How to prevent your Bosch camera's stream from switching to MJPEG

This article describes why a stream’s codec on Bosch 5000i series cameras will switch to MJPEG unexpectedly if the camera was rebooted and how to prevent it.

What is the problem and why does it occur?

If a Bosch camera has been added to Nx Witness and the stream codec is set to H.264/H.265, and for some reason, the camera was rebooted (e.g. power cycle, power failure, POE restart, etc.). After the camera connection resumes, you might see the stream codec of the Bosch camera might be changed to MJPEG instead of H.264/H.265.  

This is due to the camera taking longer time than expected to initialize the camera modules. When the camera connection resumes, Nx Witness tries to query the profiles on the camera and retrieves all the available stream settings from the camera. However, sometimes we can see the camera might not be ready to provide the entire stream but only a portion so that Nx Witness will choose the ready-to-use one (e.g. MJPEG).

How to solve the problem?

Workaround A - Manually force the profile to be updated 

You may choose one of the following approaches to re-initialize and retrieve the stream from the Bosch camera again:

1. Change the setting on Media2 option (i.e. Automatic selection → Never → Automatic selection):
2. Right-click on the camera and go to the Camera Setting > Expert page. 
3. Navigate to Initialization Settings.
4. Click the dropdown box and choose Never.
5. Apply changes.
6. Wait for 1 minute, then switch back to Automatic selection.
7. Reboot the Nx Server service 

Workaround B (Permanently*) - Disable using media2

Note: This workaround will be valid for H.264 profile only. Please be aware that if you are using H.265 stream, the stream might not be properly working after disabling the media2 service.

1. Right-click on the camera and go to the Camera Setting > Expert page. 
2. Navigate to Initialization Settings.
3. Click the dropdown box and choose Never.
4. Apply changes.

Questions

If you have any questions related to this topic or you want to share your experience with other community members or our team, please visit and engage in our support community or reach out to your local reseller.