bigredfish is right, you have one camera already zoomed in to the choke point (pointed in the same location as the overview camera). Notice the overview picture above, now look at the zoomed in picture. The zoomed in picture is where your second camera is going to be at all times. I have a PTZ camera as my zoomed in camera which is the zoomed in picture above. (SD49225T-HN) It is not being used to auto track or any of that. When i want to look around with the PTZ i do it, other than that it remains in that zoomed in location. I capture License plates as well as everyone who passes that camera and i get a good facial pictures.
Your right if your interest is in that spot. Which is why you have one overview and one zoomed in camera in all of your locations. The interest will be in one of those spots. Just build your system one camera at a time, or what ever your budget can handle.
Are you getting plates at night AND people walking by and can ID them? If so, what are your settings? My plate came is an all black image...
At night its just plates. My other cameras get night images as they are starlight cameras. At night you use the varifocal cameras as your zoomed in cameras and that will get you clear faces, if you also have bright lights around your house lighting up the areas. I am still building my system so i have not purchased more varifocal cameras to zoom in on choke points for night use yet. But here is a look at the night plates and people in front of the PTZ at night.
As you see in the above post of the same person in front of the zoomed in PTZ camera, It's not as good a zoomed in picture, hence i will be adding another starlight camera in this same location for zoomed in night facial recognition.
WRONG SETTINGS
That is certainly possible, if a bit complicated to set up. The lag time between motion in one area and having a PTZ focused on it would also be too high in many cases.
I have done just that. I call it the "poor man autotrack" LOL. I set up several clone and zone cameras in BI to direct the PTZ. It works fairly well and initial set-up wasn't hard. Just like with an auto track, there is some "calibrating" and acceptance that not everything will be caught, but I am overall satisfied with my setup and generally accomplishes what I wanted it to do. I certainly wouldn't use this as an alternative to a fixed cam, but in instances where you have overlapping coverage and the PTZ is your "fun" camera, it can be used very beneficially to get an even better image or video if set up correctly in the right situations.
