Q™s Qontinuous Qompilation of Quality Quotations

Q™ · Dec 16, 2015

Q™s Qompilation of Quality Quotations

IpCanTalk is a wonderful forum with many knowledgeable and helpful members...and sometimes I read a post which (I believe) is pure gold. Pure gold in it's simplicity and depth of knowledge and pure gold in how helpful it is. This topic has been created for those such posts.

From time to time I will update the first several posts to this topic with the quotation which I believe will be the most helpful for new members...and for users like me!

And...please...don't hesitate to nominate posts to be included in Q™s Qontinuous Qompilation of Quality Quotations!

Helpful Tip For New members: Clicking on the image (located at the beginning of each quotation, after the author's name) will take you to the forum topic to which the quoted post belongs. This will allow you to read the quoted post in context to the entire topic.)

INDEX OF QUOTATIONS

Bit Rate: Constant Bit Rate vs. Variable Bit Rate Explained
iFames And How The Effect "Choppy", "Smeared" or "Torn" Video
Hard Drive Capacity: Understanding Claimed Capacity vs. Real World Capacity
Flashing Hikvision Camera Firmware
Remote Viewing Solution For Blue Iris Served Video
Positioning Cameras For Face Recognition
Adding A Weather Overlay to Your Blue Iris Video Output
Purchasing Hikvision Chinese Region Cameras From AliExpress
Running Ethernet Cable Inside Your Home

1. Bit Rate: Constant Bit Rate vs. Variable Bit Rate Explained
@MaxIcon

MaxIcon said:
Variable can save bandwidth and recording space when there's little motion and/or simple scenes. If the scenes are detailed or with a lot of motion, it may not make a big difference. Low light images can cause high bit rates with VBR if there's a lot of noise, or if sharpening is set high so that the noise is highlighted more.

Constant will always use the same bit rate, network bandwidth, and recording space, regardless of the scene.

To check performance at different bit rate settings, it's important to check the scene when there's a lot of activity or motion, especially if there's a lot of complexity in the image. Static scenes with little change can look great at lower bit rates but pixelate when there's a lot of motion.

2. iFames And How The Effect "Choppy", "Sheared", "Smeared" or "Torn" Video
@MaxIcon

MaxIcon said:
Yes, more i-frames will make smoother video. By the time you get to i-frame=1, you're running in MJPEG mode, essentially, which requires a higher bit rate for good quality, but every frame is good if your bit rate is high enough.

Running fewer i-frames has the benefit of having the glitch happen less often, but if any p-frames get dropped or corrupted, it takes longer before the i-frame comes along to fix the image. With more i-frames, if the quality suffers from low bit rate, the glitch will be even worse, since the p-frame will be more pixellated due to less bandwidth available, and each i-frame will clean it up more until the next i-frame comes along.

With variable bit rate, bandwidth changes will depend on the detail of the image and how much motion there is, as well as the camera's firmware. You'd have to test it to see for sure. My old Vivoteks will go above the baseline bit rate setting on variable if they need to, while Hiks use the bit rate setting as a max and will only drop below it. At least, that's how it worked when I tested, back on 2013 era firmware. I haven't updated for a while, so that may have changed.

Best bet is to test it at whatever settings you end up liking, and record a scene with a lot of motion and detail. If you step through it frame by frame and there's no obvious quality difference between the last p-frame and the next i-frame, your bit rate is good.

@MaxIcon

MaxIcon said:
With 1/12 sec exposure, your frame rates will drop to 12 fps when the light is low enough for the exposure to drop that low. 30 fps can only be sustained at 1/30 sec or above in low light. When it's bright enough, it doesn't matter, but the frame rate can never be higher than the inverse of the exposure.

I prefer higher resolution and lower frame rate, as well as minimal motion blur, since lower resolution and motion blur can prevent you from getting a good ID. Lower frame rate loses some smoothness, but if it enables higher resolution, your ability to ID is better. YMMV, as always!

@MaxIcon

MaxIcon said:
What you need is to set a maximum exposure time of 1/30 sec. The frame rate doesn't matter in this case. 1/30 sec will avoid motion blur for walkers, but runners will still blur. 1/60 sec reduces it even more, but Hiks get pretty noisy at 1/60 in low light, and many people use 1/30 as the best compromise between low motion blur and noise.

Long exposures set a maximum frame rate, but short exposures set a minimum frame rate. At 1/30 sec, you can run 30 fps or lower with no problems, but you couldn't run 60 fps. At 6 fps, you can run 1/6 second or faster, but anything below 1/30 second will cause motion blur.

