Quality drop on movement

PerthMan

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Hello all,

DS-2CD3145F-IS
DS-2CD3145F-I

I seem to have an issue I can't resolve by fiddling, so I tried reading but that failed too. So I am now asking the question :)

I can get a pretty clear image through live view and recording. However, when someone enters the frame and triggers recording the quality drops significantly. Not just the region the person is moving but it appears the whole view.

I am thinking maybe something to do with iFrame settings? I am not sure.

Also, I've noticed sometimes that the clear live view image kind of pulses in clarity if that makes sense. Like as if it was an auto-focus lense just fine tuning in/out to get the right picture. It's hard to see, but if you're staring at the screen you'll notice it. About once a second.

Does anyone have any idea on what can cause this?

Resolution: 2560*1440
Video Quality: Highest
Max Bitrate: 8192
Frame rate: 15 fps
iFrame rate: 15
Smoothing: 50
Exposure: 1/25
Gain: 50
Noise Reduction: 75
WDR: 50

Cheers!
 

PerthMan

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Ahh yes it could be the noise reduction. Thank you nayr.
It's night time here so I can't test it at the moment but I'll reduce it now and check it tomorrow.

I've added two screen shots from a video of myself this afternoon. You can see after I burst out the door like there are free hamburgers outside, not only am I blurry but I lose the detail in the brick work and the paving. I really hope it is the noise reduction like you say. It's frustrating to get good detail that vanishes at the moment you need it.
 

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Jack B Nimble

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Noise reduction will do it as noted, you can also crank up the gain to 80 and WDR down to 15-20 for night works well on that series camera.
 

PerthMan

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Awesome, that is probably the issue with my pulsing changes in resolution/quality too I suspect.
I was watching one recording and it looked like a brick in the house kept changing color tone.

I'll check it tomorrow in daylight now that I have switched the day settings for Noise reduction down to 33 as suggested. I'll fine tune that figure too. Thanks.
 

PerthMan

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For nights, I turn the IR off.
I am really regretting buying dome cameras. The turrets would have been far superior!
I have really bad IR bleed issues, dirty dome and spider web issues which I believe are all reduced somewhat with turret. The IR bleed not being an issue at all.
So I turn off the IR and have flood lights that come on in that area. Unfortunately the sensor lights are positioned just above the door in that screen shot, and off shot to the left near the garage door. This means I am lighting from the wrong side of anyone that triggers it. I will be installing a flood light on the right side close to the camera position so I get the light from the correct angle.
I found that there is that initial WHOOSH of light that causes the camera to adjust over a few seconds but I came up with an ingenious way around this... I just reduced my exposure time. Get a little less blur and the camera sensor doesn't have to adjust the image as much. Very happy with that but I'll apply your recommendations to a camera I have monitoring my front window area as there is no sensor light there and I don't have any desire to put one there.

Thanks for the suggestions.
 

Securame

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Keep in mind that you can have a different bitrate for main stream, and event. You could be recording 24/7 at a lower bitrate, and then crank up the bitrate when there is some action happening. Maybe you are doing exactly the opposite.
 

tigerwillow1

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I have the same issue with a 4 MP LTS/Hikvision camera and will be watching closely for anything you find that helps. Fiddling settings to exhaustion hasn't helped. When a moving object enters the frame, the camera goes into what I call "stupid mode", and the overall resolution goes from not-so-hot to horrible. It slowly recovers when the moving object exits the frame. I recently switched from h264 to h264zip+, which either improves or possibly eliminates this problem. I need more time to be sure. I think the problem is with lousy and/or defective data compression, but if there's some configuration setting to fix it, I'm in.
 

pghcamman

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Have you checked network speeds compared to bit rate settings? how many cameras total do you have recording? IMO you could lower your settings to reduce bit rate needed and not sacrifice quality.
 

