I Ordered an Axis Communications Axis Q1808-LE Camera

[Parley]

I would recommend resetting to factory defaults and starting from there. You can reset all the values to default without losing the IP settings by going to maintenance and using the "restore" option. I run mine in IR mode at night because I don't have enough light in the field of view for color. I use the following settings and I suggest you give them a try. Exposure Mode- Automatic, Max shutter 1/30, max gain 51, Blur-noise trade-off- all the way to low motion blur. Saturation, Contrast, Brightness, Sharpness at default of 50 (Some of my Axis cameras I run Saturation and Contrast at 60 for a better image). WDR- Off (WDR negatively impacts the night image on this camera where it doesn't with my other Axis cameras). The tradeoff to disabling the WDR at night are those street lights might washout faces.

The area directly in front of your house looks a little darker than the rest, you may need to enable the white LED's at night to add a little more light to the scene. You can turn on the white lights by creating an AOA (Axis Object Analytics) scenario and set parameters when to trigger the scenario (person walking in x area etc.). You then go to Events and add a rule to activate the lights when that scenario is triggered. You can also activate them based on a schedule.

Also something to take into consideration, this camera has an aperture of F1.7 zoomed out with a wide field of view and an aperture of F4.0 when fully zoomed in. I'd say you're probably closer to the F4.0 so you're going to need a little extra light in the scene.

I went ahead and changed the values to what you recommended. I will start from there tonight. I think going to a 1/30 shutter will make a big difference on the light situation. The zoom setting is at 3.19 on a scale of 1-4. Thank You for your help. Like I said before this camera's settings are different than what I am used to with the Hikvision and Dahus cameras.

 

[Parley]

Is the cam placement designed to get people walking or plates? As far as I can tell, the placement is bad for both. It’s at a 90 degree angle to the road so plates will be impossible. It’s also not zoomed in close enough to capture faces…

People walking by. I may go full out which is 48mm. All the way in is 12mm. IMHO it is probably closer to 1/2 of that going by the other cameras that I have.

 

[smiticans]

I went ahead and changed the values to what you recommended. I will start from there tonight. I think going to a 1/30 shutter will make a big difference on the light situation. The zoom setting is at 3.19 on a scale of 1-4. Thank You for your help. Like I said before this camera's settings are different than what I am used to with the Hikvision and Dahus cameras.

Np! It's even different from what I'm used to with other Axis cameras. I tested using the white LED's on my setup with WDR off and it actually works pretty well with the settings I mentioned in my previous post. Last time I tried full color at night I still had the WDR on with it in 4K mode and I didn't like the results. My only concern with your install as opposed to mine is that people and vehicles have to walk towards my camera with my field of view as opposed to yours they're walking across it. Which makes it more difficult to have less motion blur with your field of view. I guess we'll find out tonight.

 

[Parley]

OK. I finally figured out how to turn on the white light. Hahahaha, it was easy once I located the control. This has made a difference on the one person who walked by. I will review the video tomorrow looking for people who walked by. With the light on I can increase the shutter speed seemly without affecting the picture quality. Right now, I am 1/60. This will probably take a few nights to fine tune. It is a big learning curve for me. I may also look into increasing the wattage on one of my security lights that point in that direction.

 

[Parley]

Well, this morning the white light did not turn off on the camera at daylight. Another item I have to solve. I think it has to do with the IR-cut-filter part of the program. At least the camera is showing promise, and I am making headway inch by inch.

 

[smiticans]

Well, this morning the white light did not turn off on the camera at daylight. Another item I have to solve. I think it has to do with the IR-cut-filter part of the program. At least the camera is showing promise, and I am making headway inch by inch.

How do you have the white light set to activate? On a schedule or by rule activation? If by schedule, is the camera synced to an NTP server with the proper time zone selected?

 

[Parley]

How do you have the white light set to activate? On a schedule or by rule activation? If by schedule, is the camera synced to an NTP server with the proper time zone selected?

From what I read you have to have the IR-cut-filter on auto and there is a threshold slider that goes from bright to dark. The white light turns on and off with that. Now if I have to do it by a schedule or rule activation, please let me know how or where that is done. I read the manual, and I did not see anything on it. Thank You in advance.

