Initial Review of 4KHDIP822 & Some Questions For The Community

[Wildcat_1]

New here and received some great help already (@mat200). Wanted to post a quick mini-review of my experience with the Lorex 4KHDIP822 kit and a couple of Amcrest’s I put in place for the first time. Longer post but hope it helps people. I will cross post (for now) in the NVR & IP Cam areas as not sure where this best fits.

LNB8963B - 2 x White Vari 15 fps 4k White Cameras
LNB9232S - 2 x Black 30 fps 4k
1 x 8 Channel NR908x NVR​

Purchased the above kit as part of Black Friday deals and netted out to around $560 after all deals. Also picked up 2 x Amcrest IP8M-2496EB’s to add to the kit.

For reference before I continue, this is my first Lorex system, run the system local, no internet, involved in pro video so expectations on video quality are probably way higher than they should be for a CCTV system

Installation & NVR Experience

Installation was pretty straightforward with all cams supporting POE. The hardest, most tedious part was running CAT6 which as all here know can be laborious at best. This was not helped by some crappy CAT connector plugs that had terrible UTP channel alignment (another story).

Certainly noticed a few quirks of the NVR during installation, namely:

• You cannot have WDR on and then directly turn off, it won’t take the change. You need to switch to another backlight mode such as HLC etc first then switch back to off and you’re set.
• ‘Switch by period’ for time of day profile switching is very finicky, sometimes it switches as expected, other times it doesn’t.
• Amcrest IP Cams not showing their sub/display stream on the video wall screen. Have to change to H264 to get these to show up, could not get them displaying in H265 for sub stream.
• Long delays (at times) in cams (including the Lorex native cams) showing up on display screen, no rhyme or reason behind it.
• Would be nice for the system to clearly state when a change is going to affect FPS, for example adding WDR on a particular cam or certain resolution changes etc.

Camera & Picture Quality

Having mounted 5 of 6 cams I set about testing quality of the cams in both day and night. Some thoughts on these below:

All cams (Lorex in kit + Amcrest)

• 4K in perfect daylight looks really good
• Pleasantly surprised by the Amcrest & Lorex LNB8963B at night (more below)
• LNB9232S has not impressed me at all at night either in color or B&W (more below) and may need some help tweaking.
• 3D Digital NR is clearly a necessity (especially at night) but seems to degrade the picture so much when using it at a useful level that it causes way to much motion smearing/trailing. Finding it incredibly difficult to get a good smooth, yet detailed night picture especially from the LNB9232S.
• Despite lack of other features, the Amcrest really are an incredible (albeit wide) camera for the deal ($60 on Amz Lightning deal).
• FPS is pretty good but the claims of true 30 fps 4k are somewhat misleading when you add in the fact that most changes to backlight modes etc will potentially affect this, lowering to 25 etc.

Specific Camera Thoughts

Lorex LNB8963B

• Overall, solid camera with nice picture, good vari-focal and a useful viewing/focal distance even when fully wide.
• Seems to handle noise well and certainly better than the LNB9232S
• Clarity in motion (say 15 - 20 mph car going past) still results in motion smearing/trailing, not good but better than the LNB9232S

Lorex LNB9232S

• Nice to have the 30 fps
• Great daylight picture, very crisp, good color representation, handles motion well (during the day).
• Ok viewing distance/focal point (can’t rate this too bad as is a fixed lens).
• Audio pickup from the mic is very good
• Noise handling in low light/night situations is TERRIBLE. Doesn’t matter whether choosing B&W or Color. There is so much noise on this camera (more so in color night vision of course) that the Digital NR needs to be really high to compensate which in turn ruins the ability to capture crisp motion.
• Night vision in B&W is very soft.
• Motion at night (even when surrounded by 3 x 100W LED bulbs casting light) is NOT GOOD at all.
• Motion smearing/trailing is terrible.
• Amcrest cam seems to handle night motion better than this cam

Amcrest IP8M-2496EB

• For the price, an outstanding camera BUT has somewhat limited application due to its wide angle. For the places I have these 2 cams this wasn’t a problem. Certainly a useful cam to have augment another more focused cam (PTZ, vari etc).
• Apart from the H265 sib stream display issue these cams are a great addition to your system as long as you have other cams serving the purposes that these cannot fulfill.

