Dahua (Amcrest) IVS triggers to BI

[ipc824]

WDR was on.

They LED's were off.

First picture - auto light 25%

Second picture - Manual light far and near both 25%.

 

[wittaj]

OK, I figured WDR was on. Don't use it at night!

Those are starting to look better. You should be able to dial that in real nice.

At the distances perps would be on the deck, I would not go with the 5842 at all. Stay with this or the 5442.

 

[ipc824]

OK, I figured WDR was on. Don't use it at night!

Those are starting to look better. You should be able to dial that in real nice.

At the distances perps would be on the deck, I would not go with the 5842 at all. Stay with this or the 5442.

I am getting shredded on this. Can't dial the 4K/X in. I look at videos and photos of WC original review against the Hikvision Colorvue and I just think this is miles apart. Add why do I need to add illuminators if this is supposed to be a night color vision?
DS-2CD2087G2-L

 

[ipc824]

put the gain at 30 to reduce noise. but this is the illuminators at 100%. drop it to 5% as WC had done, and it looks too dark.

 

[wittaj]

I am getting shredded on this. Can't dial the 4K/X in. I look at videos and photos of WC original review against the Hikvision Colorvue and I just think this is miles apart. Add why do I need to add illuminators if this is supposed to be a night color vision?
DS-2CD2087G2-L

Do a search here. Many have not been impressed with the Hikvision ColorVu series. Keep in mind that any camera called "full color" or "night color", etc. still require light. They are not magic and do not defy physics.

Many people have come here after buying the Hikvision ColorVu series expressing their disappointment in the picture quality of the camera because they were expecting magic. If you do not have ambient light outside, you are better off with cameras that can see infrared.

Further, it's onboard white LED lights are not as bright as the 4K/X. There seems to be more complaints about the Hik version at night than the 4K/X.

Here is link to a thread that shows the disappointment of many thinking a ColorVu camera was magic and could defy physics. Full Color type cameras are great if you have light, but will be horrible if you do not have enough light.

Initial review of the DS-2CD2347G2-L(U) ColorVu 2.0 IP camera.

What about adding some additional landscaping lighting - this cam is awesome and with minimal light will do great. External lightning will have new power cable and new installation, cost lot of time and extra money. Not everyone like light at night. So select a good cam is very important...

ipcamtalk.com

You need illuminators because EVERY camera needs light, whether it is infrared or visible light. Too many people get burned buying a full color camera thinking it is magic. If you don't have enough visible light or don't want the onboard illuminators on then you need a camera with infrared capabilities.

It is clear these are your first attempts at these types of cameras, and that is fine. Some of these take a while to find the right settings for a particular field of view. Most of us are always making little tweaks, sometimes based on the season.

As I mentioned you have a tough field of view - in the day you have a dark foreground with a bright background needing WDR and at night you have the reflective bounce of all that wood in the forefront and dark black in background. You have a tougher field of view than the Wildcat reviews you are looking at. What settings work good at his field of view may be the complete wrong settings for your field of view.

I think you can still dial that in with other parameter adjustments like brightness and gamma, but don't be too concerned about too dark. The goal of these cameras are to get a clean capture of a perp, not bright images. I would start with turning the camera a bit so that the post on the right side of the image is either just on the right edge of the view or just off of it. That would put the illuminators more in the center of the porch and would light up the stair area a little more. Maybe even angle the camera down just a bit to not get so much of the wood above.

Most of my cameras I thought were too dark at first but after a day or so of running it and testing, I could make out the details just fine.

 

[Mike A.]

Do you not have any other light that you can turn on for that porch? I think you'll see much better results if you can get some other light source there.

Here's a good example of what I was saying earlier about the difference in using off-camera lighting vs the onboard illuminators with the Color4K-X.

First is with the illuminators off and using only other lighting:



This is after ADDING the illuminators @ ~50% for both near/far. I did not turn off or otherwise change the lighting in the first pic. That stayed just as it was in the pic above.



You'd think that the added light would help but it doesn't. Even with everything set manual, you can see the camera adjust the image when the illuminators are turned on. You may not see the exact same thing and I'm sure that there are cases where the onboard illumination works better but I've not seen it in my testing in several locations here. Always a much better overall image turning it off and using other lighting in my case.

 

[ipc824]

You need illuminators because EVERY camera needs light, whether it is infrared or visible light. Too many people get burned buying a full color camera thinking it is magic. If you don't have enough visible light or don't want the onboard illuminators on then you need a camera with infrared capabilities.

You are right. I have recently decided to throw the 5442 in that deck area. Can mess with the IR settings to blow it up. But I did wanna ask you something related without creating another thread. BI triggers on the app seems choppy. The WebGui are also choppy. Downloaded file is fine.

 

[ipc824]

OK, I figured WDR was on. Don't use it at night!

Those are starting to look better. You should be able to dial that in real nice.

At the distances perps would be on the deck, I would not go with the 5842 at all. Stay with this or the 5442.

This is with the advice you gave in previous posts.
IPC-T5442T-ZE

 

[wittaj]

I am thinking you may just be the hard to please person LOL.

Keep in mind that the freeze frame snapshot I took from this video upload would look better from the native file, but this isn't a bad capture and certainly better than the stuff you tried before:



Probably still a little bit of tweaking I see.