PerthMan

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Securame: I only seem to have main and sub stream settings. Main settings are the ones I am fiddling with and I have made sub stream very poor quality so it would be super obvious if it started using it. Is there somewhere else to access "event" settings? I am doing it via the camera Video/Audio settings at the moment.

tigerwillow1:Yes mine is a 4mp camera too. The only video encoding I have is h.264 and h.265 with 264 being the one selected. I am guessing h264zip+ is not available for my firmware (Chinese).

pghcamman: I have 4 cameras in total. I am guessing there are other people who have a lot more so I didn't think network speed would be an issue at all. However, I am open to suggestions. Currently I have 3 cameras plugged into one PoE switch, which then plugs into my NVR and also into my ADSL modem/router. The 4th camera plugs directly into the NVR. I thought the bit rate was a MAXIMUM setting that would modulate due to network congestion but I am guessing now I have that wrong. What would you suggest as a good round about figure for bit rate?

All: Going on the comments I think my course of action will be to first lower the bit rate. Failing that I might try changing the resolution back to 3mp. Kind of defeats the purpose of buying 4mp cameras though I reckon!
 

PerthMan

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Oh man the hikvision software really sh!ts me.

Some bug's I have found:
  • When the NVR reboots it will default all cameras back to "normal" motion detection mode, when I have them set to expert. This causes motion detection to stop working in my situation. I've written a one-click batch file for my wife to run when I am not at home so she can reset the cameras after a power outage.
  • When you adjust the exposure settings, the camera will default the Video/Audio settings back to default. FPS, Video Quality, and bit rate. After adjusting exposure settings I have to go back to Video/Audio and set it.
  • Now, I am trying change bit rate BACK to 6144 from 8192 (yes I am clicking save) and it appears to save as I have gone out and back into Video/Audio but after I walk out onto camera to test it and come back I find it back at 8192. This has happened 3 times in a row now.
haha, now it's dropped to 2048.
Is this to do with me selecting a variable bit rate?
 

PerthMan

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Yep, just checked it.
Changed to 6144 and saved it. Look through live view (via the camera web interface) and the image was acceptable. I flicked back to configuration and checked. Yes I was in 6144 bit rate. I then walked out into the motion detection zone and came back and checked the live view. It looked dreadfull! Checked configuration again and yes, it's defaulted to 2048 bit rate. Also, FPS has defaulted back to 25 from 15.

I think I will concentrate on getting this fixed first as it may even be the source of the issue. I'll try examine MotionDetectionExt xml and see if there is anything in there about resolution
 

PerthMan

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Cool, I just had it set for bit rate 6144 and happen to be looking through live view when a rather large butterfly flew close to the camera across my motion detection area. The image all turned to crap and I checked bit rate and it had in fact dropped to 2046. I am now convinced the issue is to do with the motion detection triggering a change in bit rate (and fps). Why? I have no idea.
All I can find in ipaddress/MotionDetectionExt that hints at resolution is inside the ROI flag, so I don't think that's it.

I'll continue to investigate and report back. Cheers.
 

PerthMan

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Interesting finding:
Okay so I had the settings @ 15fps and 6144 bit rate.
I triggered motion detection and it changed to 25fps and 2046 bit rate. (poor quality)
I left the settings and checked them some time AFTER motion detection recording had stopped.
Settings now 25fps @ bit rate 8192

This kind of falls in line with Securame's comments about different bit rates for "events" however I cant find where to set this.
tigerwillow1: If you have the time/access/desire to test if this is the same issue you are experiencing that would be awesome. Might indicate more that there is a bug in the software rather than a bad batch of camera (I have this situation on more than one camera).
 

PerthMan

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SOLVED!

Short story, Securame was correct.
There is a setting when you go to the web based interface of the NVR. I can't find this setting in the camera interface, the physical terminal interface for the NVR or via the windows IVMS software.
For the benefit of others a quick step through below.
  • point your web browser at your nvr ip address and login.
  • Choose configuration tab along the top, then Video/Audio on the panel on the left.
  • Select the correct video channel (camera you wish to configure) in the drop down box
  • Select as the stream type "Main Stream (Event)" in the drop down box.
  • Change your settings and select save.

Bloody hikvision!!
I love and hate them all the same. First cameras I have purchased but I am frustrated at all the inconsistency. So many different settings and menus. NVR terminal, NVR web interface, IVMS, Camera web interface. Then of course the updates and upgrades which change the menu structure in all of those.

