How to set up P1468-LE with Blue Iris

[wittaj]

Well I'm used to the best practices for Dahua cameras as laid out by @wittaj. So for example, different settings for shutter time and gain during the day and night. During the day I can easily run a max shutter of 1/250 with a max gain of 30 but during the night it gets too dark with these settings.

I'm also not too sure about running WDR at night, but again this is per @wittaj's recommendations for Dahua cameras.

I haven't caveated the cameras settings as most here are running the Dahua or Hikvision or some other camera that those are good starting points for those types of cameras.

Axis being more expensive will have a different baseline.

One could even argue that the Axis cameras are running more true to the settings.

For example, and I think @smiticans would agree, that a 1/60 shutter of a Dahua cam would give a far different image than his above at night (it would be worse).

And I think the same with differences with how WDR is processed, and of course focal length differences!

 

[smiticans]

I agree with @wittaj, Axis cameras are a different ball game and take a little getting use to if you're coming from Dahua cameras. I've noticed Dahua cameras are very granular when it comes to image and exposure settings where Axis cameras don't have as much customizability (They're still customizable, just not as granular as Dahua). The Axis cameras do seem to automatically handle everything nicely but the lack of customizability (day/night profile etc.) might be a bad thing if you have a unique situation.

 

[smiticans]

I have tried several streaming profiles from 1080p to 2160p with both CBR and VBR. None of them are properly working for live viewing the Axis camera, while it works fine for all the Dahua cameras that I have (although they're 1440p). And it also works fine for playing back alerts from the Axis camera, so it only doesn't work (keeps loading) when I try to live view the camera through UI3.

See the attached images for the settings I was using with BI. I was running BI demo version 5.9.9.11 and UI3 worked well on my Windows 10 PC with Chrome, iPhone with Safari and Windows 11 PC with Chrome. I set the ONVIF account to administrator and made the user/pass the same as the cameras admin account.

If you need a keyframe of 1, set the GOV length to 15 (assuming you're running 15FPS). Just note that doing so will almost double the bandwidth of the stream. I didn't have any issues running it at 31 with an FPS of 15.

Under ONVIF event, I had to disable all of the entries and create one that contained the name of my AOA event. 'Scenario1" is the name of my AOA rule that'll trigger a rule when a person/vehicle enters my driveway. If I left all of them on, I kept getting alerts anytime a vehicle drove down the street.

Just as a note, I was not using any hardware acceleration and I did not have any issues live streaming the camera while it had a higher bitrate.

 

[tuvow]

Thanks. If I set quality to 70 in the video encoder profile, doesn't that lead to double compression since I also already set a compression of 30% at "Video -> Stream"? I'm wondering, because I'm frankly not really impressed yet with the video quality.

 

[smiticans]

Thanks. If I set quality to 70 in the video encoder profile, doesn't that lead to double compression since I also already set a compression of 30% at "Video -> Stream"? I'm wondering, because I'm frankly not really impressed yet with the video quality.

Honestly, I'm not sure but I believe the settings in the ONVIF Media Profile will override the settings you have on the main page as BI will be pulling the stream from the Media Profile. When I had the camera on BI with those settings I did not really notice a difference in image quality in BI vs my main VMS. Go to overlays and add "#B" without the quotation marks as a text overlay. This will display the bitrate on the camera so you can see what the bitrate is in real time. Feel free to adjust the quality setting and see if that makes a difference.

Here is an example of a day video from my P1468-LE-

Can you be more specific on how you're trying to improve the image quality/ how it is lacking? Is there a big difference between the videos I posted and your results? If possible, post a sample video or screenshot so I can help you troubleshoot/ optimize the camera.

 

[tuvow]

Your videos look very crisp and sharp to me, mine look heavily compressed and blurry. I attached a day and night example. In the night example you can hardly make out any details. The guy wasn't even driving really that fast. In the day example you can see a lot of blurriness all over the picture (also the not moving parts like the leaves on the ground). If you look at the front of the car, you can't make out the VOLVO logo above the license plate. It's completely blurred into a straight gray line. I also have some faces during the day that are approaching the gate, they also look quite blurry and compressed. Not even remotely as sharp as your video or the pictures that my Dahua 5442's are capturing.

Settings are virtually the default settings, except for max shutter at 1/120. Max gain is like the default settings at 51. Frame rate 15 fps, 30% compression, zip stream low, VBR.

edit: attachments removed for privacy reasons

 

[smiticans]

Your videos look very crisp and sharp to me, mine look heavily compressed and blurry. I attached a day and night example. In the night example you can hardly make out any details. The guy wasn't even driving really that fast. In the day example you can see a lot of blurriness all over the picture (also the not moving parts like the leaves on the ground). If you look at the front of the car, you can't make out the VOLVO logo above the license plate. It's completely blurred into a straight gray line. I also have some faces during the day that are approaching the gate, they also look quite blurry and compressed. Not even remotely as sharp as your video or the pictures that my Dahua 5442's are capturing.

