IPC-T5442T-ZE IPC-T5442TM-AS IPC-T5842T-ZE SMD 3.0 Smart IR Latest New Firmware From EmpireTech

MikeLud1 said:
I have been playing with the new 2D NR slider and are finding if you turn it way down to 15 and then reduce the 3D NR to a point where you start to have noise this greatly reduces motion haze. Also I am finding if you turndown the sharpness to 25 it also reduces noise .
Click to expand...

have you figured out where the difference is between them? i ask it somewhere but didnt get an answer...

on my cams on day i dont get any noise ?? i dont see a huge advantage/disadvantage by turning 3dnr off or have it at 50...
 
2D helps with the static parts of the image and 3D helps with the moving parts of the image. Either one set too high and you get motion blur/ghosting depending on other settings.

Daytime in the bright sun you won't get noise (or as much) as it is bright enough to provide enough light to the sensor through the millions of holes in the "screen" to make the up the MP. It is why we say do not chase MP because the the more MP, the more noise at night without enough light to get through every pixel hole in the screen.

An analogy to try to understand why cameras need so much more light - let's look at a 4MP camera and this 4MP needs at least twice the amount of light as a 2MP at night for the same sensor. The sensor size is the same in each camera, but when you spread the "screen" of 4MP worth of pixel holes across the same sensor, it now has double the holes, but also double the "screen material" than the 2MP. A 4K camera would need 4 times the light of a 2MP or double the light of a 4MP for the same sensor.

Kind of hard to explain, but lets try to use a window screen as an analogy - take a window where the opening is fixed - that is the sensor - you add a screen to it (that represents 2MP) and looking out through the screen is a little darker because of the screen material. Now replace that screen with one that has double the holes (now it represents 4MP) and it will be darker looking through it because (while the resolution would be better) there is more screen material. At night time, look out your window with and without the screen and it will be darker looking through the screen than without it. If you are looking out your window to see the stars or the moon, do you look out the part of the window with the screen, or the upper portion without the screen material? Now obviously as it relates to a camera, you need to balance the amount of pixel holes with the screen material - too few holes (and thus less screen material) and the resolution suffers, and too many holes (and thus more screen material) and the more light that is needed.

It is why many of us here say do not chase MP - do not buy a 4MP camera that is anything smaller than a 1/1.8" sensor. Do not buy a 2MP camera that is anything smaller than a 1/2.8" sensor. Do not buy a 4K (8MP) camera on anything smaller than a 1/1.2" sensor. Unfortunately, most 4k cams are on the same sensor as a 2MP and thus the 2MP will kick its butt all night long as the 4k will need 4 times the light than the 2MP... 4k will do very poor at night unless you have stadium quality lighting (well a lot of lighting LOL). At nighttime is when most of us want the camera to perform. Almost any camera can work with enough daylight.
 
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@wittaj

thanks for your explanation. That make sense... seems that i was wrong... there is a huge difference by this setting...

so i tested it after i was home... (i am using h265+ at the moment, so i think there will be more artefacts than normal)... didnt see this on the old firmware, maybe it comes with the smd v1 where the 2d switch was introduced.

seems there is a benefit from not using it on day... the background wash out fast moving objects somehow. have to test what 3D does on moving object...

With 2D on 50:
View attachment 11.30.20-11.33.00[M][0@0][51110] (online-video-cutter.com).mp4

View attachment 11.30.20-11.33.00[M][0@0][51110] (online-video-cutter.com)(1).mp4

with 2D on 15:

View attachment 19.01.31-19.09.00[R][0@0][58318] (online-video-cutter.com).mp4



I am also using the old SMD firmware from post 1... i wasnt able to get it work. even ivs (tripwire) did not work good. First i thought it was the strange mounting of the camera... but i set the suggested settings (sensitivy 0, threshhold 100) from @MikeLud1 and it is now working 100%. i will use it tomorrow with the new settings and revert it then and see if its true or not...


more and more testing o_O
 
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looney2ns said:
Smart IR is working very well.
IVS Intrusion is working well, even tho I've not calibrated Global Setup yet.

