user22758: I just purchased a cheap dashboard video-camera that is advertised to have a H.264 codec inside. However, after the first video test I have seen that a 43sec movie takes 123MB! How is this possible. I thought that H.264 has a MUCH better compression!
Question:
1. Does my video camera really incorporate a true H.264 codec or is it a fake?
2. If it is a true H264 why is the compression ratio so poor?  

UPDATE:
I contacted the producer and they said that "The compression ratio system setting of the H.264 AVC codec is 102:1. This setting cannot be set manually"

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    ................
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user1871: H264 allows for much better compression, but image acquisition should be as good as feasible, so cameras will capture at a high bitrate, say, 10+ Mbps, depends on resolution and framerate. Nothing unusual about that.
The full bouquet of H.264 compression methods i.e. lookahead for rate-control, better motion estimation ..etc is usually applied when producing a file for web playback. You can use ffmpeg with libx264 to achieve that.

22758: <p>I just purchased a cheap dashboard video-camera that is advertised to have a H.264 codec inside. However, after the first video test I have seen that a 43sec movie takes 123MB! How is this possible. I thought that H.264 has a MUCH better compression!</p>

<p>Question:<br>
1. Does my video camera really incorporate a true H.264 codec or is it a fake?<br>
2. If it is a true H264 why is the compression ratio so poor?  </p>

<hr>

<p>UPDATE:<br>
I contacted the producer and they said that "The compression ratio system setting of the H.264 AVC codec is 102:1. This setting cannot be set manually"</p>

<hr>

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</code></pre>
 1871: <p>H264 allows for much better compression, but image acquisition should be as good as feasible, so cameras will capture at a high bitrate, say, 10+ Mbps, depends on resolution and framerate. Nothing unusual about that.</p>

<p>The full bouquet of H.264 compression methods i.e. lookahead for rate-control, better motion estimation ..etc is usually applied when producing a file for web playback. You can use ffmpeg with libx264 to achieve that.</p>