Settings are virtually the default settings, except for max shutter at 1/120. Max gain is like the default settings at 51. Frame rate 15 fps, 30% compression, zip stream low, VBR.

It kind of looks slightly out of focus. Go to Video- Installation- and click on the "AF" button next to Focus.

If you're running Max shutter at 1/120 with IR in complete darkness that's too fast and you should reduce it to 1/60. (I had decent results with 1/120 with IR but I also have two other cameras blasting IR within the scene).

Also, does the image look the same in the camera UI as it does in BI?

If those adjustments don't work, I would recommend doing a restore (Maintenance-Restore) and we can go from there.

See two images I've attached of my P1468-LE in IR mode. When I tested it while I walked around it captured my face pretty well at shutter 1/60 without motion blur. The image I attached to this post is from an Amazon driver that was wearing a lot of reflective material and a bright headlamp on his head so it's not a good example of the camera in IR. When I get a better capture I will post it.

 

[tuvow]

Yeah I've tried AF several times but during the day it goes anywhere between 75-85. Is a range like that normal?

I'll try again at 1/60, but since the Dahua's work well with 1/120 it's still a bit disappointing that the Axis isn't doing well with 1/120 (considering the 1/1.2" sensor).

Your question about image quality in Blue Iris versus camera UI is a fair question, since BI is also doing its own encoding etc. To be honest, I'm not really sure if there's a difference. I'll investigate.

 

[smiticans]

Yeah I've tried AF several times but during the day it goes anywhere between 75-85. Is a range like that normal?

I'll try again at 1/60, but since the Dahua's work well with 1/120 it's still a bit disappointing that the Axis isn't doing well with 1/120 (considering the 1/1.2" sensor).

Your question about image quality in Blue Iris versus camera UI is a fair question, since BI is also doing its own encoding etc. To be honest, I'm not really sure if there's a difference. I'll investigate.

The settings in Axis cameras and Dahua cameras are not equal and react differently (It took me a little to learn this). You can't really compare the two. Instead of chasing a specific shutter setting you should be adjusting it based on the image quality. You may be able to use a faster shutter than 1/60 for your setting, but for troubleshooting purposes, I would set it there for now and adjust as needed.

Do you have a micro SD card in the camera? If so, you can create an event rule to record directly to the SD card and you can use that video to compare it to BI to see if there's difference in quality.

Also, can you confirm the lens is clean and free from any debris?

Either way there is definitely an issue with your image. Where did you purchase this camera from?

Edit: That sounds like a normal range depending on your zoom level. I attached a screenshot of my zoom settings. You can try to manually adjust your camera to my setting and see what it looks like.

 

[tuvow]

I just tried your zoom level and AF settings, but the leaves still look a bit blurry to me. To be honest, it’s a bit hard to judge in IR mode. It’s past midnight here, so I’m going to check tomorrow if the lens is clean. It’s brand new, but maybe a spider has already been building a little web that I can’t see

Unfortunately I don’t have a SD card to test with, but I’m recording direct-to-disc with BI so I should be able to view exactly what the cam recorded without any re-encoding. Going to investigate this tomorrow.

I bought the cam at a webshop that sells returned items. I admit, not the best source but the box was sealed and the protective plastic was still on the lens.

 

[smiticans]

I just tried your zoom level and AF settings, but the leaves still look a bit blurry to me. To be honest, it’s a bit hard to judge in IR mode. It’s past midnight here, so I’m going to check tomorrow if the lens is clean. It’s brand new, but maybe a spider has already been building a little web that I can’t see

Unfortunately I don’t have a SD card to test with, but I’m recording direct-to-disc with BI so I should be able to view exactly what the cam recorded without any re-encoding. Going to investigate this tomorrow.

I bought the cam at a webshop that sells returned items. I admit, not the best source but the box was sealed and the protective plastic was still on the lens.

One thing I just thought of, go to the camera settings in BI and uncheck "Enable Pan/Tilt/Zoom and other controls" if you didn't already. That way we could rule out the possibility of BI modifying the zoom/focus settings.

It's very possible the camera is defective but the next step would be to do a restore and configure the camera again. We can continue to troubleshoot tomorrow. If you're unable to return the camera, you can always contact Axis support and see if they would be willing to exchange it for you. However, I don't know how far you'll get since the camera was previously returned and the website was probably not an authorized seller.

 

[wittaj]

If this problem continues, I would recommend deleting it from BI and use the camera GUI to confirm BI isn't sending any wacky things.

It shouldn't, but we have seen instances where BI does something like that.

 

[smiticans]

One thing we forgot to troubleshoot is the ONVIF profile stream settings. Can you post a pic of your ONVIF profile settings in the camera and also the ONVIF profile that BI is using. I want to verify that BI is actually pulling the main stream from the camera.

Also, when you're viewing the camera from the web browser, go to the bottom right of the image and click the gear icon. Turn off Adaptive Stream. Adaptive stream uses a reduced quality stream in the web browser to save bandwidth. Turning this off will allow you to view the full high quality stream in the browser.

