No image improvement, 1080p camera vs 4k
- Thread starter 8trek
- Start date
I'm really happy with these 4k 1/1.2" ones. Do you think the difference in resolution would be that big of a deal? Assume a 4M 1/1.8" vs 4k/1.2" at night would be close, in your opinion which is better for night? Also not a big fan of domes, do they make a bullet version of this?
The 5442-ZE is a turret and not a dome and does not suffer from the issues of a dome, but yes they do have it in bullet format as well.
It comes down to the distance you want to IDENTIFY. At night a 2.8mm focal length, whether it be the 4K/X or 5442 won't be able to IDENTIFY at 30 feet away, but the 5442 varifocal at max zoom will be able to.
I have a mixture of cameras, each one selected for the area to IDENTIFY. MY 4k/X camera is great, but I am not going to use it to try to identify at 40 feet.
It comes down to the distance you want to IDENTIFY. At night a 2.8mm focal length, whether it be the 4K/X or 5442 won't be able to IDENTIFY at 30 feet away, but the 5442 varifocal at max zoom will be able to.
I have a mixture of cameras, each one selected for the area to IDENTIFY. MY 4k/X camera is great, but I am not going to use it to try to identify at 40 feet.
Just to be certain, do you mean this:
According to the specs this camera requires more light than the IPC-Color4K-X 2.8mm.
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looney2ns
IPCT Contributor
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Yes, that is the bullet version. You are one of the few that prefer a bullet over a turret LOL.
Well the 4K/X has a lot bigger sensor than the 5442, but the 4K/X doesn't come in varifocal. Like I said, if you need to iDENTIFY at 30 feet, the varifocal is a better option. And yes, the higher the focal length, the more light is needed.
Plus the 5442 will see infrared, and the 4K/X does not.
But I wouldn't go much on the light spec ratings...
So the reason for the difference in the Lux ratings is based on the parameters the camera is set to.
That is why you don't put much stock in these ratings. Every manufacturer tweaks their camera to get the "best" lux rating it can, but nobody would run the camera in the settings they did to get the lux ratings. These lux ratings are probably at 1/3s shutter, which would be a bright static image, but complete motion blur.
So the best bet is to look at the reviews here on the camera where members here show you video and stills from motion shots and you can see the light they had available and determine if it is close to what you have or not. Do not rely on Amazon and other site reviews because the general consumer is fascinated with a bright image. You never see motion in the amazon reviews. You can make any camera look nice and bright and great out at midnight if you slow the shutter and up the gain, but then motion is a complete blur.
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Hey wittaj, i've had the SD49225XA-HNR for almost a month, will be tomorrow, and need to figure quickly if i should return this thing. Here's the problem: After a day of installing the camera lost signal for several hours overnight. Happened one other time but hadn't happened again until last night and this time was down from like 8:45pm till 6am this morning. I have the auto reboot set for Sunday at 2am so this happened after that. Have you had this issue with yours? Is there a reason they put these auto reboot options in there for this very reason?
Sounds like a power issue and however you are powering it can't keep up with the camera when infrared turns on.
Are you using a POE+ switch? If so what else is hooked to it as you may be overloading the switch. Sounds like when the other cameras switch back from infrared to color, then there is enough extra power to run this camera. What switch brand/model?
Do you have a POE+ injector or other power supply you can try?
And yes this can be intermittent - your cameras can pull and need different power requirements at different times, so maybe there is some motion that happens that all the cameras see it and the power needs go up just enough to send the power requirement beyond what the POE switch can provide. So some days it is good, and some days it is not.
I tend to say not use the auto reboot unless you see trouble. Just like your phone needs an occasional reboot, so do these cameras, but I tend to do it manually unless one is acting up.
This particular camera is on it's own injector, the length from this injector to the camera is only like 15 feet
Initially when i set it up had it on my main switch, the length from this switch when it was hooked up is probably closer to 100 feet or more
Given I had issues on both switches not sure where this leads me.
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That injector is your problem. You need a POE+ injector. You are starving the camera for power.
Your injector gives out 15.4w of power and the camera needs more than that and the POE+ provides 30 watts of power. This camera can draw up to 24 watts when in infrared and tracking.
It will work for you intermittently as daytime doesn't draw as much and depending on your settings, it may work sometimes at night until something happens and the PTZ needs more power.
Now your POE switch says it is POE+, but are you exceeding the power limit of the switch? Remember the power budget comes into play as well as it cannot provide 30watts to every port.
How many cameras do you have hooked to it and what is there power draw? Unhook the other cameras at night and plug in just the PTZ and take it thru its paces and it will probably work.
If you had a camera on every port, 250 watts divided by 16 ports is 15.6watts available per port.
Your injector gives out 15.4w of power and the camera needs more than that and the POE+ provides 30 watts of power. This camera can draw up to 24 watts when in infrared and tracking.
It will work for you intermittently as daytime doesn't draw as much and depending on your settings, it may work sometimes at night until something happens and the PTZ needs more power.
Now your POE switch says it is POE+, but are you exceeding the power limit of the switch? Remember the power budget comes into play as well as it cannot provide 30watts to every port.
How many cameras do you have hooked to it and what is there power draw? Unhook the other cameras at night and plug in just the PTZ and take it thru its paces and it will probably work.
If you had a camera on every port, 250 watts divided by 16 ports is 15.6watts available per port.
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Wow okay, man you are a wealth of knowledge. So this should get the job done correct?
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I have a 4K/X not for the 8MP it provides but for its low light performance. It simply doesn't need much light to give an incredible night color image. It blows away any camera I previously had at that location in terms of low light performance. Sensor size make a huge difference.
