If you have an Axis camera connected to Angelcam and experience any of the following, the likely cause is Axis Zipstream:
Live stream fails to load entirely — you see an error or the spinner never stops
Live stream takes a long time to start — video spins for several seconds before appearing
Recordings are hard to seek — playback jumps to the wrong position
Recorded video looks frozen or choppy, especially during quiet scenes
The "keyframe interval too high" warning appears in your recording timeline
The fix is straightforward: disable Zipstream in the camera's stream settings.
Why Zipstream causes problems
Zipstream is Axis's built-in bandwidth-saving technology. It works well for on-site VMS storage, but two of its features — Dynamic GOP and Dynamic FPS — are incompatible with cloud streaming and recording.
Dynamic GOP causes stream failures, slow startup, and broken seeking
A GOP (Group of Pictures) defines how often the camera sends a full keyframe. Every cloud video platform — including Angelcam — needs to wait for the next keyframe before it can start delivering video to your browser or app. With Dynamic GOP enabled, the camera stretches the interval between keyframes during quiet scenes to save bandwidth.
The default upper limit is 300 frames. At 25 fps, that is a keyframe every 12 seconds. In practice this means:
When you open a live stream, it can take up to 12 seconds before video appears — the server is waiting for the next keyframe before it can start the stream.
In the worst case, the stream never loads at all. If the server waits too long for a keyframe, the connection times out and the stream fails — even though the camera is online and transmitting.
When you seek in a recording, playback jumps to the nearest keyframe rather than the exact moment you selected.
Axis's own documentation acknowledges this directly: Dynamic GOP "may cause problems viewing recorded video in some clients and VMS solutions, even though the compressed video stream conforms to the H.264 standard."
Dynamic FPS causes choppy or frozen-looking playback
Dynamic FPS drops the encoded frame rate during quiet scenes. A camera set to 25 fps may deliver only 5–8 fps when nothing is moving. This creates irregular timestamps in the stream, which can confuse the recording pipeline — the result looks like frozen or stuttering video, even though the recording itself is intact.
How to disable Zipstream
The menu path depends on your camera's firmware version. Setting Zipstream Strength to Off disables all Zipstream features — including Dynamic GOP and Dynamic FPS — in one step.
New interface (AXIS OS 10.x and newer)
Open your camera's web admin interface and go to Video → Stream.
In the right panel, find the Zipstream section.
Set Strength to Off.
Click Save.
Older interface (AXIS OS 9.x and earlier)
In older firmware the section is labeled H.264 and H.265 encoding instead of Zipstream.
Go to Video → Stream.
Find the H.264 and H.265 encoding section.
Set Zipstream to Off.
Confirm that Dynamic FPS and Dynamic GOP are also disabled.
Click Save.
Note: After saving, allow a few seconds for the stream to reinitialize. Live stream startup should be noticeably faster.
Recommended stream settings
While you have the stream settings open, also check these:
P-frames (also called GOV length): set to 25–60, giving a keyframe every 1–2 seconds at typical frame rates
Frame rate: fixed value, not dynamic — 10–25 fps is sufficient for most deployments
Bitrate control: Variable or Maximum bitrate
For a full overview of recommended streaming settings across camera brands, see Recommended streaming settings and the "keyframe interval too high" error.
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