One more note. If you do a factory default instead of a restore, the camera will go back to its default IP settings. One of the changes in OS 12 is that the camera will no longer have a default IP address of 192.168.0.90. Instead, the camera will pull an IP address from a DHCP server if available, if a DHCP server is not available, it'll default to a link-local address.

See this link if you need instructions on how to configure your NIC for a link-local address-

https://help.axis.com/en-us/axis-os-knowledge-base#ipv4-compliant-mode

 

[tuvow]

I decided to do a factory default and start over. I have attached screenshots of all my Axis settings and the BI video settings. I have tried to stay as close to your settings as possible. I used the same zoom factor and used AF to get to a focus setting of 84. The only thing I wasn't able to do is set a FPS of 15 in the ONVIF streaming profile. It only lets me choose from a drop down with 25, 12.5, 10, 5 etc. But not 15, so I chose 25. According to BI it's streaming at 15 FPS anyway.

To be clear, I also started over in BI. I deleted and added the camera. Turned off PTZ. It's recording direct-to-disc.

I have also attached a video of a car during the day. I exported the video from BI without any re-encoding, so it should be exactly what the Axis camera has exported as a stream. What do you think of the picture quality?

 

[tuvow]

Here's a video in IR mode. Looks like there's indeed a spider web that might be causing some issues as well. Nevertheless the image looks very compressed to me. At least the camera doens't look out of focus to me I did decrease the zoom level a little bit, so there's more time for the camera to detect objects.

 

[smiticans]

I decided to do a factory default and start over. I have attached screenshots of all my Axis settings and the BI video settings. I have tried to stay as close to your settings as possible. I used the same zoom factor and used AF to get to a focus setting of 84. The only thing I wasn't able to do is set a FPS of 15 in the ONVIF streaming profile. It only lets me choose from a drop down with 25, 12.5, 10, 5 etc. But not 15, so I chose 25. According to BI it's streaming at 15 FPS anyway.

To be clear, I also started over in BI. I deleted and added the camera. Turned off PTZ. It's recording direct-to-disc.

I have also attached a video of a car during the day. I exported the video from BI without any re-encoding, so it should be exactly what the Axis camera has exported as a stream. What do you think of the picture quality?

That image looks much better than the one you posted yesterday.

That's odd that it won't let you set 15 FPS. I would create your own ONFIV media profile and follow my settings and use the custom made one for BI. See my attached screenshots.

 

[tuvow]

It's not possible to select 15 FPS either when I create my own ONVIF media profile. See attached screenshot.

 

[smiticans]

Here's a video in IR mode. Looks like there's indeed a spider web that might be causing some issues as well. Nevertheless the image looks very compressed to me. At least the camera doens't look out of focus to me I did decrease the zoom level a little bit, so there's more time for the camera to detect objects.

Its hard to tell with the spider web there but it doesn't look that much different than mine in IR. The exposure is too slow to get the plate from the truck moving at that speed but it looks like you can somewhat make it out as it rounds the corner. For testing purposes, someone needs to walk by the gate. If you can pause the video and clearly identify them (Both in IR and during the day) then I'd say you're in pretty good shape (You don't have to post it here for privacy reasons) You can also increase the shutter and see how it handles it. I would try 1/100 first.

Another difference between Axis cameras and Dahua cameras are how it handles bitrate. I'd have to go back and read the documents but from my understanding, it tends to increase the bitrate around moving objects like people, vehicles and license plates etc. and decrease the bitrate around static objects. As opposed to Dahua cameras are just streaming at a constant bitrate. So the static image from my 4K-T looks better than a static image from an Axis camera, however, the image of a person/vehicle is better than what I can get on my Dahua cameras. I've been able to see the eye color of people walking up to my front door, which I've never been able to do with my Dahua cameras.

I'll post a static image screenshot comparison of my 4K-T and Axis camera so you can see.

 

[smiticans]

It's not possible to select 15 FPS either when I create my own ONVIF media profile. See attached screenshot.

Hmm that's odd. Maybe try "user2" for the video encoder?

 

[tuvow]

Hmm that's odd. Maybe try "user2" for the video encoder?

Same, no option for 15 fps. I'm running the latest Axis OS (12.1.64).

So the static image from my 4K-T looks better than a static image from an Axis camera

This is why I'm trying to compare moving objects. I know it's easy for cams to generate beautiful static pictures. I guess the night video of the car is not terrible, but I suppose I expected a sharper picture and more detail because it's a 8mp cam with 1/1.2" sensor. I can't compare it with a Dahua 5442 because I don't have that cam at the same spot, but I feel like I could capture a very similar picture with the same amount of forensic detail even though the Dahua is 5x cheaper than the Axis.

I'm still wondering though what's causing the blurring or "compression" artifacts. Is the shutter speed too slow? Is it WDR? Is it the level of compression and/or Zipstream? Or am I simply expecting too much and is the night capture of the car actually a good capture?