Hikvision Camera Settings

[mbastard924]

I did a quick search around the forum and using Google, but I'm mostly at a loss. When it comes to camera settings, I really suck at it. All our cameras are Hikvisions (DS-2CDxxx2) - a mix of dome, bullet and exir bullet. I've set the configurations about the same for each. At first I was streaming video at 20fps, but lately, it appears to be a bigger CPU hog when I use the BI4 software. I bumped everything down to 15fps, but noticed video to be a bit choppier and in one of the dome cameras to have a blur effect at night when people are walking by. I'll share my configuration settings below, but I was wondering if there are experts out there that know what they are doing with configuring their camera settings and can help me out for the best crisp video possible (both at 20fps and 15fps). I have a few questions as well.

1) I don't have much knowledge about exposure times. I have a separate profile for day & night video. In day time, I have it set to 1/30 and in the night time, I have it set to 1/12. Is it true that at night, you want a lower exposure time and during the day, you want a longer exposure time?
2) If I adjust the Max Bitrate from 4096 Kbps to say 7800 on the Hikvision cameras themselves, would that result in much higher CPU usage in BI4?
3) See the screenshot below.

Video/Audio Settings (under Advanced Configuration):
Resolution: 1920x1080p
Bitrate Type: Variable
Video Quality: Highest
Frame Rate: 15 fps
Max Bitrate: 4096 Kbps
I Frame Interval: 15
SVC: Off

Image Settings (under Advanced Configuration):
Common:
Saturation: 50
Hue: 50
Iris Mode: Manual
Day/Night Switch: Auto
Sensitivity: 4
Filtering Time: 5
Smart IR: On

Day:
Brightness: 50
Contrast: 50
Sharpness: 50
Exposure Time: 1/30
Gain: 100
WDR: On
Wide Dynamic Level: 40
White Balance: Natural Light
Digital Noise Reduction: On
Noise Reduction Level: 10

Night:
Brightness: 50
Contrast: 50
Sharpness: 50
Exposure Time: 1/12
Gain: 100
WDR: On
Wide Dynamic Level: 2
White Balance: Natural Light
Digital Noise Reduction: On
Noise Reduction Level: 100

 

[phillip da]

I was not aware you could adjust the night vision separite to day time footage.

I must look into this.

I always thought the brightnes was a bit low for night view, but when I adjust to suite, daytime is to bright.

 

[ServiceXp]

I asked a similar question a bit ago.

I've searched high and low and I don't think anyone has done a help blog or video on the subject matter. I struggle with these settings also.

 

[wxman]

I too was not aware that you could have a day and night profile. Perhaps this is only available on certain Firmware versions?

To answer some other questions:

1. As far as the exposure time, it really depends on your situation and what you are trying to photograph. As the exposure time increases, more ambient light is allowed to reach the sensor, thus your image will be brighter with longer exposure time. However, longer exposure times will cause more blur to motion. The opposite is true for shorter exposure times (darker and less blurred images).

Examples: at 1/500 on a bright sunny day, you can save a snapshot of a person running and they will appear to be standing still in mid air. Try that same image at 1/3 exposure and you will only see a blur across the screen and the image will also be very bright/washed out most likely.......Try this same situation at night and the result will be total darkness on the 1/500 exposure. You may be able to see the runner at 1/3 at night, but still as a blurred streak across the screen.

In short, longer shutter speeds are better for low light/no motion, while shorter shutter speeds are better for bright light/fast motion.....This means that the ideal situation for a bright, sunny day is usually the higher shutter speed, the better. At night, you have to make a sacrifice between what's more important (brighter image and more blurred motion, or darker image and less blurred motion)...If it's important for people walking to not be blurred, you'll have to use a faster exposure at night and then invest in extra lighting if the image looks too dark. If motion blur is not important and you are trying to make the brightest image out of a low light situation, then the slower exposure is what you use.

Sounds as though identifying walking people is your main priority here, and if so, that means your solution would be keeping the exposure more around 1/30 at night and either buying a spot light or extra IR lights if it's too dark.

2. In my experience, 4092 kbps is more than enough bandwidth to get a clear image at 1080P resolution and I doubt upping that to 7000 range will be all that noticeable of an improvement. For clear images of people in motion, you need highest frames per second possible and faster shutter possible for your lightning conditions (which again, may require extra artificial sources of lighting to accomplish)

3. I'm not about this question as, again, I didn't realize there was the option of setting different settings for day vs night....However, I feel pretty confident that "auto" day/night switch would work just as well as "scheduled" day/night. Either way, it seems it would switch over to the night image settings profile whenever the camera goes to night mode, regardless of whether the switch is done by a timer or by the ambient light sensor on the camera. I'd at least give it a try on "auto" as I see no reason it wouldn't work.

