[Dahua] Recommendations needed

[houmi]

Hi Everyone, so I've been researching this forum quite a bit especially feedback from @wittaj on different threads. I recently switched from a HikVision DVR to a Dahua NVR N41C2P and upgraded all my 6 cameras to N42BJ62 (4MP). I realized recently that I was missing some footage and change from motion control only to continuous and also upgraded the built-in 4TB Samsung to 14TB (WD Purple).

I realized that the general settings doesn't work when I realized I couldn't even see my own license plate when parking at night (much worse here since it rains all the time in the Seattle area), so been playing constantly with settings after I did set a Day/Night Profile.

Here are my settings so far, but I am open to any suggestions. I have upgraded my NVR/Cameras to latest firmware as well.

Video Settings:
I played a lot for these, I didn't see much difference between H264 that people recommend here vs H265 but chose the latter to extra compression, but I am choosing the max bitrate, CBR and switched to 15fps

Picture Settings:
Using this same settings for Day/Night

Exposure:
So for the day I wanted to use 2-4ms for Shutter Speed and 30 gain but it's too dark here during winter, so went the same as night time (figured it's better than Auto for the day)

For the Day/Night I saw it was pretty dark at night when shutter speed is at 1/120, so I am using B&W instead of Color.

I also have a few questions regarding Blue Iris:

• If I purchase Blue Iris, can I still view my cameras via the NVR like SmartPSS Lite does ?
• In that case if I want to save videos, does Blue Iris have the option to saving to an Unraid SMB Shared over the network ?
• Finally if I choose someday to ditch the Dahua NVR for a total Blue Iris Setup, is this the recommended way people go these days by setting up a PC just for this + POE switch, etc ?

Thanks!

 

[wittaj]

Not that we should be doing digital zoom, but do playback of digital zoom with both H264 versus H265 - that is where you can see the differences.

BI has a demo so give it a try before you buy.

Many people here use the NVR as a POE switch and feed the NVR into BI, so yes you could run BI and use SmartPSS Lite for the NVR.

You would have to save to a disk first in the BI computer and then offload if you wanted to save it for extended periods.

Yes, the recommendation is to treat PC/BI as an NVR and don't do anything else on it than let it be an NVR. Just like you wouldn't check email or surf the net with your NVR, you shouldn't do it with a PC running BI. Doesn't mean people don't, but it can cause issues. A PC is cheaper than an NVR, so really no reason to double duty it.

 

[TobiasF]

• In that case if I want to save videos, does Blue Iris have the option to saving to an Unraid SMB Shared over the network ?

You would have to save to a disk first in the BI computer and then offload if you wanted to save it for extended periods.

I would say it depends on the speed of your NAS serving the SMB shares and the speed of your network connection.
With two cameras I have no issue writing directly to a SMB share served by TrueNAS. But this I am doing only because my BI is virtualized and there is no local disk. In a dedicated hardware based system I also would write to the local disk first, to reduce the risk in case of the SMB share is not available.

 

[houmi]

Not that we should be doing digital zoom, but do playback of digital zoom with both H264 versus H265 - that is where you can see the differences.

Thanks, I'll try it... something tells me you have done this before. The only issue I might have with H265 is what you had mentioned before in one of your messages like CPU being limited on these cameras and H265 might take too much power and impede other functions during live playback. Because I do notice that sometimes like stutters during live playback.

Many people here use the NVR as a POE switch and feed the NVR into BI, so yes you could run BI and use SmartPSS Lite for the NVR.

You would have to save to a disk first in the BI computer and then offload if you wanted to save it for extended periods.

I would say it depends on the speed of your NAS serving the SMB shares and the speed of your network connection.
With two cameras I have no issue writing directly to a SMB share served by TrueNAS. But this I am doing only because my BI is virtualized and there is no local disk. In a dedicated hardware based system I also would write to the local disk first, to reduce the risk in case of the SMB share is not available.

I have been looking at these low powered Mini PCs that people use for PfSense and was actually thinking to use one where I would run BI in a VM as well (like via Proxmox) and use my Unraid Shares since I have a ton of space available. The only issue could be the gigabit network which I may have to upgrade to 2.5/10.

I had tried to disable Route and use Bridge on NVR in the past and I got this warning (which I didn't follow through), I wonder if I did this, would the cameras still be powered through the NVR (being a POE Switch) ?