Well wifi cams are notorious for crapping out with motion, so not surprised to hear that happened to you. But even then, at that distance, it would have been useless video for IDENTIFY purposes.
You have some learning and reading to do before you jump the gun and make another camera buying mistake.
If a true non-compressed surveillance camera exists, it will be way out of your price range LOL. You wouldn't have started with Ring and Nest if that was the issue. These are surveillance cameras not DSLR cameras.
We are running cameras here with H264 compression and are just fine for surveillance video purposes. We get the clean captures of faces and if we set the camera up for plate reading, we get clean plate captures as well.
No reason to run more than 15FPS, and many us have cams running at 10 to 12 FPS. Movies for the big screen are shot at 24FPS, so I do not think we need 30FPS for these cameras and to view on our phones and monitors LOL. The goal is to get a clean image, not smooth motion.
Sure 30FPS can provide a smoother video but no police officer has said "wow that person really is running smooth". They want the ability to freeze frame and get a clean image. So be it if the video is a little choppy....and at 10-15FPS it won't be appreciable. My neighbor runs his at 60FPS, so the person or car goes by looking smooth, but it is a blur when trying to freeze frame it because the camera can't keep up. Meanwhile my camera at 15FPS with the proper shutter speed gets the clean shots. Shutter speed is more important than FPS.
Watch these, for most of us, it isn't annoying until below 10FPS
Most of us purchase cams from
@EMPIRETECANDY, a member here with an Amazon store. These are Dahua OEM models:
You need to identify the areas you want to cover and pick a camera designed to cover that distance. In some instances, it may be a 2MP or 4MP that is the right camera. DO NOT CHASE MP!!!
It is why we recommend to purchase one good varifocal and test it at all the proposed locations day and night to figure out the correct focal lengths and cams.
A few other tips....It is simple LOL 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 (8MP) 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).
To identify someone with the wide-angle 2.8mm lens that most people opt for (and what your Ring and Nest probably are), someone would have to be within 13 feet of the camera to IDENTIFY them, but realistically within 10 feet after you dial it in to your settings.
My neighbor was bragging to me how he only needed his four 2.8mm fixed lens 4k cams to see his entire property and the street and his whole backyard. His car was sitting in the driveway practically touching the garage door and his video quality was useless to ID the perp not even 10 feet away.
Meanwhile my 2MP varifocal optically zoomed 60 feet away to the public sidewalk provided the money shot to the police to get my neighbors all their stuff back. Nobody else had video that could provide anything useful, other than what time this motion blur ghost was at their car.
Here are my general distance recommendations, but switch out the Dahua 5442 series camera to the equivalent 2MP on the 1/2.8" sensor or equivalent Hikvision works as well.
- 5442 fixed lens 2.8mm or the 4K/X - anything within 10 feet of camera OR as an overview camera
- 5442 ZE - varifocal - distances up to 40-50 feet (personally I wouldn't go past the 30 foot range but I like things closer)
- 5442 Z4E - anything up to 80-100 feet (personally I wouldn't go past 60 feet but I like things closer)
- 5241-Z12E - anything from 80 feet to almost 200 feet (personally I wouldn't go past 150 feet because I like things closer)
- 5241-Z12E - for a license plate cam that you would angle up the street to get plates up to about 175 feet away, or up to 220 with additional IR.
- 49225 PTZ - great auto-track PTZ and in conjunction with an NVR or Blue Iris and the cameras above that you can use as spotter cams to point the PTZ to the correct location to compliment the fixed cams.
You need to get the correct camera for the area trying to be covered. A wide angle 2.8mm to IDENTIFY someone 40 feet away is the wrong camera regardless of how good the camera is. A 2.8mm camera to IDENTIFY someone within 10 feet is a good choice OR it is an overview camera to see something happened but not be able to identify who.
One camera cannot be the be all, see all. Each one is selected for covering a specific area. Most of us here have different brands and types, from fixed cams, to varifocals, to PTZs, each one selected for it's primary purpose and to utilize the strength of that particular camera.
So you will need to identify the distance the camera would be from the activities you want to
IDENTIFY on and purchase the correct camera for that distance as an
optical zoom.
If you want to see things far away, you need optical zoom, digital zoom only works in the movies and TV...And the optical zoom is done real time - for a varifocal it is a set it and forget it. You cannot go to recorded video and optically zoom in later, at that point it is digital zoom, and the sensors on these cameras are so small which is why digital zoom doesn't work very well after the fact.
