IPC-HDW5442T-ZE artifacts

mooch91

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Hi all,
Can you help a newbie set up the subject varifocal camera? To start with, I'm seeing a lot of artifacts in the daytime. I would have thought I'd be able to tell that the animal down by the fig tree was a chipmunk. You can see the driveway is grainy. And the spots on the hood of the SUV are not real. This is with Auto exposure settings, but I've played with some manual settings that don't look much better because I don't really know what I'm doing.
Thanks!

Driveway-20220522-080159.jpg
 

danbutter

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Are the "spots" on the SUV not just the reflection of the trees above and to the side? Just what I would think I'm seeing when I look at the picture.
Chipmunk...yeah kinda hard to tell exactly what that is, but it is also in both light and dark areas.
Driveway I can't speak to, but you have a rather large area overall so I wouldn't expect perfection with every pixel.

That said, I'm not an expert on manual settings so I can't help you there, but it is likely someone will come along with some advice.
Also Lots of info here:
 

paul@austins.tv

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Hi all,
Can you help a newbie set up the subject varifocal camera? To start with, I'm seeing a lot of artifacts in the daytime. I would have thought I'd be able to tell that the animal down by the fig tree was a chipmunk. You can see the driveway is grainy. And the spots on the hood of the SUV are not real. This is with Auto exposure settings, but I've played with some manual settings that don't look much better because I don't really know what I'm doing.
Thanks!

View attachment 128687
I would adjust the sharpness down and adjust the gamma initially. Then adjustments to the exposure to custom settings.
 

bigredfish

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Auto settings are rarely good.
That said, first check your bitrate, set it to 8192, Iframe and fps the same, start with 30. Use h.264h and CBR

Then your exposure, for daytime I’d start with custom 0-8.33

Leave all backlight options off for starts, and set DNR to say 30

Those will get you in the ballpark then see what you have before messing with anything else.
 

mooch91

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Maybe I'm expecting too much.

Attached is with sharpness at 40, exposure 0-4, 3D and 2D DNR at 30. Doesn't seem much different/better. Granted, the lighting has changed much in the couple of hours since I took the first shot.

Driveway-20220522-100000.jpg
 

wittaj

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To identify a chipmunk on the edge of a field of view is asking too much.

If you do not have enough light to keep this in color at night, the tree leaves coming up from the bottom will wreak havoc on infrared.

As @bigredfish says, make these changes in the camera GUI itself and confirm you are at least 8192 bitrate and CBR and H264 (or try H264H). The image looks like it is too low bitrate and VBR. If you are CBR and H264 and 8192, then up the bitrate.

Keep in mind at certain parts of the day, the sun and reflection can cause issues. That morning sun reflecting off all that granular blacktop can cause issues with focus, noise, exposure, and overall picture quality. Give it a few more hours for the sun to get more overhead and then rehit the focus and see if that improves the image.
 
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Check out his thread on artifacts.

 

jack7

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Hi all,
Can you help a newbie set up the subject varifocal camera? To start with, I'm seeing a lot of artifacts in the daytime. I would have thought I'd be able to tell that the animal down by the fig tree was a chipmunk. You can see the driveway is grainy. And the spots on the hood of the SUV are not real. This is with Auto exposure settings, but I've played with some manual settings that don't look much better because I don't really know what I'm doing.
Thanks!

View attachment 128687
I suspect the artifacts on your hood in the first pic are caused by the angle of the sun and a reflection of the driveway going to your camera. Notice that the artifacts are not on the hood where the sun is not hitting it.
 
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The real video quality test that is important is how well does a face show up. Gravely driveway and grainy car hood is no real deal. What you really want to know is how well does it reproduce a face, and secondly clothing.

Walk that area and see if the face has artifacts.
 

rfj

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Is there a reason to prefer CBR over VBR and H.264 over H.265? Reading the forum it seems H.265 had some compatibility issues some years ago but it seems it is the preferred option these days. Or am I wrong? As for CBR vs VBR doesn't make VBR more sense as it just uses the bandwidth it needs to achieve a set quality goal?
 

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wittaj

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CBR is preferred because in some field of views, the bitrate at VBR may not ramp up fast enough and then you miss the clear shot. If the bitrate is too low, you get a pixelated mess with motion. With VBR, the bitrate may drop real low during no motion and calm static image, but then a perp comes by and it needs to ramp up from 80 bitrate to 8192 bitrate and you miss the clean shot.

H264 is preferred over H265.

This will explain H264 versus H265 a little better.

H265 in theory provides more storage as it compresses differently, but part of that compression means it macro blocks big areas of the image that it thinks isn't moving. However, it also takes more processing power of the already small CPU in the camera and that can be problematic if someone is maxing out the camera and then it stutters.

In theory it is supposed to need 30% less storage than H264, but most of us have found it isn't that much. Mine was less than few minutes per day. And to my eye and others that I showed clips to and just said do you like video 1 or video 2 better, everyone thought the H264 provided a better image.

The left image is H264, so all the blocks are the same size corresponding to the resolution of the camera. H265 takes areas that it doesn't think has motion and makes them into bigger blocks and in doing so lessens the resolution yet increases the CPU demand to develop these larger blocks.

In theory H265 is supposed to need half the bitrate because of the macroblocking. But if there is a lot of motion in the image, then it becomes a pixelated mess. The only way to get around that is a higher bitrate. But if you need to run the same bitrate for H265 as you do H264, then the storage savings is zero. Storage is computed based on multiplying bitrate, FPS, and resolution.

1638584913822.png





In my testing I have one camera that sees a parked car in front of my house. H265 sees that the car isn't moving, so it macroblocks the whole car and surrounding area. Then the car owner walked up to the car and got in and the motion is missed because the macroblock being so large. Or if it catches it, because the bitrate is low, it is a pixelated mess during the critical capture point and by the time H265 adjusts to there is now motion, the ideal capture is missed.

In my case, the car is clear and defined in H264, but is blurry and soft edges in H265.

H265 is one of those theory things that sounds good, but reality use is much different.

As always, YMMV. But do not use Codec with BI or you may have trouble.
 
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rfj

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Huh, I guess I need to switch my cams back to H264 and CBR. That is a very good explanation that makes a lot of sense. I haven't tried this myself but trust what you are saying.
 

spammenotinoz

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I concur with most of what is said here, especially moving to H.264H and CBR, with the exception of 1:1 frame to iframe. PC-HDW5442T-ZE are definitely over sharpened out of the box.
From some reason when I have a 1:1, I get some artifacting as pictured. (PS: Whenever changing camera settings, I always go into VI, camera properties, but don't change anything just click okay, so the feed resets. Anyone have a better way?
Also suggest test with backlighting off.

PS: Agree the camera is mounted too high, you won't get a face if the perp is wearing a cap, hoodie or simply tilting their face slightly down. All decent perps like looking at their shoes.
 
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