I will have to play with the Motion settings (didn't need to do that previously) to see if SMD works better.
Click to expand...
Looney can u post some video of smart ir nighttime pitch black if uou have time? Thx. Eric
 
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Me again... its dark outside now...

2D NR has no real "bad" effect on noise. It will only create the same what i showed in the videos earlier. but there seems some noise on darker moving objects with 0 and on some parts of the image... but its only real visible when zooming in too much. but with decreasing sharpness or a bit more 3D NR it is getting better.
There is also no big effect on bandwith ... its the same with 0 and 50. maybe a marginal effect of 10kb/s.

Only 3D NR slider creates "real" visible noise on still / moving objects...

Without 2D NR the moving objects looks 100% better.........
 
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user8963 said:
Me again... its dark outside now...

2D NR has no real "bad" effect on noise. It will only create the same what i showed in the videos earlier. but there seems some noise on darker moving objects with 0 and on some parts of the image... but its only real visible when zooming in too much. but with decreasing sharpness or a bit more 3D NR it is getting better.
There is also no big effect on bandwith ... its the same with 0 and 50. maybe a marginal effect of 10kb/s.

Only 3D NR slider creates "real" visible noise on still / moving objects...

Without 2D NR the moving objects looks 100% better.........
Click to expand...
That's what I am finding too. The added 2D NR slider is a great feature to help dial in the image.
 
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Here is an example to get an idea of the "marginal" noise creation (settings 0 and 50)... its not everywhere, only on some areas / objects... no idea...
in my opinion, its complete acceptable... better than what i have on moving objects .. unidentifiable

also visible that the 2d nr wash out the details of the plant ...

(here a dayshot to get an idea of the plant, but also with 2D NR, ..)
plant.jpg

screenshot is cropped and with bigger resolution after crop, to get an better idea
marginal_noise.jpg
 
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gansle said:
Looney can u post some video of smart ir nighttime pitch black if uou have time? Thx. Eric
Click to expand...
Also see my message above HERE, RE: SmartIR and the final fixes not being in the latest 7/29 FW yet. Therefore if you are still seeing washout @gansle that can be explained. Specifically the fixes should be implemented across all 5442's (turret, bullet cam etc) and across versions (v1 and v2) which the 05-24 addressed but this one is not.
 
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user8963 said:
@wittaj

thanks for your explanation. That make sense... seems that i was wrong... there is a huge difference by this setting...

so i tested it after i was home... (i am using h265+ at the moment, so i think there will be more artefacts than normal)... didnt see this on the old firmware, maybe it comes with the smd v1 where the 2d switch was introduced.

seems there is a benefit from not using it on day... the background wash out fast moving objects somehow. have to test what 3D does on moving object...

With 2D on 50:
View attachment 97110

View attachment 97116

with 2D on 15:

View attachment 97114



I am also using the old SMD firmware from post 1... i wasnt able to get it work. even ivs (tripwire) did not work good. First i thought it was the strange mounting of the camera... but i set the suggested settings (sensitivy 0, threshhold 100) from @MikeLud1 and it is now working 100%. i will use it tomorrow with the new settings and revert it then and see if its true or not...


more and more testing o_O
Click to expand...
Now that you mention it, yes I'm seeing that too.
 
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With this latest I'm also seeing the Video "Stutter or Jerky" video when cars driving by. I have to assume this is caused by increased cpu useage when a tripwire or SMD is at work.
I see this on video recorded to the SD card, and to BI. Audio drops out at the same time very briefly.
gansle said:
Looney can u post some video of smart ir nighttime pitch black if uou have time? Thx. Eric
Click to expand...



@EMPIRETECANDY
 
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looney2ns said:
With this latest I'm also seeing the Video "Stutter or Jerky" video when cars driving by. I have to assume this is caused by increased cpu useage when a tripwire or SMD is at work.
I see this on video recorded to the SD card, and to BI. Audio drops out at the same time very briefly.

