The disclosure is related to adaptive encoding of video streams from a camera. A camera system includes a camera and a base station connected to each other in a first communication network, which can be a wireless network. When a user requests to view a video from the camera, the base station obtains an encoded video stream from the camera and transmits the encoded video stream to a user device. The base station monitors multiple environmental parameters, such as network parameters, camera parameters, and system parameters of the base station, and instructs the camera to adjust the encoding of the video stream, in an event one or more environmental parameters change.