Much has been written about the significant bandwidth and storage savings H.264 provides when compared to MJPEG or MPEG4 Part 2. A related topic is the various ways H.264 can be configured and the resulting impact to image quality. Resolution, lighting, scene activity, bit rate, rate type, I-frame interval and compression all dramatically change how image quality is captured, transmitted and stored. This creates a “balancing act” between network bandwidth controls and image quality that isn’t easy to execute successfully because of the wide range of parameters in use. Some network camera deployments are overly concerned with bandwidth or storage consumption and consequently limit the cameras’ bit rate, resulting in low image quality. Other deployments are not concerned with bandwidth and allow an unlimited bit rate. However, they leave the cameras’ default compression setting, causing the same effect: poor image quality.