Less- vs More-Featured Cameras & Camera Software

[pjl]

Hello -

I'm looking at this Hikvision camera series comparison chart and wondering the following. If one is going to use camera software (in my case, SecuritySpy since I'm Mac-based), I would have thought it would be the camera software that performs all the "smart" features (e.g., line crossing, face detection, etc.), hence you do not need the camera itself to do those features --- so you could just get a less-featured ("dumb") camera.

Is this true? Thanks.

 

[aristobrat]

Yeah, VMS like Blue Iris and SecuritySpy can do their own motion detection/AI which can make the cameras ability to do it not as important.

For folks using NVRs instead of PCs running VMS, the NVRs rarely have enough processing power to do their own motion detection and rely on the cameras doing the motion detection.

I think most folks here choose their camera models based on how well they perform in low light situations. Dahua Starlight models are usually the most popular because of the variety of choices and the price/ease of ordering from a great forum vendor Andy (@EMPIRETECANDY). Hikvision has a similar series called Dark Fighter. The latest models from both companies now have ‘AI’ that can filter alerts if they don’t detect a person and/or a car. I think SecuritySpy can do that kind of filtering too. Blue Iris can’t do it natively yet so for my two new AI models I let the camera do the motion detecting instead of BI.