DH-SD22204UE-GN - tuning tips for day and night

tomas21

Getting the hang of it
Aug 12, 2014
154
22
US
Have a DH-SD22204UE-GN mounted on a wall in the backyard that overlooks pool and back grass area as I am trying to dial in the condition settings.

During the day seems fine but in the evening when sun goes down and there is only landscape lights on not as clear...and when landscape lights go off in early am not as good but could keep landscape lights on longer if need be to help with lighting.

Curious what condition settings to play with to optimize view so we can see the bobcat that is sneaking around the backyard lately late night / early morning

Current setup:
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Sure try it.
You might make it brighter, but the image will likely be so blurred upon movement that the bobcat won’t be recognizable

Add motion floods
 
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.
 
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@wittaj Amazing guidance! I just documented and dialed in all the settings for day and night will monitor today and tonight as we tune.... couple questions..

Picture - should i leave all of it at defaults with just a bump in contrast at night... tune shutter and gain before touching any further?
EIS & Picture freeze... best to be off?
Exposure
2D NR and 3D NR should they both be on and tuned last once shutter and gain are ideal...
Sub-stream
Preferred settings for sub-stream as well?


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Last edited:
He’s already running auto exposure - 0-333 ms
It’s already too dark in evening /night
His camera has no IR


He will have to add light, either IR or white light to brighten the evening /night image.

Those settings will make it darker unless there’s something being left out
 
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EIS= Eletronic Image Stabilization
If your camera is mounted to something solid no need to be on, as in not on a pole that may move slightly in the wind.

Picture Freeze= freezing the display while the camera is moving. I leave it off
 
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Have a DH-SD22204UE-GN mounted on a wall in the backyard that overlooks pool and back grass area as I am trying to dial in the condition settings.

During the day seems fine but in the evening when sun goes down and there is only landscape lights on not as clear...and when landscape lights go off in early am not as good but could keep landscape lights on longer if need be to help with lighting.

Curious what condition settings to play with to optimize view so we can see the bobcat that is sneaking around the backyard lately late night / early morning
Is there a reason for using a PTZ camera at this location?

If there is little to no light in this location at night, without lots of IR or visible light, this camera will always struggle to produce a useable image. I know, I have a LOREX version of this cam and during the day it looks ok, but at night it's terrible. Since your running auto settings currently, it's as bright as it will ever get, and the image will be unusable to recognize or identify anything.
 
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Is there a reason for using a PTZ camera at this location?

If there is little to no light in this location at night, without lots of IR or visible light, this camera will always struggle to produce a useable image. I know, I have a LOREX version of this cam and during the day it looks ok, but at night it's terrible. Since your running auto settings currently, it's as bright as it will ever get, and the image will be unusable to recognize or identify anything.
This PTZ is for monitoring a backyard with a pool and i like the ability to move the camera when i'm away to check out various parts of the pool... but normally it is fixed on pool and the entire backyard