• I would knock down NR a bit.
• I would experiment with Smart IR off at manual.
• Maybe try a fixed shutter or a tighter range.
• Not sure what your settings are for brightness, gamma, contrast, etc. but those can have a significant impact to picture quality.
• I would probably tilt the camera up a little and optical zoom just a bit more to further get the capture shot and have some ability for some digital zoom after the fact.

Keep in mind that you just need to manage the expectations of an cellphone camera or DSLR camera versus a surveillance camera.

Every one of these surveillance cameras have more processing of the images than a DSLR camera or cellphone camera. Some are worse than others. Then there is the compression of the video, etc. Turn off NR on one of these cameras and you will see how much processing is used.

You will find a BIG difference between photography equipment and these cameras. Digital zoom works better on regular cameras than these. The sensors and optics just are not at the same level. These cameras are designed for 24/7 use with abuse from the elements. DSLR cameras or a cellphone are designed for a different working environment and purpose. Hang a DSLR camera outside and see how long it lasts LOL! But the quality would be better for the time it was working (but also a lot more storage needed too).

Remember these are surveillance cameras, not DSLR cameras, so you have to check your expectations. For example, you can see individual hairs and skin pores with DSLR photography equipment or even an iphone camera and you won't with these kinds of cameras. These are for a different use and different expectations.

• Sensor Size - a full frame DSLR sensor size is 864mm^2; whereas a 1/2.8" sensor popular on many cameras would be 20mm^2, so the "real" camera can collect over 40 times more light than a surveillance camera. And this doesn't even account for less light available for an 8MP versus 2MP for the same size sensor.
• Shutter Speed (Exposure) - Taking a picture with a "real" camera, you can slow the shutter down to 1/2s or longer for a nice clean picture of a person not moving. Perps rarely stand still and we need a shutter of at least 1/60s to minimize the blur.
• Aperture - With a "real" camera you focus on a specific part of the field of view, while a surveillance needs to focus on things in the foreground and background, which means the aperture is smaller, further compounding the light issue.
• Compression - A single 8MP image from a "real" camera could be upwards of 5MB of storage. In surveillance cameras, if you record at 15FPS, every second of video could be 75MB or more, which could equate to 6.5TB per day per camera. Obviously most are not going to have that kind of storage, so lossy compression algorithms are used to reduce storage and network bandwidth requirement, and that can add noise.
• Environment - a "real" camera is used mainly under ideal conditions, whereas a surveillance camera is going 24/7 in every type of element, so the design and size impacts its capabilities.

The goal of surveillance cameras is to capture clean images with enough detail that the police can make an ID and this 5442 image could certainly do that.

 

[ipc824]

I am thinking you may just be the hard to please person LOL.

The goal of surveillance cameras is to capture clean images with enough detail that the police can make an ID and this 5442 image could certainly do that.

Hey, I look like conehead when I walk away though! Ha. Thank you for your help. I like this setting, but I worry it won't get a runner. I will post the 4k/X night vision video in a different view with more light. It does better but I think the gain is added a lot of artifacts and blurring my body.

 

[wittaj]

LOL the conehead and blurring is too much NR. But it is a balance - too much NR and the image looks great with no motion but poor on motion. Too little NR and the noise is distracting. So it is finding the balance for your field of view. The 5442 tends to run a little sharp, so you can probably drop the NR to 30 and sharpness to 40 and get a great image.

It would have to be Superman to not get a runner at 1/120 shutter lol. And a thief probably wouldn't sprint up the steps.

But if it is a concern, then go with a faster shutter and blast the IR on manual.

Your difficult field of view also has the benefit of being a tight confined area with a lot of IR bounce so you could run a faster shutter.

 

[ipc824]

Yeah, I'd say that looks purty damn good.

Had trouble adding the right clip. But it looked great.

 

[EMPIRETECANDY]

I am getting shredded on this. Can't dial the 4K/X in. I look at videos and photos of WC original review against the Hikvision Colorvue and I just think this is miles apart. Add why do I need to add illuminators if this is supposed to be a night color vision?
DS-2CD2087G2-L

Thanks for your posting, I don't think you are installing camera at a right place, and most cams have to be installed at a higher place to watch down, not horizonal. And you are not very clear which place you really want to watch at., just this little place or opening outdoor. The led is bound back badly, use any camera will be same bad pics for outdoor.

 

[ipc824]

Thanks for your posting, I don't think you are installing camera at a right place, and most cams have to be installed at a higher place to watch down, not horizonal. And you are not very clear which place you really want to watch at., just this little place or opening outdoor. The led is bound back badly, use any camera will be same bad pics for outdoor.

Any firmware upgrades worth having on either of the 5442 or the 4k/x? I've bought within last month.

 

[wittaj]

Yeah it is getting there now.

Every field of view is so site dependent and takes some time to dial them in. The alternative are Rings or Reolinks or Arlos that you can just slap up and be amazed at the still image, but then motion is a big blur mess.

 

[EMPIRETECANDY]

4K-X currently fw is the best, never have report back about pic quality is bad.
5442 has a new one, but for cyber security only, can send you for a testing.

 

[ipc824]

Here is the 4K/X. See the noise. I think it is "okay" but I dind't know if there was something I could do to improve it. I chose default to test first.

 

[Wildcat_1]

@ipc824 feel free to DM me and we can look at setting some time to take a look with me jumping on your system remotely if you like. Working with a number of other forum members to help them at this time but will get back to you