Edit: I am trying to run the camera in color 24/7.

 

[smiticans]

From what I read you have to have the IR-cut-filter on auto and there is a threshold slider that goes from bright to dark. The white light turns on and off with that. Now if I have to do it by a schedule or rule activation, please let me know how or where that is done. I read the manual, and I did not see anything on it. Thank You in advance.

Edit: I am trying to run the camera in color 24/7.

That threshold slider is for the IR Cut Filter. Notice if you disable the IR light or set the IR Cut filter to on the slider disappears. I suspect you manually activated the white light by clicking on the bulb icon in the image menu under the live preview. I don't think the white light automatically activates based on how dark it is outside. I could be wrong but I'll try and clarify that tomorrow.

To activate the white light based on a schedule go to System- Events and click schedules at the top menu. Create a start and end time of your choice. Then click on the "rules" tab at the top. Create a new rule. Set the condition as schedule and select the schedule you created. Then go to action and scroll down to Illumination, select use lights while this rule is active. Under the light menu, select white light. This will keep the white light on during the hours you specified in the schedule.

You can also only have the white lights activate based on a person/vehicle entering a specific area. To do this, create an AOA scenario of your choice (go to apps, Axis Object Analytics click open and create a scenario). Follow the steps I provided above to create a rule to active them when a person/vehicle enters the area you defined. Instead of setting the condition as schedule, you set Object Analytics: "Scenario You Created" as the condition, set action to use white lights and I have mine configured to leave them on for about 2 minutes after the event ended.

Edit: How did the camera perform last night with the white light on?

 

[Parley]

Here is some video from last night. Also clicking on Vivid in the Stream Profile made a difference for the better. I was surprised at that. One other surprise with this camera is the Sharpness. I have it set at 100. I put my Dahua PTZ with the 4/3" sensor to the same area for comparison. With that camera I have the sharpness set at 25. I would say the video from the two cameras was comparable. Maybe slightly less noise from the Axis. Smitcans, I will go ahead and set up the schedule for the white light as you suggested. This morning, I also moved my nighttime security camera a little to give more light in that area.

 

[wittaj]

^The video is showing as private.

 

[Parley]

^The video is showing as private.

I went back in and edited a couple of things one was making it public. See if it works now.

 

[wittaj]

Yep can see it now!

 

[steve1225]

Here is some video from last night. Also clicking on Vivid in the Stream Profile made a difference for the better. I was surprised at that. One other surprise with this camera is the Sharpness. I have it set at 100. I put my Dahua PTZ with the 4/3" sensor to the same area for comparison. With that camera I have the sharpness set at 25. I would say the video from the two cameras was comparable. Maybe slightly less noise from the Axis. Smitcans, I will go ahead and set up the schedule for the white light as you suggested. This morning, I also moved my nighttime security camera a little to give more light in that area.

This is Your second video, which shows that this camera can do nice static image at night, but moving people are a problem..
Image of moving people are noisy and ghosted... there are huge compression artifacts around people (but this can be Youtube compression).

Sony Image Sensor is good, but for me it looks like video processing (ISP - Image Signal Processor) is not at 2024 / AI standards...

Can You download footage directly to forum as part of post (like image)?

ps. at what shutter time this footage were done? 1/30 1/60 1/120?

 

[Parley]

This is Your second video, which shows that this camera can do nice static image at night, but moving people are a problem..
Image of moving people are noisy and ghosted... there are huge compression artifacts around people (but this can be Youtube compression).

Sony Image Sensor is good, but for me it looks like video processing (ISP - Image Signal Processor) is not at 2024 / AI standards...

Can You download footage directly to forum as part of post (like image)?

ps. at what shutter time this footage were done? 1/30 1/60 1/120?

The YouTube video looks the same as the video live on the camera going by my naked eye. The shutter speed is 1/60. I am hoping that a little more light helps, Yes, I will download a static image from my NVR storage from last night.