I will be pulling the CAM runs from the NVR and instead look to move to an enterprise POE switch for some further features I am working on across the infrastructure. This will also allow more flexibility of NVR placement which will access the CAMs on their own VLAN via IP rather than using the NVR switch itself.

In summary, for the price of the Lorex kit its a pretty solid system IMO. The LNB8963B’s are the nicer cams out of the kit and will definitely keep those in the mix along with the Amcrest. The LNB9232S’s however have not impressed. Will continue to tweak these and test but as of right now, find these hard to recommend except in daylight and will probably look to replace with other cams.

I also have some questions and was hoping others can help me here.


Questions

1. What is the latest FW for this system (both the NR908x and the cams above) and where can we get those when not connecting the system to the Internet for local updates ?
2. Recommended settings for these cams or NVR, WDR etc ?
3. Have been looking into picking up a Dahua Starlight, what are the latest models, are there 4k versions (if needed) and for things like driveway coverage (long driveway) are most people using PTZ’s or sticking with bullets/turrets and a mix of short and long fixed lenses ? Read a lot of reviews on the 2MP versions and wondering if the 4MP or higher are available and worthwhile ?
4. Anyone else seen extreme motion streaming/trailing with this or other systems using this NVR or cam combination ? If so, any thoughts on how to fix ? I am looking to try and fault isolate whether this is an NVR issue or even CAM HW related.
5. I have a need for a side coverage of about 180 degrees and was thinking a mini-ptz. Light is not optimum there so was thinking that another starlight that could be set to patrol the 180 area and zoom (thinking 10x or around that) to specific points. Any thoughts on this ?
6. Lastly, something to replace a doorbell type of cam. Any suggestions on current vs pano here and if so single vs dual lens ?
7. Any one else seen the issue with this NVR that when you click on one of your cams from the quadrant views you just see a black screen and have to wait (at times up to 30 seconds) for the picture to display ? Not sure if this is an NVR/cam setting that is causing this or something else.

Thanks all for help with my questions.

Hope the above mini-review was helpful for those looking at this kit.

WC

 

[bigredfish]

Good job. Any sample clips?

 

[mat200]

Thanks for the review @Wildcat_1

Definitely share the night time images and settings.

There are ways to reduce the motion blur - typically increasing the shutter speed, which will naturally reduce the brightness of the image.

The Lorex LNB9232S - 2 x Black 30 fps 4k - should be a sibling of the Dahua IPC-HFW1831E - so look for the thread on that model here and see what others have been doing. If it is using the same sensor, which I suspect it is, it should perform well at night with some tuning.

Q&A:

Q: Recommended settings for these cams or NVR, WDR etc ?
A: WDR I like to start w/20-30 and then adjust from there.

Q: Dahua OEM starlight..
A: The current "4K"/8MP Dahua OEM starlight version you probably do not want to drop $800-1000 on ( it is a box camera - really nice )
Number of really nice options to pick up - look for IPC-HxW22xx / IPC-HxW42xx / IPC-52xx models reviewed here. Start with searching "review" in the search box - select title.
I really like the following at the front door at eye level:
Dahua OEM 2MP starlight mini-dome wedges
IPC-HDBW4231F-AS
and IPC-HDBW4231F-E2-M
see Review-Dahua IPC-HDBW4231F-E2-M Dual Starlight Cam

Q: PTZ
A: 2MP Dahua OEM starlight version is the way to go right now imho - if you can wait there is a 4MP starlight series of models in the works ( fenderman posted on this recently - look for starlight+ - still waiting on models to show up ). Double check the NVR or switch can handle PoE+ for better results ( possible to separately power the camera if NVR / switch is not PoE )

Q: Night time capture of moving objects
A: Always the most challenging for security cameras. Start with trying out a faster shutter speed, ensuring enough ambient light,..

