Review-Dahua/EmpireTech Dual lens IPC-HDBW5441F-AS-E2 (The Boobie Cam Upgrade)

[EMPIRETECANDY]

Has anyone found a better solution to the plugin problem? I've tried getting this setup from 2 different Win 10 computers. I don't have IE on either of them. I change most of the settings I need, but trying to setup IVS without the preview is an exercise in madness. My 5442 camera work fine in any modern browser, so not sure why these don't (despite having basically the same firmware version).

The dual lens or multi-lens camera will not cancel the plugin, have to use the plugin to make it working well.

 

[looney2ns]

Anyone having an issue with the built in IR illuminator on channel 2? Mine doesn't appear to be coming on ever. I can clearly turn the illuminator on and off in conditions settings and see the difference in the video for channel 1. Changing to manual and sliding the brightness has no impact on channel 2. I'm running the last firmware from here and wondering if there's a bug:

IPC-HDBW5441F-AS-E2 Dual Lens Smart IR FW.

Hey guys Here is the Smart IR FW for this model is done now. It'a a bit good 4MP Dual lens compare which support AI. This firmware is a special one for EmpireTech IPC-HDBW5441F-AS-E2 only. Product Link...

ipcamtalk.com

@EMPIRETECANDY - is there older firmware I should try out?

Go out after dark and look at the LEDs around the lens on channel 2, you can see them if they are on.
IF they aren't on, I would try resetting the cam to factory defaults and then set it back up from scratch.
No issue's here.

 

[tedrpi]

Awesome - you will love it!

You need to dial the camera in to your field of view. Staying on auto/default will never result in acceptable performance, especially at night. Ghost and blur is common with auto/default settings.

In my opinion, shutter (exposure) and gain are the two most important and then base the others off of it. Shutter is more important than FPS. It is the shutter speed that prevents motion blur, not FPS. 15 FPS is more than enough for surveillance cameras as we are not producing Hollywood movies. Match iframes to FPS. 15FPS is all that is usually needed.

Many people do not realize there is manual shutter that lets you adjust shutter and gain and a shutter priority that only lets you adjust shutter speed but not gain. The higher the gain, the bigger the noise and see-through ghosting start to appear because the noise is amplified. Most people select shutter priority and run a faster shutter than they should because it is likely being done at 100 gain, so it is actually defeating their purpose of a faster shutter.

But first, run H264, smart codec off, CBR, and 8192 bitrate to start.

Go into shutter settings and change to manual shutter and start with custom shutter as ms and change to 0-8.3ms and gain 0-50 (night) and 0-30 (day)for starters. Auto could have a shutter speed of 100ms or more with a gain at 100 and shutter priority could result in gain up at 100 which will contribute to significant ghosting and that blinding white you will get from the infrared.

Now what you will notice immediately at night is that your image gets A LOT darker. That faster the shutter, the more light that is needed. But it is a balance. The nice bright night image results in Casper during motion LOL. What do we want, a nice static image or a clean image when there is motion introduced to the scene?

So if it is too dark, then start adding ms to the time. Go to 10ms, 12ms, etc. until you find what you feel is acceptable as an image. Then have someone walk around and see if you can get a clean shot. Try not to go above 16.67ms (but certainly not above 30ms) as that tends to be the point where blur starts to occur. Conversely, if it is still bright, then drop down in time to get a faster shutter.

You can also adjust brightness and contrast to improve the image.

You can also add some gain to brighten the image - but the higher the gain, the more ghosting you get. Some cameras can go to 70 or so before it is an issue and some can't go over 50.

But adjusting those two settings will have the biggest impact. The next one is noise reduction. Want to keep that as low as possible. Depending on the amount of light you have, you might be able to get down to 40 or so at night (again camera dependent) and 20-30 during the day, but take it as low as you can before it gets too noisy. Again this one is a balance as well. Too smooth and no noise can result in soft images and contribute to blur.

Do not use backlight features until you have exhausted every other parameter setting. And if you do have to use backlight, take it down as low as possible.

After every setting adjustment, have someone walk around outside and see if you can freeze-frame to get a clean image. If not, keep changing until you do. Clean motion pictures are what we are after, not a clean static image.

Greatly appreciate the guidance. Any specific suggestion on exposure comp vs advanced 2D and advanced 3D settings? I assume they are largely noise reduction so try to get down to ~40 for night and 20-30 during the day?

 

[wittaj]

Yeah, you can probably get in the 10s-20s during the day. At night take the NR as low as you can stand. Probably not much more than 40 or so.

 

[tedrpi]

Yeah, you can probably get in the 10s-20s during the day. At night take the NR as low as you can stand. Probably not much more than 40 or so.

Any suggestions on exposure comp? Manual just describes it as making the image brighter. I suspect its a gain value.

 

[Dagwood08]

I'm unable to get the second camera feed working in Blue Iris, even though I've selected Cam#2 in the video configuration. Both instances of the camera show Cam#1 even though I've selected Cam#1 and Cam#2. Any suggestions? Are there any other settings that need to be changed?

 

[wittaj]

You need to go to the main and substream dropdowns in BI setting and change it from 1 to 2. The Cam# box doesn't always work.

 

[Dagwood08]

That was easy. Thanks for the prompt response.

