). But, I hope this helps/answers your question

PS Just this last eek I helped a neighbor with a similar video issues in his home entertainment set up. My wife helped out. We sat in front of the neighbor try to solve the problem. For 30 seconds we discussed, ports, protocols, cables, and various goes-in-tas. Neighbor just look at me... "Do people really talk like that?" Yes. Yes we do.

Wabid - you're awesome. Thanks for the insight and terrific information.

Ha...thank....I'll give you my bosses email. ;-)

My pleasure, about the only thing I could comment on lately. We have not been back to the island for close to 3 years, and with the birth of daughter 18 months ago...it will be some time. Miss the island greatly.

I have dual monitored both cameras and find them to be within seconds of real time. The Sunset Beach cam, lags slightly!

quote=JoeC047]I have dual monitored both cameras and find them to be within seconds of real time. The Sunset Beach cam, lags slightly![/quote]

Not really. There is a difference between the network/PC time (displayed on your system tray and on the video frame) and when the actual "time" the video is captured.

Just eyeballing it now.... ( Can you tell I had a very long work week and need a distraction?). I can see the SXM Cam has about a two second lag behind the Beach cam. Yet, both cams and my PC are reporting the exact same time. That's network/PC time displayed on the webpage and not the "actual" time in the embedded video frame. Like I mentioned above there will be good days where both will appear in sync while others you are going to see the lag. However the lag/latency in this scenario will always be there you can't avoid it.

Thanks for the explanation. I'm not tech savvy so I thought it was my computer when I went from one cam to another.

I'm addicted to these cams. Daily morning look as I drink that first cup of coffee.

Arrive Sunday and will see it all first hand---but that doesn't mean I'll not watch the cams!

It's SXM. The internet sucks and we should be thankful for the pictures. I think it's all satellite based so we should be thankful.