Support / The picture on the wall is smaller than full screen, or the app says it “dropped to the lighter picture”
Which picture to use: full or lighter
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Two pictures from one camera
Almost every camera sends the same scene twice: a full picture (the main stream — say 1080p or 4K) and a lighter one (the substream — often 640×360). The full one is for watching one camera closely; the lighter one is for showing several at once and for weak Wi-Fi.
What ViewTile does
- On the wall, with several cameras on screen, it uses the lighter picture. Four full pictures at once is more than most Wi-Fi and most phones handle, and a tile the size of a matchbox cannot show 1080p anyway.
- Full screen uses the full picture.
- When the full picture cannot keep up — the stream stalls, the network is weak — ViewTile switches to the lighter one by itself and says so on the picture. One tap on the switch at the top puts the full one back.
Changing it
On the camera’s page, under Video streams, you choose which stream the wall uses and which full screen uses. Two reasons to change the default: a camera whose lighter stream is switched off or set absurdly low (a 320×240 substream looks broken — set it to 640×360 or 704×576 on the camera’s page), or a cabled camera on a strong network where you want the full picture even on the wall.
In Settings, Drop to substream automatically can be switched off if you would rather see the stall than the smaller picture.
Reading the small print
The line under the camera’s name on the picture shows what is really arriving: resolution, frames per second, bitrate. If it says 640×360 when you expected more, the camera is sending the lighter stream — either by your choice, or because the full one could not keep up.