Q: Side coverage of 180 degrees
A: Better to use 2 cameras - note there are some multi lens cameras - like the IPC-HDBW4231F-E2-M though it is a mini-dome so I prefer to keep it out of direct UV exposure as much as possible. ( note, multiple lens cameras will take more than one camera channel! )

Q: Door bell camera
A: I like the IPC-HDBW4231F-E2-M or the IPC-HDBW4231F-AS at face level by the front door + some doorbell intercom device. Right now I have not seen many doorbell intercom devices that I like at a price point I think is reasonable, so I am personally holding off a bit on this. There are some reviews here on Hikvision and Dahua OEM products which may work well enough, but it seems this area is still experiencing some rapid development.

Q: NVR performance on display.
A: Try hooking up a PC w/the Dahua OEM software smartpss to the WAN port and seeing how the display of live streams performs. I recall a number of people reporting that displaying "4K" camera streams can significantly challenge the NVRs power. Though, it does seem that 30 seconds is significantly longer than I would expect. ( my NVR has mostly 2MP starlights, so I don't have a good way to compare the issue. ) Remember the NVR's primary purpose is to record - live viewing is secondary and processing power is allocated to that after recording.

Wonder if there is a way to get a "top" command run on the NVR and see the processing load.

Try setting the encoding to H.264 and see if that takes less processing power of the NVR. ( in theory it may ).

 

[Wildcat_1]

@mat200 Will be putting some pics up this weekend. I am still pondering the front door cam area. Was originally thinking the IPC-HDBW4231F-AS like you mentioned but as the porch is very well lit (100w LED) and gets a lot of Sun through at least 3/4 of the day I was concerned about the dome. My other thoughts were either a) 5231R-ZE turret, b) 4239T-ASE (albeit no IR, shame that version has not been released yet) or c) even another 1831E (2.8 on the wide end) due to amount of light and short ID length in this area. Any thoughts on that ? Again today I have a Ring Pro in place with 160 degrees of view and that covers the door and porch area nicely.

Thanks

 

[mat200]

@mat200 Will be putting some pics up this weekend. I am still pondering the front door cam area. Was originally thinking the IPC-HDBW4231F-AS like you mentioned but as the porch is very well lit (100w LED) and gets a lot of Sun through at least 3/4 of the day I was concerned about the dome. My other thoughts were either a) 5231R-ZE turret, b) 4239T-ASE (albeit no IR, shame that version has not been released yet) or c) even another 1831E (2.8 on the wide end) due to amount of light and short ID length in this area. Any thoughts on that ? Again today I have a Ring Pro in place with 160 degrees of view and that covers the door and porch area nicely.

Thanks

Hi @Wildcat_1

So a lot always depends on WAF and other factors, thus while I like the models: a) 5231R-ZE turret, b) 4239T-ASE .. or c) even another 1831E (2.8 on the wide end)

For a camera by the front door, the next model after the mini-dome ones I would probably look at the IPC-HDW42xx turret model in either a 2.8mm or 3.6mm lens as it is a bit smaller and the case can be easily painted to match the frame / wall colors.

If you are mounting the camera further away, then the IPC-HDW5231R-ZE or the IPC-HDW2231x are nice as they are varifocal and you can ensure you get enough pixels on target to get a decent chance of a facial ID if you can place the camera in such a way to get a good angle on a suspect. ( remember I want to have a chance to get a good image by 2+ different cameras for anyone walking up to the front door, so the Ring you have setup would be 1, now I would try to get the 2nd one setup - and note, currently the Ring cameras do not have embedded time stamps - so you'll want the 2nd camera to provide that feature, which naturally is possible with a IP POE camera )