Looks like your smart ir is working ok. I do see the stutter your talking about. Thx for posting.

Click to expand...
 
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All, quick update from me here. I was starting to see some 'interesting' things happening within the 7/29 FW so I looked at the codebase specifically around SmartIR. Sure enough the fixes I put forward ARE in fact in this version. After I saw that I went back to a number of the 5442 cams (model and revision) to see what was going on as these were still washing out on 7/29 (I captured this in video) BUT not on 5/24. What I found was that certain build date of 5442 cameras were having more of an issue moving from lower revisions to the new one. Specifically I saw a bigger issue (more on this in a minute) with 5442's with build dates of 2020-08 (August). I also saw that different releases of FW were 'addressing' the upgrade approach differently hence as an example 5/24 always worked well with or without specific order for upgrading the cam (reboot, factory default etc) whereas others did not.

So what was I seeing ? Well, it appears that some of these older (v1 of 5442) cams hold a portion of the boot loader and stale config from existing version and this impacts the cameras ability to fully wipe and start clean. I decided to test this theory on 3 x 2020-08 builds (as well as others) and on these 3x 08 dates this happened consistently. This meant that although the camera would show 7/29 successful upgrade that you still saw impact from previous version(s).

So how do you fix it ? Well this is where it got interesting, the punchline is that you ABSOLUTELY MUST factory default as I and others always recommend on each FW release BUT there's more. I found that on those impacted cams, if you only factory reset AFTER the FW upgrade then it took multiple (in some cases up to 6 was the highest I've ever seen) factory defaults to clear and work properly (i.e. SmartIR working well as expected and other features). However, I wanted to share a slightly different approach that worked more cleanly and much quicker (no multiple factory defaults) and that is restart then factory default BEFORE you run the upgrade.

Specific steps would be:
  1. Login to your cam running your current version may be 04/03 or 5/20 etc
  2. Restart the camera (on current version) without any defaulting BEFORE step 3
  3. Now complete a factory default (not just regular default) while still on current version
  4. Next, upgrade to latest FW (7/29 in this example)
  5. Once upgrade completes, log back in and force 1 more reboot (no default needed)

Taking this approach (on these build date cams I was testing against) allowed these older units to correctly take the upgrade with just the 1 factory reset (rather than multiples when taking the regular approach for factory default) and appeared to clear stale entries in config before upgrade. Now does that mean that all revisions and builds of cam with any version of FW the cams were coming from showed the same issue ? No. Some build dates (and depending on FW version they were on) took the upgrade without any need to default BUT its not consistent. That is why I always recommended and advocate (as do others here) that you factory default on each upgrade. However, maybe try the workflow above yourself in future (regardless of camera) as it does seem to work better and make it a little less onerous and impactful than multiple factory defaults :)

Therefore to conclude, this latest FW (7/29) does work well from SMD 3.0 AND SmartIR and I'm pleased to see that these fixes I built did make it into the v1 of the 5442's as I recommended to Dahua rather than just v2's. This is great as it means the fixes (and new features) will work regardless of build version of 5442 you have.

Lastly, its absolutely evident that certain cams, certain revisions of build along with certain FW versions (that people run at any given time) AND uptime of a cam without reboots, play into this larger issue with FW releases. They are processed just slightly differently and this speaks to consistency of FW builds (Along with pre-upgrade checks) that does need work for sure as a wider focus. @EMPIRETECANDY please let Dahua know about this and the steps to take. It might be worth them looking at boot loader and resisting overall upgrade workflow in the codebase for future releases (regardless of camera model segment) so there is a more consistent upgrade experience. Also @EMPIRETECANDY please pass on my thanks again for the work Dahua did in integrating the SmartIR fixes I shared and worked on with them, very much appreciate it and hope all 5442 owners here will benefit ! Next is to ensure this SmartIR code makes it into ALL IR based cameras in the future :)

HTH all
 
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sorry , yes.. i also have seen that before on h265...

forgot to change , my bad.. but what is on video earlier is on h264 and 265

i will factory it later and see if it changes
 
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