EmpireTech IPC-PFW83242-A180-S2 4 × 8 MP Multi-Sensor Panoramic Bullet Network Camera Question

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voyagerx

n3wb
Dec 8, 2024
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USA
Hi everyone. I purchased an EmpireTech IPC-PFW83242-A180-S2 4 × 8 MP Multi-Sensor Panoramic Bullet Network Camera. This should be the same as the Dahua by the same model number. I purchased the camera for an uncommon reason - I'll be filming soccer games with it for the team to review games after. I picked this camera for a few reasons, notably the high the resolution / MP, the large FOV, and support for 30 FPS (vs many cameras at high resolutions supporting less).

I'm trying to optimize settings for the camera to record at the best quality I can per game. I've read many threads on this site about optimizing quality so think I have a decent starting point. I currently have:

Codec: H.264H
Resolution: 8192 × 3840
FPS: 30
Iframe: 30 (matching FPS)
Bitrate Type: CBR
Bitrate: 32,768 kbps (maximum)
Exposure shutter: Manual
Shutter: 0-4ms
Gain: 0-30
3DNR: 30
2DNR: 30

Questions:
The maximum bitrate isn't that high for 8K resolution. Is it I possible I would get a better picture using H.265 at the same bitrate, which presumably is better at utilizing limited bitrates? I am already using the H.264 High profile since it is supposed to offer some benefits in efficiency.

Given I only need about 150 degrees for the FOV vs the 180 degrees the camera supports, if I enabled privacy masking on the far left and right of the image, would it allow for more data / bitrate / better quality for the area that matters since the masked areas would effectively be black blocks and presumably less data?

Are there any other settings or changes that anyone recommends for optimizing for the use case?

Thanks everyone and thanks for all the available info already on the site!
 
Last edited:
One other setting I forgot to mention. I have Smooth Stream [Smooth <->Clear] set to 50. By default this setting was at 100 toward Clear on the slider. I noticed when I was testing with VBR, this produced signifigantly less bitrate. When I set it to 1 (slider toward Smooth), it produced signifigantly more bitrate. I set it at 50 as an "in the middle" setting and what seems to be the default for the similar setting on hikvision cameras, but admittedly don't know what it does and the impact it has.
 
Because of "macroblocking" H265 would likely give you a worse video.

What is your use case - just casual observe or be able to identify the action and analyze it later? These cameras may or may not be able to accomplish what you want.

Plus 180 cameras suffer from distortion and objects tend to be thinner than real life and the splicing cameras can have a "blind spot" in the middle where someone can disappear.

In all likelihood surveillance cameras are not designed for that type of capture that you are looking for. Most will cap out at 30FPS but may be glitchy and problematic running at that speed.

They would make okay cameras for general overview type things, but this isn't their intended purpose.

Along those lines, 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 and most monitors LOL. Many of my cameras are running at 12FPS.

If your unique case requires a higher FPS or better quality to analyze the game, you will find surveillance cameras are not going to meet your needs and you need to get a camera capable of that - and spend some serious money if a gopro isn't sufficient.

We have had recently people come here after purchasing cameras in two instances where they were wanting to use in sports complexes - one was a tennis club and another was a youth soccer club.

Even with the higher FPS, In both cases they found that these types of cameras were not capable of what they were wanting to do. Sure the cameras could run faster FPS, but it still didn't provide them with the level of detail they were looking for.

I recall the soccer club had a decent quality PTZ ($800) that is fine for a residential or retail/commercial installation to capture a thief, but to cover the action of the soccer field it wasn't capable of meeting their needs. And because of the extremely fast motion, it was creating a halo type effect around the action (which can be seen in certain lighting conditions). These cameras are good, but not good enough to catch the rotation of a ball for example.

Here is another example from one of these types of cameras.

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Another came here trying to use this cameras for a race track in the pit stalls to monitor lug nuts and violations and it just couldn't do it.
 
Thank you for chiming in, very much appreciated. The intent is to be able to analyze player positioning and strategy after the game vs wanting a high quality replay or stream of the game. As the settings currently stand, from initial testing, I believe it should meet that need. I'm just trying to optimize it as much as possible. I won't be able to full test it on an actual game until early spring.
 
In that case you are probably as good as you can get.

Most here run 4K cameras at 12,000ish bitrate and have found that higher doesn't improve the image and just takes more storage space.

Plus they can get oversharp running too high bitrate.

The only other improvement you could make would be in brightness, contrast, sharpness, gamma, etc. Most have found that contrast 5-8 higher than brightness works best.
 
voyagerx said:
One other setting I forgot to mention. I have Smooth Stream [Smooth <->Clear] set to 50. By default this setting was at 100 toward Clear on the slider. I noticed when I was testing with VBR, this produced signifigantly less bitrate. When I set it to 1 (slider toward Smooth), it produced signifigantly more bitrate. I set it at 50 as an "in the middle" setting and what seems to be the default for the similar setting on hikvision cameras, but admittedly don't know what it does and the impact it has.
Click to expand...

where You move smooth streams to clear then camera will use most of the bandwith for I-frames, which are usually once every 2 seconds. other (delta frames) will have a lot less bandwidth and the moving objects will be not sharp / good quality inside that 2 seconds windows.

For TV-like purposes You should move it more into smooth side - then delta frames (59 frames of 60 in 2 second intervals) will have more bandwith to encode movement. Yes it will use more bandwidth but give you better image quality at all times.

Check if this camera have Ai Coding. If yes, try to use it (it will give more image quality for areas with detected by AI people).
If not, stay with CBR. VBR is toy to save bandwith at cost of video quality.

In theory h265 should give better image quality at the same bandwith. In practice usually gives worst, h265 ignores many small changes in video which will be encoded by h264h.

Yes, enabling privacy mask for some part of image will save bandwith for other image parts..
 
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Thanks Steve - this is great feedback as well. Today I did some testing and confirmed that h264h had better performance than h265. The camera doesn't have AI Coding.

I will try to do some testing with the smooth setting and using the privacy mask on the extra wide parts not needed to see if there is any impact on the remaining visible part. Some of this is subjective, some settings are very noticeable. I might try to do a quick comparison between h.264 and h.264h as well.
 
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