Dahua IPC-HDW4831EMP-ASE - suggestion on settings & few other Q's

[phoenixxko]

hi gents,

currently I am having 2 cameras Dahua DH-Dahua IPC-HDW4831EMP-ASE securing perimeter of my house by taking photos & recordings.
My questions might be pretty easy to answer:
1. I am looking for best practice settings for alarms - to see if somebody is wandering around and to remove false alarms like bees, flies, spiders, etc not sure what might be right number of sensitivity & threshold for motion detection and anti-dither value.
2. is there any easy method how to export the pictures and recordings out of that cam - via SMB protocol or so maybe ? or only via web interface ?
3. what is the best quality I can get for live feed - right now the best I could transport via internet to endpoint is H265 with Smart Codec ON, 1080p 25fps VBR and 6 quality points with max bit rate 4096, can somebody maybe suggest better option for better/higher quality of recordings & snapshots ?
4. I see the cams have 10/100 network card, are there better cameras (quality, speed, ...) to choose (I am planning to expand to 4 cams, so still 2 more to buy)

thanks a lot in advance !

 

[wittaj]

That camera is not on an ideal MP/sensor ratio, so a 2MP camera will kick its butt all night long as this 8MP is on the same size sensor as the 2MP, so it will need over 4 times the light.

It is simple LOL do not chase MP - do not buy a 4MP camera that is anything smaller than a 1/1.8" sensor. Do not buy a 2MP camera that is anything smaller than a 1/2.8" sensor. Do not buy a 4K (8MP) camera on anything smaller than a 1/1.2" sensor. Unfortunately, most 4k cams are on the same sensor as a 2MP and thus the 2MP will kick its butt all night long as the 4k will need 4 times the light than the 2MP... 4k will do very poor at night unless you have stadium quality lighting (well a lot of lighting LOL). Starlight, ColorVu, Full Color, etc. are simply marketing terms, so don't be sold on those names.

The camera you have does not have AI in it, so there will be more false triggers than some of the better cameras.

The 5442 series is a much better camera that has the ideal MP/sensor ratio and has AI, so with IVS rules you can tell it to only trigger on humans and basically knock out all false triggers.

Keep in mind that these type of cameras and NVRs, although are spec'd and capable of these various parameters, real world testing by many of us shows if you try to run these units at higher FPS and higher bitrates than needed that you will max out the CPU in the unit and then it bugs out just long enough that you miss something or video is choppy. My car is rated for 6,000RPM redline, but I am not gonna run it in 3rd gear on the highway at 6,000RPM...same with these types of units - gotta keep them under rated capacity. Some may do better than others, but trying to use the rated "spec" of every option available is usually not going to work well, either with a car or a camera or NVR.

These types of cameras are not GoPro or Hollywood type cameras that offer slow-mo capabilities and other features. They "offer" 30FPS and 60FPS to appease the general public that thinks that is what they need, but you will not find many of us here running more than 15 FPS; and movies are shot at 24 FPS, so anything above that is a waste of storage space for what these cameras are used for. If 24 FPS works for the big screen, I think 15 FPS is more than enough for phones and tablets LOL.

For best quality, you should run 15FPS, 15 iframes, H264, CBR and a minimum of 8192 bitrate.

Of course these are field of view dependent and YMMV.

 

[sebastiantombs]

While the cameras may offer a 10/100 network speed even an 8MP camera running 20,000Kb/ps bit rate won't go over about 10Mb/ps. Faster network speeds in a camera just aren't needed.

As wittaj said, chase sensor size and not megapixels -

720P - 1/3" = .333"
2MP - 1/2.8" = .357" (think a .38 caliber bullet)
4MP - 1/1.8" = .555" (bigger than a .50 caliber bullet or ball)
8MP - 1/1.2" = .833" (bigger than a 20mm chain gun round)

 

[phoenixxko]

hi guys, please excuse my lack of knowledge, so bigger the better sensor ? so looks like now I have 1/2,5", so kinda a better 2MP cam ?
what would you recommend then to buy - same type of cam (dome ?) but with better parameters ?

thanks !

 

[sebastiantombs]

Domes are problematic because of the reflections a dome produces, especially with IR at night. Plus they tend to fog over time from UV and weather. Turrets are the effective replacement for a dome. Bullet cameras used to be plagued with spider webs and bugs at night because the IR lights were in a ring around the lens. Newer bullets are fairly immune to that problem since the IR emitters are located away from the lens. There are still a large number of lower end bullet and PTZ cameras with the IR LEDs mounted ring style around the lens and will be plagued with bugs/spiders.

The bigger the sensor for any given resolution the better the performance, especially at night. For example your 1/2.5" 2MP camera. If it were a 4MP camera with that same sensor each pixel of the sensor would receive about half the light that it does in 2MP. That's actually simple math, four million pixels in the same area as two million pixels means that in the four million configuration double the pixels for the same amount of light. This severely limits low light performance. Think of it like a screen, a coarse screen lets a lot of light through while a fine screen cuts light significantly.