Cameras
Camera types
Section titled “Camera types”Angelcam supports cameras with H.264, H.265 (experimental), and MJPEG video codecs. The codec is indicated by the type property of the camera resource.
H.265 is experimental. H.265 cameras can only be connected via the API and playback in the Angelcam web and mobile apps may not always work.
Live streams
Section titled “Live streams”Live streams are fetched from Angelcam CDN. The stream feature is intended for private monitoring by the camera owner — each camera is limited to 10 concurrent consumers (Angelcam web and mobile apps count toward this limit, recording does not). For higher concurrency or public access use the Broadcasting service.
For MJPEG cameras only an MJPEG stream is available. For H.264/H.265 cameras you can choose from:
MJPEG is a stream of JPEG images. No audio track, higher bandwidth than H.264/H.265, but easy to embed in HTML via an <img> tag and supported natively by most browsers. Lower CPU load on the viewer side — preferred when displaying many streams simultaneously. You can cap the frame rate (e.g. 1 frame per 10 seconds) to save bandwidth.
HLS is the preferred format for most use cases. Widely supported by video players and browsers. Angelcam CDN delivers the video as produced by the camera, so bitrate and quality depend on the camera’s encoder settings.
Fragmented MP4 — use when you need low latency between live and real time. Less widely supported than HLS; may not work on mobile devices.
MPEG-TS (experimental)
Section titled “MPEG-TS (experimental)”Similar latency characteristics to fMP4 — an alternative when fMP4 cannot be used.
Snapshots
Section titled “Snapshots”A snapshot is a periodically saved image of the live stream — a cheap way to show users a preview without establishing a camera connection. Snapshots can be up to 24 hours old; accessing any camera endpoint triggers an automatic refresh. Check the created_at field to see the snapshot age.
If you need a more recent image use a live snapshot or an MJPEG stream with a low frame rate.
Live snapshots
Section titled “Live snapshots”A live snapshot captures the camera’s current frame by establishing a real connection to the camera and extracting the last key frame. This is more resource-intensive than a regular snapshot.