Throw in the bugs that exist like the NVR pushing all the cameras back into "normal" mode from "expert" when it boots or the fact that every time I change exposure time's I have to change video settings too (may be linked to this current issue). It's enough to make me purchase an alternative next run to see how it performs. My parents might end up with a Dahua system next year just so I can compare :)
 

tigerwillow1

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There is a setting when you go to the web based interface of the NVR. I can't find this setting in the camera interface, the physical terminal interface for the NVR or via the windows IVMS software.
For the benefit of others a quick step through below.
  • point your web browser at your nvr ip address and login.
  • Choose configuration tab along the top, then Video/Audio on the panel on the left.
  • Select the correct video channel (camera you wish to configure) in the drop down box
  • Select as the stream type "Main Stream (Event)" in the drop down box.
  • Change your settings and select save.
This is good info. Might apply to me. I'm not taking a stand until I have time to check it out for a while.

So what's happening here? When there's an event, does the nvr tell the camera to change its bitrate? Does the nvr just record at a different bitrate? Before replying I went to the nvr manual and of course could find nothing about this. Is there any user documentation for the web interface? As far as I know, it's 100% undocumented.
 

PerthMan

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I hope it does apply to you mate. Nothing worse than paying for something that doesn't deliver.
I always think the NVR's retrieve some settings from the cameras to display to the user, and push some back to the camera. For instance, if configure a camera and THEN attach it to a network with an NVR the recorder will display the settings I configured on the camera so its obviously pulled that off the camera. However, if I change any of those in the NVR and then connect direct to the camera I can see that the NVR has changed the camera.

To add to this, I can notice the quality of the live feed drop when an event is triggered. This to me kind of indicates that it is the camera that changes the bit rate and fps when an event triggers and not just the NVR recording at a lower quality.

I'm thinking this is a feature that got lost somewhere along the way and there isn't a front end coded into the web GUI for the camera. It's remained in the web GUI for the NVR however and changing it there pushes it onto the camera. Maybe they just didn't have enough room to fit it in :)
 

tigerwillow1

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I've had two motion passes after changing the setting referred to in the above few posts, and it both cases it made a big difference. Both times, the camera did not go into what I called "stupid mode". Both times the picture resolution stayed at "not so hot" instead of "horrible". This is a BIG improvement. After a little more confidence building I need to try it with zip+. The camera I'm dealing with does not support h265. I have another camera that does support h265, but the NVR and client support is flaky enough that I turned it off.

So just to summarize, in order to prevent your image from going to total crap on a motion event, you have to change a camera setting that isn't available on the camera's UI, using an undocumented field in the NVR's web UI. Nice going, Hikvision! I'm getting more and more irate at all the time I've lost due to poorly and/or undocumented features and settings, inconsistent UIs, and freeze/crash happenings. I'd be really lost without the forum support. I have a 4 MP Dahua camera ordered just to see for myself if it's any better. Mating that to my LTS NVR might be a real adventure.

Does any documentation exist for the Hikvision and/or LTS NVR web UI?
 

PerthMan

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I am not aware of any web UI documentation.

I find a lot of the documentation refers to features or has screen shots of versions that are not mine. It's very disheartening. They don't have very good version control over their software and they seem to jump around a fair bit. I was really excited when I seen all this stuff about crossing the line events. I seen people talk about setting up multiple lines but alas, my version only supports 1 line. Further research and I see they reverted back because CPU load was too high with multiple lines. That to me indicates untested features. These things should be tested extensively before release.

For me the biggest foobar is the motion detection reverting back to "normal" mode when the NVR boots. So frustraiting because I have been able to almost eliminate all my false positives while not missing REAL events with the expert motion detection. But to have it stop recording when the NVR boots is a real big foobar. Luckily I have scripted a bash to fix it. If I had a linux box online I'd monitor it on the network and fix it as it happens but I dont at the moment so have to manually run a batch file after every power outage.

I'm glad that this thread has helped you out too, I share your frustration with hikvision.
 

Securame

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For me the biggest foobar is the motion detection reverting back to "normal" mode when the NVR boots. So frustraiting because I have been able to almost eliminate all my false positives while not missing REAL events with the expert motion detection. But to have it stop recording when the NVR boots is a real big foobar. Luckily I have scripted a bash to fix it. If I had a linux box online I'd monitor it on the network and fix it as it happens but I dont at the moment so have to manually run a batch file after every power outage.
You might also try to fix that by after finishing all the configuration make the NVR connect to the cameras with a non-administrator account :)
 
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