Thanks for this, new injector has solve this problem with the SD49225XA-HNR ... next question, could you share your settings with this cameras as I believe you stated you also own this thing? I'm getting terrible night vision using various settings i've tried.
So just to be clear, the lower the shutter number (0-0ms being the lowest possible) will give you the least amount of what i'll call "stutter" or "jagged" video where frames appear to be missing... is that correct? Reason i'm asking is I can't seem to eliminate this problem from any of my 4k cameras.
Everyone has different terms for what they are referring to, but yes 0-0 means the camera will run at its fastest shutter, which for many Dahua cams is 1/100,000s shutter speed.
Video frames missing isn't related to shutter speed. Stutter and jagged can be other problems like your system cannot handle the bandwidth of the cameras, FPS issues, or you are using every capability of the camera and is maxing out the little processor in the camera and causing it to stutter.
So you need to troubleshoot. Unplug all but one camera and see if it still happens. Then add each camera back one at a time.
Are your cameras going thru a router? If so that is a common culprit.
All of the cameras are using the recommended fps of 15 with equivalent I frame interval. I have bit rate set to highest... if i lower that can this help? All devices including cameras inevitably go through a router... please elaborate on how a router can impact this issue. Thanks.
For kicks drop the bitrate really low and see if it fixes it - if it does then you know it is a bandwidth issue somewhere.
Cameras connected to Wifi routers (whether wifi or not) are problematic for surveillance cameras because they are always streaming and passing data. And the data demands go up with motion and then you lose signal. A lost packet and it has to resend. It can bring the whole network down if trying to send cameras through a wifi router. At the very least it can slow down your entire system.
Unlike Netflix and other streaming services that buffer a movie, these cameras do not buffer up part of the video, so drop outs are frequent. You would be amazed how much streaming services buffer - don't believe me, start watching something and unplug your router and watch how much longer you can watch NetFlix before it freezes - mine goes 45 seconds. Now do the same with a camera connected to a router and it is fairly instantaneous (within the latency of the stream itself)...
The same issue applies even with the hard-wired cameras trying to send all this non-buffer video stream through a router. Most consumer grade wifi routers are not designed to pass the constant video stream data of cameras, and since they do not buffer, you get these issues. The consumer routers are just not designed for this kind of traffic, even a GB speed router.
So the more cameras you add, the bigger the potential for issues.
Most of us here run a dual NIC system - all the cameras on one ethernet port on the BI computer on a different IP address range than our internet and then the internet goes into the other ethernet on the BI computer. Then a good chunk run a VLAN switch to isolate the cameras off the router. With either option, the camera feeds are not passing thru the router and the cameras are not touching the internet and phoning home.
And then a few have them going thru a router and exposing them to the internet and potentially causing the stutters and dropouts and other issues.
So what is the network topology of your system? What computer i number and CPU do you have and what is the CPU%?
Have you done every optimization in the wiki including substreams?
Optimizing Blue Iris's CPU Usage
Cameras connected to Wifi routers (whether wifi or not) are problematic for surveillance cameras because they are always streaming and passing data. And the data demands go up with motion and then you lose signal. A lost packet and it has to resend. It can bring the whole network down if trying to send cameras through a wifi router. At the very least it can slow down your entire system.
Unlike Netflix and other streaming services that buffer a movie, these cameras do not buffer up part of the video, so drop outs are frequent. You would be amazed how much streaming services buffer - don't believe me, start watching something and unplug your router and watch how much longer you can watch NetFlix before it freezes - mine goes 45 seconds. Now do the same with a camera connected to a router and it is fairly instantaneous (within the latency of the stream itself)...
The same issue applies even with the hard-wired cameras trying to send all this non-buffer video stream through a router. Most consumer grade wifi routers are not designed to pass the constant video stream data of cameras, and since they do not buffer, you get these issues. The consumer routers are just not designed for this kind of traffic, even a GB speed router.
So the more cameras you add, the bigger the potential for issues.
Most of us here run a dual NIC system - all the cameras on one ethernet port on the BI computer on a different IP address range than our internet and then the internet goes into the other ethernet on the BI computer. Then a good chunk run a VLAN switch to isolate the cameras off the router. With either option, the camera feeds are not passing thru the router and the cameras are not touching the internet and phoning home.
And then a few have them going thru a router and exposing them to the internet and potentially causing the stutters and dropouts and other issues.
So what is the network topology of your system? What computer i number and CPU do you have and what is the CPU%?
Have you done every optimization in the wiki including substreams?
Optimizing Blue Iris's CPU Usage
oh wow, I've never fully understood why some mboards have 2 net ports until now. The problem i see with this approach is i would only being able to access the camera's gui's from the BI computer, correct? The problem has to be the way in which i'm currently running since when viewing the live feed in the camera gui it also has the same problem. cpu usage is under control at the moment. All but a couple cameras I could easily take the router out of the equation, a couple go through various switches before reaching the router, the others all go to a large POI switch which could be removed from the router and plugged directly into the BI pc. I have a netgear nighthawk router, everything is hard wired... it does have some setting for vlan but this is getting into uncharted territory for me. Thanks for all the info... btw, did you see my post earlier about your settings for the one camera?
Parley
Known around here
Just for general information, I am using Hikvision NVR's. The more 4K cameras that I add, I am finding out that the NVR's cannot handle the added bandwidth. So I have been adding NVR's and I am up to 4 of them. When all is said and done I may have 5 of them. 