FYI - LeChange / Dahua 8x 8MP/4K UHD IP PoE cameras + 16 channel port PoE NVR 2/3TB HDD $899 7/13/18
- Thread starter mat200
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Yes also gdMSS and they don't show up on the monitor connected to it.
mat200
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mat200
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Hi @cnitty76
Completely understand not wanting to undo any work and getting up on the ladder.
Hopefully we can isolate the problem better and determine what it is related to.
( cameras? cables? NVR? )
1) Seeing that you are selling some of the cameras - did you pick up an extra NVR?
If so try and swap it out and see if you get better results.
2) If you do not have an extra NVR:
Try swapping ports on the NVR you have.
Take a good camera connection and plug a non-working camera line into that port and see if you get anything different.
At night see if you can see IR leds on the cameras outside.
If you have a POE switch, try pulling the cameras into that.
3) Take a spare camera and test it with a good cable on the ports which currently have cameras which are having problems.
( similar test to using good working cameras on ports which you know you have issues with )
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Thank you I don't know why I did not think of that I'm going to try out my old NVR now.
mfish123
Getting the hang of it
@SuperYellowTang - Yes, I do think it's a keeper. I'm not an experienced pro and really don't have much to compare to, but I'm tecchy by nature and have been giving my self a crash course over the last month or 2. I've also reviewed footage that others have posted from their cams to compare to by eye.
Like @mat200 said, for the money this kit is tough to beat. Probably be around $1,600 give or take to piece something similar together with Dahau hardware.
From what I can tell this system gives all the same features that the OEM Dahau equivalents would give and isn't handicapped in any way.
Personally, for some of my camera locations I wish the cameras were vari-focal or 4mm instead of 2.8mm but that's just for my setup. But in this grade of consumer hardware I'm pretty sure kits are biased toward wider viewing angles - 2.8mm or 3.6mm lenses. Maybe down the road I'll sell some of the cams where I don't need a super wide angle and buy Dahau replacements. Obviously with 4K resolution they're much more "forgiving" to wider viewing angles.
Replacing the power supply fan was worth every penny and dramatically reduced the noise level.
From what I've seen these systems give a ton of flexibility in configuring them but don't give super simple plug n play ease, so no different with this system.
I'd definitely recommend trying some of my suggestions above to get the most out of the system: Logging into each individual camera and setting then to H.265, VBR with smart codec turned on helped get rid of my choppy video and skipped frames. Plus there are more image settings you can tweak when logged in directly to each cam. Tripwire gives way less false alarms vs. standard motion detection. I like gdmss / idmss more than the Lechange app - more customization and you can save favorites for quick access and view more than 4 cams. If you have very little ambient light at night consider adding ir illuminators to help. Consider getting a router capable of running a VPN for secure remote access. I coincidentally already had an Asus RT-AC86U which is a commonly recommended one here.
Also, I have IVS and smart codec running simultaneously. IVS definitely is working and as long as I can believe the settings in the individual cams are reporting accurately then smart codec is enabled too. Looks like very recently there were posts about Dahau systems not being able to run both features simultaneously. I believe when I enabled smart codec it turned off IVS in the smart plan menu but then I re-enabled successfully and the smart codec setting enabled setting stuck. Maybe this isn't recommended but seems to be working just fine for me. With smart codec enable I can't access sub stream 2 for some reason but this isn't a deal breaker for me and technically I don't if I was able to before switching to smart codec.
I could be wrong, but bottom line, without spending considerably more money (probably more than double) I can't see getting more than this level of performance with the current technology available.
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SuperYellowTang
Young grasshopper
Wow.. a lot of details and tips..
Which encode is better? H264 or 265? I feel that 265 seems a bit slower and viewing on mobile take longer to load the videos also.
Are you using an iPhone when using the gdmss app? I can't get the app to work on my pixel phone..
mat200
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Hi @SuperYellowTang
H.265 will compress more - thus uses less storage space, however that also means it will use more processing power to encode and decode.
Also, some software may support H.264 but not H.265 - or sometimes features. Example in the past some of the software handling IVS features had not yet been converted to support H.265. I think that has been taken care of in newer versions of the firmware.
