Thoughts on this night capture

TheE

Pulling my weight
Joined
Dec 8, 2018
Messages
159
Reaction score
106
Location
TX
The cameras is a T544IR-ZE-S3. This location is in a warehouse with the only light coming from the time clock.

Still being somewhat new to IP cams, I guess my other question would be is how do you know when your captures are good enough? Lol... Or is this something you will always be tinkering with because of OCD and passion?


View attachment Cam1.20240306_160005_1.mp4
 

mat200

IPCT Contributor
Joined
Jan 17, 2017
Messages
13,966
Reaction score
23,278
The cameras is a T544IR-ZE-S3. This location is in a warehouse with the only light coming from the time clock.

Still being somewhat new to IP cams, I guess my other question would be is how do you know when your captures are good enough? Lol... Or is this something you will always be tinkering with because of OCD and passion?


View attachment 188784

Thanks @TheE .. looks fairly good to me .. try to inspect a few single frames for what you want to watch for and see if you are getting the results you need.

try to Increase the shutter speed if you need less blur ..
( lol .. faster shutter speed .. )

iirc @wittaj has a few posts on tuning parameters to try out



iirc this is the camera we are talking about
1709793332558.png
 
Last edited:

TheE

Pulling my weight
Joined
Dec 8, 2018
Messages
159
Reaction score
106
Location
TX
Thanks @TheE .. looks fairly good to me .. try to inspect a few single frames for what you want to watch for and see if you are getting the results you need.

try to Increase the shutter speed if you need less blur ..

iirc @wittaj has a few posts on tuning parameters to try out



iirc this is the camera we are talking about
View attachment 188787

Good morning and yes sir, this is the camera I am talking about.
 

bigredfish

Known around here
Joined
Sep 5, 2016
Messages
17,510
Reaction score
48,726
Location
Floriduh
Its not bad at all.. It IS a never ending OCD thing :lol:

What exposure are you running?

The one thing that helps more than just about anything though for freezing motion and getting better images is adding white light. Simple things like $39 Mr. Beams at doorways and key points where you may get a face shot. 20 seconds of added white light helps a lot

View attachment Home_ch3_20230821053432_20230821053508.mp4
 

looney2ns

IPCT Contributor
Joined
Sep 25, 2016
Messages
15,635
Reaction score
22,893
Location
Evansville, In. USA
The cameras is a T544IR-ZE-S3. This location is in a warehouse with the only light coming from the time clock.

Still being somewhat new to IP cams, I guess my other question would be is how do you know when your captures are good enough? Lol... Or is this something you will always be tinkering with because of OCD and passion?


View attachment 188784
Looks very good to me.
 

wittaj

IPCT Contributor
Joined
Apr 28, 2019
Messages
25,041
Reaction score
48,824
Location
USA
Yep looks good.

Someone mentioned me and starting point for settings, so here goes lol:

In terms of getting the most out of the camera, here is my "standard" post that many use as a start for dialing in day and night that helps get the clean captures and help the camera recognize people and cars.

Start with:

H264
8192 bitrate
CBR
15FPS
15 iframes

Every field of view is different, but I have found you need contrast to usually be 6-8 higher than the brightness number at night.

We want the ability to freeze frame capture a clean image from the video at night, and that is only done with a shutter of 1/60 or faster. At night, default/auto may be on 1/12s shutter or worse to make the image bright.

In my opinion, shutter (exposure) and gain are the two most important parameters and then base the others off of it. Shutter is more important than FPS. It is the shutter speed that prevents motion blur, not FPS. 15 FPS is more than enough for surveillance cameras as we are not producing Hollywood movies. Match iframes to FPS. 15FPS is all that is usually needed.

Many people do not realize there is manual shutter that lets you adjust shutter and gain and a shutter priority that only lets you adjust shutter speed but not gain. The higher the gain, the bigger the noise and see-through ghosting start to appear because the noise is amplified. Most people select shutter priority and run a faster shutter than they should because it is likely being done at 100 gain, so it is actually defeating their purpose of a faster shutter.

Go into shutter settings and change to manual shutter and start with custom shutter as ms and change to 0-8.3ms and gain 0-50 (night) and 0-4ms exposure and 0-30 gain (day)for starters. Auto could have a shutter speed of 100ms or more with a gain at 100 and shutter priority could result in gain up at 100 which will contribute to significant ghosting and that blinding white you will get from the infrared or white light.

Now what you will notice immediately at night is that your image gets A LOT darker. That faster the shutter, the more light that is needed. But it is a balance. The nice bright night static image results in Casper blur and ghost during motion LOL. What do we want, a nice static image or a clean image when there is motion introduced to the scene?

In the daytime, if it is still too bright, then drop the 4ms down to 3ms then 2ms, etc. You have to play with it for your field of view.

Then at night, if it is too dark, then start adding ms to the time. Go to 10ms, 12ms, etc. until you find what you feel is acceptable as an image. Then have someone walk around and see if you can get a clean shot. Try not to go above 16.67ms (but certainly not above 30ms) as that tends to be the point where blur starts to occur. Conversely, if it is still bright, then drop down in time to get a faster shutter.

You can also adjust brightness and contrast to improve the image. But try not to go above 70 for anything and try to have contrast be at least 7-10 digits higher than brightness.

You can also add some gain to brighten the image - but the higher the gain, the more ghosting you get. Some cameras can go to 70 or so before it is an issue and some can't go over 50.

But adjusting those two settings will have the biggest impact. The next one is noise reduction. Want to keep that as low as possible. Depending on the amount of light you have, you might be able to get down to 40 or so at night (again camera dependent) and 20-30 during the day, but take it as low as you can before it gets too noisy. Again this one is a balance as well. Too smooth and no noise can result in soft images and contribute to blur.

Do not use backlight features until you have exhausted every other parameter setting. And if you do have to use backlight, take it down as low as possible.

After every setting adjustment, have someone walk around outside and see if you can freeze-frame to get a clean image. If not, keep changing until you do. Clean motion pictures are what we are after, not a clean static image.
 
Top