Recommendations for outdoor IP camera with good AI

[Sonnie]

Got a couple of cameras from Andy. Thanks for all the recommendations. They are installed and using Blue Iris. Andy recommended I start with two cameras and see how they handle the area.





What causes this spot? It's only there at night.

 

[bigredfish]

That’s likely a reflection off of something. Looks like theres a street light nearby? Any reflective signs ?

 

[Sonnie]

There is a street light up above the cameras. No signs anywhere.

 

[Sonnie]

It also appears I need to adjust my camera better for tags. Zoomed out too far at this time I suppose.

 

[Sonnie]

Maybe not... getting the tag leaving our driveway is more important than on the road. This is us leaving for dinner yesterday evening.



But then... no way to identify who these folks here, which would be nice to do if they were cutting up on the road. They are blurred the entire passing.

 

[Sonnie]

Here is the same shot on the 180° camera blown up slightly.

 

[Sonnie]

I was reading where 60fps is recommended for best motion capturing, but this camera is 30fps. Are there any adjustments here I could make to improve on it?

 

[wittaj]

I was reading where 60fps is recommended for best motion capturing, but this camera is 30fps. Are there any adjustments here I could make to improve on it?

View attachment 197419

Shutter speed is more important than FPS.

I capture plates at 8FPS because the shutter speed is correct.

It appears you are on default/auto settings and thus the blur of motion.

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.

 

[bigredfish]

^^^^^
This

That blur is shutter speed (also watch DNR. Shouldn’t be above 30 daytime).
The faster the object is moving, the faster the shutter speed you’ll need.
You can generally get people walking with 1/60 or 1/120 but when you get vehicles moving 25-30mph+ you’ll need even faster shutter

 

[Sonnie]

So here are my settings that we'll test for both cameras. Please let me know if you see anything that does not look right... thanks!

 

[wittaj]

Those should be good starting points.

 

[Sonnie]

Yeah... nothing but almost pitch black on both cams at these settings. I bumped the brightness up to 63 and contrast to 70 to get to these images here. I think the mailbox could be a little brighter still.

 

[105437]

^^^^^
This

That blur is shutter speed (also watch DNR. Shouldn’t be above 30 daytime).
The faster the object is moving, the faster the shutter speed you’ll need.
You can generally get people walking with 1/60 or 1/120 but when you get vehicles moving 25-30mph+ you’ll need even faster shutter

So, both of these settings should be no higher than 30 for Day profile? What do you suggest for the Night profile setting for each?

 

[bigredfish]

That really depends on light and shutter speed. It’s trial and error to get detail without blurriness, and how much noise you can live with.
Never more than 50. Try 45

 

[Sonnie]

What would be best to adjust to get my night image brighter?

 

[The Automation Guy]

What would be best to adjust to get my night image brighter?

This is the problem with full time color cameras without IR. You need lots of ambient light to make them work well. I believe those cameras have built-in white lights, but I suspect they are dimmer than the street light, so probably won't be any help in your situation. Without a lot of light, you have to start to compromise with the exposure settings - turning the shutter speed slower (which causes moving objects to blur) or turning the gain up (which causes ghosting and other weird artifacts).

Long story short, I don't think you are going to be able to get a good nighttime capture of the mailboxes/r road with those color cameras. The light falloff is just too great to allow good captures with fast shutter speeds and low gain. This is a situation where an IR camera (which includes an IR emitter that "adds" a lot of IR energy to the scene which allows for better exposure) might be appropriate to get good nighttime captures. The camera of the driveway is close enough to the street light that you can likely get OK nighttime captures with the color camera, but again you just need to slowly go through different shutter speed and gain setting combinations until you find some that allow for a bright enough scene while still capturing moving subjects well. There likely isn't a perfect settings, so it is deciding which is more important to you - a brighter scene, or non-blurry captures.....

 

[Sonnie]

It was suggested that I may end up needing three cameras. I guess I can use the mailbox camera with a broader view to capture vehicles coming and going thru our gate.

What would be the best camera with a strong IR to get the job done? Money is not a concern... I'd like to have the best available.

 

[bigredfish]

That was me

Brst IR camera is going to be the 5442 series. Get the bullet, it has more LEDs
Either the 2.8-12 variable focus out to 25-30 ft or for 50-75 ft the Z4 model

 

[Sonnie]

From my service pole where the cameras are mounted to the road in front of the mailbox is 115ft.

 

[bigredfish]

So step back for me, what camera model is the one in B&W currently?

What are you trying to accomplish? If more light at the Mailbox, I would first try a $45 external illiminator leaving cameras as you have them. This one does a good job to about 120-150ft

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