Thus for me, to play it safe I like H.264 over H.265 at the expense of more storage space consumed.
mfish123
Getting the hang of it
@SuperYellowTang I'm OCD so when I get into some new tech I immersive myself. My loves it - LOL "What the hell are you reading about now???! These dishes ain't gonna clean themself"
I'd defer to @mat200 with his comment about H.264 being less processor intensive since it compresses less. In fact now that he said that I'm going to try it out. I'd rather have smooth video and no skipped frames at the expense of using more hard drive space.
@mat200 - Do you know if smart codec is more or less demanding of the processor? I know it sounds counter intuitive as smart codec compresses the areas of the image with little to no motion, more, but my subjective observation is that it demands less of the processor. Maybe its easier to compress the static parts of the image and the lower bit rate is less demanding of the processor?
Here is my subjective feedback:
H.265 compresses more so should be better for saving hard drive space. Pretty sure when it was developed it had 4K / high bitrates in mind. The other side of the coin is load on the CPU and GPU. I should probably do a bit more testing. I think smart codec (regardless of H.264 or H.265) is less demanding of processing power probably since its inherently a lower bit rate (unless you had motion in the majority of what your camera's field of view). When I have time I can do some H.264 vs. H.265 testing.
I think that depending on how you have the codecs, frame rate, bit rate, smart codec, etc. setup it seems like if you ask for "too much" you bog down the CPU and GPU and then you get the choppy video on live view and skipped frames on recordings. How i have it now for the main stream - H.265, smart codec (directly enabled in each camera), VBR, quality 6, 15 fps it seems able to handle it. When I had the same parameters but smart codec not enabled it seemed to be a bit too much for it to handle smoothly. I'm going to leave everything else equal and switch to H.265 and see if things get smoother. Can always buy a bigger / additional hard drive
I'm successfully using gdmss plus on my Android Galaxy S7. I have idmss plus (the iphone equivalent) working on my wife's iphone 6. I just set it up as a wired device utilizing ip/domain. Have you checked in the NVR and your router that the NVR is successfully being assigned an ip addresss? Does the port in the NVR match what you is in gdmss? Using the same password in gdmss as you setup in the NVR?
I would recommend once your router initially assigns an ip address via DHCP to then switch it to a static ip in both the router and NVR (just use the ip that DHCP assigned) so it doesn't change on you.
My S7 struggles with the 4K main stream - bogs down and freezes for a bit when its loading the stream. idmss just straight up crashes if it tries to stream the main stream. If you don't have a very new phone with a very strong processor then stick with the substream if you're having any issues like this.
mfish123
Getting the hang of it
@mat200 - As always thanks for your insights. When you have a sec can you please provide feedback on the following. It was buried in my response to Superyellowtang and just wanted to make sure you saw it: Do you know if smart codec is more or less demanding of the processor? I know it sounds counter intuitive as smart codec compresses the areas of the image with little to no motion, more, but my subjective observation is that it demands less of the processor. Maybe its easier to compress the static parts of the image and the lower bit rate is less demanding of the processor?
mat200
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Hi @mfish123
I was just reading earlier a thread on H.265 here. MixManSC pointed out that H.265 implementation appears not to be uniform so that creates issues with compatibility between different OEM / products. ( update: link H.265 )
Encode / Decode - so, a lot depends on the processor and firmware. If the chip supports some of the encode and decode - and the firmware passes work to the chip - then you normally have a more efficient process. Code and algorithm quality also play into this. Thus it does get complicated to do complete comparisons.
Some chips maybe able to do H.265 better ( faster ) than H.264, others not.
Recall the discussions here about Blue Iris and i5/i7 chips which support certain functionality in the chip. This is why AMD chips are not recommended for Blue Iris as the BI software is optimized to use Intel chip level instructions for better performance.
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SuperYellowTang
Young grasshopper
@mfish123
When I selected to set up as Wired device. It tells me to initialize the device. I did it but it tells me that the device does not require to be initialized. The IP setup would bring me back to the add device screen. I am using the IP address that my router assigned for the NVR (192.168.x.x). The Nvr created a new set of IP for each of the cameras (10.1.x.x). The app would just be crashed if I try the p2p setup.