 

[steve1225]

This person don't look ok...
there is noise on his clothes and face..
color deconstruction is very bad (also on trees)...
face have no details...
right leg in motion is very blurred.
there are huge compression artifacts around / behind that person..

 

[Parley]

^^^^^ I agree with you. Hopefully tonight I can take care of a good portion of that issue. I was hoping to up the shutter speed to 1/120 but when I did that it darkened things up too much at the current settings. That is also the darkest area of that scene.

 

[steve1225]

^^^^^ I agree with you. Hopefully tonight I can take care of a good portion of that issue. I was hoping to up the shutter speed to 1/120 but when I did that it darkened things up too much at the current settings. That is also the darkest area of that scene.

shorter shutter speed will not help - main problem is that there is to little light catches by sensor in that place.
All problems (noise, ghosting, wrong color reconstruction, lack of details) are mostly from that...
only blurry part is from too long exposure...

I don't know what tools You have there in Axis configuration (like gain/ISO control, 2D and 3D noise reduction etc)..

 

[Parley]

shorter shutter speed will not help - main problem is that there is to little light catches by sensor in that place.
All problems (noise, ghosting, wrong color reconstruction, lack of details) are mostly from that...
only blurry part is from too long exposure...

I don't know what tools You have there in Axis configuration (like gain/ISO control, 2D and 3D noise reduction etc)..

Well, I have adjusted one of my security lights to hopefully light up that area a little bit more. Yes, you can adjust the gain. I have not seen the others listed as that. Axis may call it something else. I will look into it.

 

[smiticans]

Well, I have adjusted one of my security lights to hopefully light up that area a little bit more. Yes, you can adjust the gain. I have not seen the others listed as that. Axis may call it something else. I will look into it.

Go to image- exposure- and adjust the max gain to 63 (I'm pretty sure that's the default). That will brighten up the image a little but you will need to adjust additional settings. You can adjust the Blur-Noise tradeoff slider to less noise in small increments to see if that reduces the noise in the image but that may cause more motion blur.

If your sharpness is set to 100 that's too high and can introduce noise. What was the reason for changing the sharpness from the default settings?

I recommend using either the "forensic" or "Vivid" scene profiles at the default state until you fine tune the camera. I think you're adjusting too many settings at once without verifying if the adjustments are hurting or helping the image quality.

Go to video- image and select Overlays. Add a text overlay and type in "#B" without the quotation marks. This will display the current bitrate on the camera live feed. I recommend doing this while you're fine tuning the camera.

What are your current bitrate settings? Go to Video- Stream and click on General for compression, Zipstream for the Zipstream setting and bitrate control for the bitrate setting.

You can increase the bitrate by decreasing the compression (default is 30). Just keep in mind, if you use variable bitrate and turn off compression, be prepared for bitrate over 50Mb/s during the day. If you decide to disable compression, I would recommend switching to average bitrate and setting a target bitrate and a max bitrate.

Unfortunately for both you and I we're using this camera for a purpose it was not designed to do. Since the camera is mostly zoomed in, the aperture is pretty small (F=4.0 as opposed to F=1.7 zoomed out) which means we need more light to run it in color at night. The Dahua Color 4K-T has an aperture of F1.0 for reference.

I have a lot less light than you do and I'm able to get a better color image of a moving person at night than you. I think you can definitely improve the image quality but I personally don't think this is the right camera for your intended purpose. This camera is really designed for an overview of a large well lit area.

Also, what is the distance from where the camera is mounted to the sidewalk where the people were walking in the video?

I'm going to attempt to fine tune mine to run in color at night instead of IR. If I can find settings that I like, I'll post them for you to try.

 

[Parley]

My gain is currently set at 66. I have frame rate set at 30 and compression set at 30. Zipstream was set at low. I just changed it to medium. I have the max bitrate set at 10,000. Dynamic FPS is off, and Dynamic GOP is also off. I have the Blur-noise trade-off slider all the way to low motion blur. Thank You for your help. I think we are slowly getting there.

Edit: The white light came on as programed. A lady just walked by and things are better. However, it is not fully dark, but almost.

Edit 2: I went to 1/120 on the shutter speed and the scene did not seem to change light/dark wise.