Live streaming from intgrated camera to ec2 instance returns poor quality stream

There are several factors that could be contributing to the poor quality of your live stream from your integrated camera to your EC2 instance. Here are some suggestions to improve the quality:

1. Network Bandwidth: Ensure that you have sufficient network bandwidth between your camera and the EC2 instance. For live video streaming, the available bandwidth should at least match the encoder bitrate of your camera. If the bandwidth is insufficient, it can lead to dropped frames and low FPS.

2. EC2 Instance Type: Consider using an EC2 instance type that is optimized for video processing. Instances with higher CPU and GPU capabilities may handle video streams better, especially if you're planning to use it with Touchdesigner for real-time processing.

3. Encoding Settings: Review the encoding settings of your camera stream. Ensure that the video and audio encoding parameters are configured correctly and optimized for streaming. You may need to adjust bitrate, resolution, or frame rate to find the right balance between quality and performance.

4. Stream Ingest Method: Instead of directly streaming to the EC2 instance, you might want to consider using a service like Amazon Kinesis Video Streams as an intermediary. This service is designed to handle live video ingestion and can potentially provide a more stable stream to your EC2 instance.

5. Latency Considerations: Be aware that processing live video streams will introduce some level of latency. You'll need to test and determine what level of latency is acceptable for your use case.

6. Network Configuration: Ensure that your EC2 instance's security groups and network ACLs are properly configured to allow the incoming video stream without any restrictions.

7. Monitoring and Diagnostics: Use network diagnostic tools to inspect the traffic between your camera and the EC2 instance. This can help identify any issues with packet transmission or routing.

If these optimizations don't sufficiently improve your stream quality, you might want to explore using AWS services specifically designed for video processing and streaming, such as AWS Elemental MediaLive. These services are optimized for handling live video streams and could potentially provide better performance for your use case with Touchdesigner and stream-diffusion.

Remember to test your setup thoroughly and monitor its performance to ensure it meets the requirements for your live processing needs.

Sources
Cross region Media Live unstable output quality | AWS re:Post
Viewing UDP stream from AWS EC2 on user's PC | AWS re:Post
Recommendations for camera setup (streaming video) - Amazon Rekognition

I would suggest to check if your camera can produce reliable type of protocol on the output: Zixi, SRT. You can use it with combination of MediaConnect on reception side in a cloud: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/media/best-practices-for-streaming-to-social-media-platforms-using-aws-media-services/

What is the connection protocol used between your camera and EC2 instance in AWS Cloud? What is the codec and bitrate the camera is using?

Without knowing some of the basic details of feed, connection and architecture, it's difficult to make recommendations. Please provide details of your camera output, resolution, bitrate and connection protocol used.

Several things to consider:

• Can the camera output be sent through some video software that can create a delivery protocol, such as RTMP, SRT or perhaps MKV?
• Depending on the delivery protocol and bitrates, sending streams over the Internet to the AWS Cloud can be impacted packet drops, errors and poor performance.
• Can a packet recovery technique, such as SRT, Zixi, FEC or other mechanisms be deployed to improve performance?
• Is it possible to send the feed through another AWS service before delivering directly to an EC2 instance? Ex. AWS MediaConnect can accept Transport Stream based connection and work with packet recovery protocols.
• Is it possible to first store the camera feed in Amazon S3, before having the application access it? Several AWS services (MediaLive, Interactive Video Service, Kinesis Video Service) offer capture to S3 functions.