Here's an example of a runner at 1/30 sec in daylight. 1/60 sec would have frozen the motion much better:
View attachment 6074

3. Hard Drive Capacity: Understanding Claimed Capacity vs. Real World Capacity
@MaxIcon

MaxIcon said:
Yes, this is the difference between base 2 (used for bandwidth and native data calculations) and base 10 (used for HD marketing, because it's bigger and sounds like more space), and I mixed the two.

500 GB (base 10) is about 465 GiB (base 2), and both are the same amount of data. Using GiB will give 10.8 days instead of 11.5 days. Either one gets you in the ballpark.

4. Flashing Hikvision Camera Firmware
@Q2U (Sorry I Couldn't Resist!)

Q2U said:
( or Firmware Flashing For Dummies )

With so may folks bricking their Hikvision cameras I thought it might be helpful to provide a topic -- an FAQ if you will -- on the do's and don'ts of how to download Hikvision firmware for your Hikvision camera. Please be advised that Ol' Q™ is no expert by any stretch of the imagination, so what I initially write in this post (I hope) will be corrected and made better as the experts weigh in and provide better information. So here we go!...

5. Remote Viewing Solution For Blue Iris Served Video
@bp2008

bp2008 said:
...I never particularly liked Blue Iris's remote view web pages. They work, but they lack the simplicity and ease-of-use that I wanted. So I made better ones, and I would like to share them with all of you...

6. Positioning Cameras For Face Recognition
@stevejay

stevejay said:
I went to all kinds of trouble when I got my first set of IP cams to mount them way up high, assuming that the comprehensive "aerial" view from overhead looking down onto my porch—and another across my patio— was the best way to see as much as possible. Eventually I realized that I couldn't even identify the mailman's face in the recordings if he was wearing a simple baseball cap. When I got new cams I put them down at eye level so now I'm looking right into people's face. There's sort of a security issue with having them low enough to grab. I have the one monitoring the front porch mounted back behind a hedge of cactus and other sticky, stabbing plants next to the house. But, if someone really wanted to get their hands on it, I guess they could. Hopefully I would have good video recorded by the time they could run away with it.

7. Adding A Weather Overlay to Your Blue Iris Video Output
@Mike

Mike said:
I'm very happy to introduce Blue Iris Tools to everyone. Blue Iris Tools was created to act as a companion to Blue Iris and has a bunch of features built in to help maximize your Blue Iris experience.

Some of the core features of Blue Iris Tools are:

Weather Overlays

Easily add the local weather to your camera feeds,

Easily create Macros for Blue Iris right from BI Tools,

Ability to assign all weather conditions to 1 Macro!

Watchdog

If Blue Iris crashes or closes, BI Tools will re-open it

Monitor Blue Iris (whether running 'normal' or as a service)

Monitor Blue Iris' web server. If BIT cannot connect, activate alerts

CPU monitor + CPU Overlay

BI folders monitor

IP Address monitor (notify if change)

Notifications - Get notified if BI crashes via e-mail, push notifications via Pushover (download BIT icon here), by playing a sound, pinging / launching a URL.

Web Server File Management

Insert Google Analytics into web server files easily,

Search & Replace in web server files,

Download & install bp2008's alternative web server files.

Language

Create and import custom language phrases and definitions. Language files are available in the 2nd post of this thread. If you created your own, please share it!

DDNS Updater & IP Management (In next version)

Automatically update DDNS providers when your IP address changes...

8. Purchasing Hikvision Chinese Region Cameras From AliExpress
@misslehead3

misslehead3 said:
I am currently dealing with the worst case scenario. I have 40 cameras up and running and am struggling to get a feature working. There is no support for these cameras by the company because China sends you to US and the US tell you to kick rocks because they are Chinese cameras. Never again will I buy non US cameras, regardless of savings. You also cant ugrade the firmware because it will revert the camera back to its origonal language, which would be Chinese in this case. As for price savings the difference in AliExpress compared to @milkisbad is marginal from what I am seeing. I just wish I knew about him before getting the cameras elsewhere.

@fenderman

fenderman said:
China cams were a great buy and 50 percent cheaper two years ago. Regular folks could simply not purchase from ADI or other distributors. So it was the only choice for many. Now that there are several vendors who sell US region cameras and the price has dropped, it makes more sense to just buy locally...with the exception of our members outside the US who are still gouged on these cameras...specialty models like the hikvision pinhole cameras are not carried locally or the price is inflated, so going to china makes sense there as well.

9. Running Cable Inside Your Home

An entire topic of quality quotations!...

https://www.ipcamtalk.com/showthread.php/6622-Recommendations-for-pulling-CAT6e-wires-in-an-existing-home-DIY-or-hire-someone

Q™ · Dec 16, 2015