 

[aster1x]

Unfortunately it is not possible to define different Image adjustments and Exposure settings for day and night with automatic switch over between day and night based on the luminocity sensor of the camera. You can only have different day and night settings if you define scheduled-switch between day and night times. In the screen dump of post #1, the day/night switch below the Exposure settings determines only when and how the IR will turn ON. It has nothing to do with the Image and exposure settings during day or night.

The ideall solution would be to have different day and night settings based on AUTO switching.

 

[mbastard924]

Thanks all for your helpful feedback. I'll probably have to go back in and mess with the exposure settings again. We do have spot lights that come on automatically when people walk by, but I'm still seeing the blur on one of the cameras - specifically the dome camera. Once we get the rest of our cameras installed, I'll see if CPU usage is still an issue and if not, I'll see if I can bump up one camera's FPS from 15 to 20.

 

[phillip da]

Would be a great feature if you could set the shutter speed to also change automaticaly as the camera changes from day to night mode automaticaly.

 

[wxman]

Would be a great feature if you could set the shutter speed to also change automaticaly as the camera changes from day to night mode automaticaly.

The shutter speeds slower than 1/25 (50hz mode) and 1/30 (60hz mode) are auto adjusted. In other words, it's a "max exposure time". For example, I've got mine on 1/3 all of the time. At night it slows to 1/3 (and blurs motion), but when the sun comes out during the day, the motion blur stops as the camera automatically sets itself to a faster shutter (though it still displays as 1/3)....It simply means that 1/3 is the slowest shutter speed it can drop to, but will not slow down to 1/3 unless the lighting is low enough for it to need it. Likewise, if I chose 1/12, it would still be at the faster speed during the day and would only drop to as much as 1/12 at night, if needed.

 

[dmsims]

Very interested in this settings topic as well

 

[devastator]

I like the different settings for day/night, if only they would work with automatic switching :-/.

I know there is a script to upload these settings to the cam, but is that script able to detect if nightmode is on ?

 

[Kentg]

I also am a new to the IP cam scene and I installed a ds-2cd2t42-i5.
I noticed last night playing with it that turning the noise reduction on made the recordings blur like crazy. Turning them down low reduced it but just turning it off helps the most and I still get slight bit of blur. This is watching cars drive by the house about 20-25 mph.
I turned the frame rate down to 15 before I left for work and will see if that helps.
I have this mounted under my soffet next to the gutter downspout on my 2 car garage and there is a carriage light on each side of the door with a cfl light in each on motion detect.
I have the IR set to auto. What I did notice is that with the lights out I get as much illumination from the IR as the carriage lights in non IR I suppose. I dont know how to tell if it is IR mode with the carriage lights on. Manually turning out the carriage lights I can actually see more and better detail. However there is some noise in the graininess/noise in the feed though. I need to adjust the carriage lights not to come on when a car drives by but only when one of us pull in the driveway which is about 20 feet long.
In daytime mode I can pause a playback of a car coming by and can tell the make and model pretty much but if I zoom in I see some blur and pixle issues. Not sure if thats as good as its going to get or if some of the experts can suggest how to maximize the settings.
Im using BlueIris and recording clips only not continous. I decided I dont need to as long as the triggers work.
Im interested in following this as well. Im sure as these become more mainstream and in use the experts will enlighten us amatures I hope.
I dont really care about super smooth playback, I want to be able to grab an image from a clip and get the highest resolution and quality possible like everyone else. I wonder if I should lower the frame rate more if that will help.

 

[DemonicHawk]

Here's some tips:
-Lower your exposure to reduce motion blur. In my experience, 1/30 is usually good for walking, 1/60 for running, but you might need to go even lower (e.g. 1/120) for zero motion blur on cars. The trade-off here is that the lower you go, the darker the picture.
-Increase your bitrate. higher bitrate = higher quality
-Lower your FPS. FPS does not affect motion blur. The lower your FPS, the lower your bitrate needs to be for maximum image quality. See: http://www.hikvision.msk.ru/_fr/0/IP_Camera_Recom.pdf

For night picture, if you have sufficient lighting, you can try leaving your camera in daytime picture mode. This should give you more detail.

 

[gwminor48]

I have found the night time settings to be challenging too, trying to find a compromise between noise and blurring on my 4mp Hikvisions. I am keeping a spreadsheet and toying with the settings, still trying to get it where I am happy. As far as switching from day to night, I am using Blue Iris schedule to switch relative to sunrise/sunset with my cameras in auto-switch mode using a method posted by @mcx in this thread https://www.ipcamtalk.com/showthread.php/5727-Different-settings-to-the-Hik-cams-at-sunrise-sunset-using-Blue-Iris-event-schedule, Thanks @mcx, it's working great for me.

 

[Oinc]

You can use curl to change some of the image setting.

https://www.ipcamtalk.com/showthread.php/5727-Different-settings-to-the-Hik-cams-at-sunrise-sunset-using-Blue-Iris-event-schedule

 

[Teddyal]

how did you make separate profiles for day & night video?
At the moment I change the settings for the day, it automatically changes the same sattengs for a night.