Optimizing video streams

[dan64]

My team is looking into ways to minimize bandwidth and latency while streaming video from multiple Starling Max drones over 4G+VPN. In one of our tests, we disabled all but one pipe in voxl-camera-server.conf for the hires_front camera, and disabled all for the hires_down:

"en_preview": false,
"en_small_video": true,
"en_large_video": false,
"en_snapshot": false,

According to these docs, streams are not activated until a client connects, but disabling these other pipes seemed to have made a significant improvement in stream quality.
https://docs.modalai.com/voxl-camera-server/#hal3-streams

Can someone please confirm: if all pipes are enabled, and a client connects to a specific pipe (e.g. small video only), are all streams then activated? Any tips or suggestions to optimize bandwidth and reduce onboard overhead are appreciated!

[dan64]

For additional context, here is our voxl-streamer.conf:

{
  "input-pipe":  "hires_front_small_encoded",
  "bitrate":  1000000,
  "rotation":  0,
  "decimator":  1,
  "port":  8900
}