Saturday, April 20, 2024

Reolink for Windows Download Failed

Reolink makes some pretty decent security cameras including their recently released Duo 3 PoE 16MP with night vision, visible and infrared illumination, and in particular its panoramic view, which with its two lenses can offer a full horizontal view of the street in front of your home.


While the Reolink app for Android is pretty solid, their Windows app is much less so. When trying to get recorded video via the Windows version's Playback => Download, maybe a third or more of the time you'll be met with repeated download failures. 

Before optimization. Note repeated download failures.


Whether just a few videos are queued to download or a few dozen, Reolink will variously fail one or a few along the way, slow to a crawl in terms of transfer speed, or as seen above, fail altogether. Things can be even worse if you use a resource manager like Bitsum's excellent Process Lasso (sort of like Task Manager on steroids), which manages programs' CPU, memory and I/O usage on your system, and in some cases actively restrains ornery processes trying to monopolize same. 

Reolink for Windows strikes me as poorly written for PC, as if the developers either outsourced to some third-rate Windows team, or let their B-team or even interns loose on it. It's finicky, brittle, and inconsistent overall, whether trying simply to connect to cameras the Android app interacts flawlessly with, or as in this situation trying to download recordings.

Having Process Lasso enabled really brings Reolink's download issues to a head, but at the same time, if you configure things properly, it can help minimize those issues so that the app performs overall more smoothly and consistently. To do this, from Process Lasso, look for Reolink.exe in the list of all or active processes, right-click on it, then click Induce Performance Mode.



This ensures Reolink is both not restrained by Process Lasso itself, and seems to help the app have more resources dedicated to it, being more sensitive to changes in CPU and other resources especially for downloading as well as live viewing and even simple connectivity to your cameras.

After Induce Performance Mode. Overall smoother operation.


Certainly this does not get around Reolink being challenged in the Windows development department, but it does work arounds the app's clearly irritating deficiencies, at least most of the time.