Do you know why my night vision for one of the camera looks so bad? It is set up SmartIR for the night mode.
mfish123
Getting the hang of it
@SuperYellowTang - Mine gives the warning about making sure the device is initialized too so i think that is generic. i don't think I ever tried to initialize the device but would imagine if I did it would also tell me it doesn't need to be initialized. I never tried p2p.
For gdmss, use the 192.168.x.x ip address. Looks like you are able to access your cams via your screen shot so are you all set there?
For that cam with the haze is it mounted perpendicular to a wall or are there any flat surfaces nearby? Looks like a lot of the IR light is reflecting back and causing the haze. I'd try aiming the camera in a different direction to see if that's the case and if it is you'll have to mount in a slightly different location. One of my cams is mounts very close to my motion flood lights. which have a white casing. It's a bit ghetto but I put dark grey duck tape on the housing and that helped a lot with the ir reflections.
if none of that works, I'd swap in one of your other cameras to that same location to see if you get the same results to see if there is possibly something wrong with that particular camera. Does it look fine in the day light?
Maybe also pull the ethernet plug out for that one out of the NVR to power down that camera and force it to reboot for good measure.
SuperYellowTang
Young grasshopper
@mfish123 - Thank you for replying back.
For gdmss, I use the 192.168.x.x IP address but can never be connected to it. Very strange. Those screen captures are using the LeChange app.
The came with the haze is flat on the surface. I will move it to another spot tonight and let you know. I have powered down that camera yesterday but the haze is still present.
There are so many settings. I am currently having my cams encoding with h265. It does seem to be a bit smoother when viewing it on my phone.
Please let me know more when you find out more..
Thank you.
mfish123
Getting the hang of it
@SuperYellowTang - Gotcha. That is odd that the Lechange app works but gdmss doesn't. I'm assuming with gdmss you double checked you input the right port #, ip address and username and password? Only other thing I can think is maybe there is some sort of setting or firewall rule in your router that is preventing gdmss from connecting to your cams.
Only other troubleshooting tip I didn't mention is to see if you can get gdmss to work on a different phone / tablet.
I'd be curious to see if moving your camera to another spot gets rid of the haze.
SuperYellowTang
Young grasshopper
@mfish123
I moved the camera a bit but the haze is gone. Thank you.
I will try to set up gdmss on another device to see if it is working.
Do you know if it is ok to set the recording to record continuously and IVS at the same time?
If I set the motion recording, I get tons of notification. As for IVS recording, the recording time is so short.
mfish123
Getting the hang of it
Glad that got rid of the haze for you.
And actually I gave the Lechange app another whirl. I'm actually finding it more stable than gdmss. i suggest you give it a try. Lately gdmss has been freezing on me or if I stream the mainstream the video just stops streaming after a short amount of time. I cleared the cache and that didn't help. I'm not having these problems with the Lechange app. You actually can get the Lechange app to display more than 4 cameras - although its not very intuitive to figure out what the buttons do. Only real issue with it is if I switch to the main stream (they call it "HD) it fails the first time I try to load it but does work the 2nd time. Still better than the complete lock up or completely stopped streaming on gdmss. When viewing on a small phone screen the sub stream isn't that bad and loads much quicker. Both apps can do push notifications when they get an IVS trigger.
I have mine set to record all channels continuously and also record all IVS events, however I may re-visit that. I think it's a lot to ask for from the NVR to process all of that. Maybe video would be smoother and less apt to drop frames if I only do one or other. If I had to chose, I would chose to only record IVS since its pretty useless to watch endless hours of continual recording to see if anything worth noting actually happened.
For IVS (in the web interface setup) there is a "post record" setting where you can increase the amount of seconds after IVS is triggered that it records. I wish there was also a "pre record setting" (although the NVR would have to really be recording continuously for a feature like that to work) as sometimes I think there is a bit of a delay between when IVS is triggered and when the recording starts. Maybe if I turn off constant recording that will get rid of that as I'm sure the hard drive and processor has a heck of a time recording 8 channels continuously and then on top of it is being asked to trigger recording instantly when it detects and IVS trigger.