 

[cams2007]

@wittaj
I was trying to follow you recommendations from page 4 for camera setup. Why do you recommend H.264 over the default H.265? I found that when I changed it to H.264 it make the cpu usage excessively high, like from under 10% to over 50% when changing only 1 channel on 1 camera. Would you recommend H.264B or H.264H over H.265? Currently running BI version 5.5.7.5 and cameras are at 15 fps and running trigger on ONVIF only.

 

[wittaj]

@wittaj
I was trying to follow you recommendations from page 4 for camera setup. Why do you recommend H.264 over the default H.265? I found that when I changed it to H.264 it make the cpu usage excessively high, like from under 10% to over 50% when changing only 1 channel on 1 camera. Would you recommend H.264B or H.264H over H.265? Currently running BI version 5.5.7.5 and cameras are at 15 fps and running trigger on ONVIF only.

Did you change mainstream and substream to H264? I suspect when you changed it, BI somehow lost the substream because H264 or H265 should not be an appreciable change to the BI CPU%.

Or it was a conflict with the BVR file that started in H265 and is now seeing H264 stream, so you would have to open up all files in BI and manually stop the current BVR recording (or reboot the computer LOL).

This will explain H264 versus H265 a little better.

H265 in theory provides more storage as it compresses differently, but part of that compression means it macro blocks big areas of the image that it thinks isn't moving. However, it also takes more processing power of the already small CPU in the camera and that can be problematic if someone is maxing out the camera and then it stutters.

In theory it is supposed to need 30% less storage than H264, but most of us have found it isn't that much. Mine was less than few minutes per day. And to my eye and others that I showed clips to and just said do you like video 1 or video 2 better, everyone thought the H264 provided a better image.

The left image is H264, so all the blocks are the same size corresponding to the resolution of the camera. H265 takes areas that it doesn't think has motion and makes them into bigger blocks and in doing so lessens the resolution yet increases the CPU demand to develop these larger blocks.

In theory H265 is supposed to need half the bitrate because of the macroblocking. But if there is a lot of motion in the image, then it becomes a pixelated mess. The only way to get around that is a higher bitrate. But if you need to run the same bitrate for H265 as you do H264, then the storage savings is zero. Storage is computed based on multiplying bitrate, FPS, and resolution.

In my testing I have one camera that sees a parked car in front of my house. H265 sees that the car isn't moving, so it macroblocks the whole car and surrounding area. Then the car owner walked up to the car and got in and the motion is missed because the macroblock being so large. Or if it catches it, because the bitrate is low, it is a pixelated mess during the critical capture point and by the time H265 adjusts to there is now motion, the ideal capture is missed.

In my case, the car is clear and defined in H264, but is blurry and soft edges in H265.

H265 is one of those theory things that sounds good, but reality use is much different.

As always, YMMV. But do not use Codec with BI or you may have trouble, so just stick with H264 without the H or B or + after.

 

[cams2007]

Great! I think it may be one of your first couple suggestions. Recording 24/7 with substream and it switches to mainstream when triggerd so will try switching and then rebooting to see cpu usage. Will update with results. Thank you for your suggestions and explanations.

 

[cams2007]

Great advice as always wittaj! It was exactly as you stated in the second comment, with the stream change. Rebooting took care of it and the cpu usage is the same or less. Now to waiting for evening and tweak the rest of the night settings. Thank you again for the great tips, advice and answers!

 

[thomas-nau]

The dual lens or multi-lens camera will not cancel the plugin, have to use the plugin to make it working well.

I'm curious what happens tomorrow when IE reaches EOL. Will Microsoft still allow me to use it or enable a forced
forward towards EDGE?
However, I use Pale Moon 32bit as replacement and for all of my 5442s and 3241-ZAS it works great but there's one
issue with the 5441F. It allows me to setup everything I like such as one IVS rule on cam #1 and two on cam #2.
Also manual shutter settings. However, after a reboot and re-login the IVS rules of cam #2 are gone and I cannot
add any via the "+" button. Using the "save" button results in an error.
Going through a factory reset doesn't solve the problem while using IE does. Anyone seeing the same?

 

[looney2ns]

Using Chrome with the IE Tab extension installed works.

 

[thomas-nau]

Using Chrome with the IE Tab extension installed works.

Thanks @looney2ns! Followed your recommendation and it works great. However I need to correct
my above statement. The issue of disappearing IVS rules is reproducible with IE11, Chrome+IE-Tabs
or Pale Moon. The steps to reproduce are:

• Starting of with the working setup. IVS as in attached picture #1
• create backup
• manual reboot

Now in life view the IVS lines for cam-module #2 are gone. Double checked if the display settings
are "on" and they are. Same picture no matter which browser I use. See screenshot #2. In IVS
settings all rules are gone and clicking on the "plus" sign doesn't do anything, nor does refresh.
Pressing "save" results in an error message as shown in screenshot #3.

Loading the saved config file brings all back to normal. Also verified IVS to be working
again thanks to my wife

Any ideas as I'm sure I'll forget to load the config on some power outage, reboot, ... in the
not too far future. Thanks

 

[thomas-nau]

...
H265 is one of those theory things that sounds good, but reality use is much different.

As always, YMMV. But do not use Codec with BI or you may have trouble, so just stick with H264 without the H or B or + after.

@wittaj I fully agree with your comments on the H.265 codec. Using on the cams created more problems than benefit for me too.
E.g. scenes with short gras moving become blurry quickly and often there are visual effect that reoccur on every I-frame interval
as long as bandwidth isn't set to high values. Much higher that the ones needed for H.264.
However, my mileage is different indeed I use the H.264H on all my Dahua cams without being aware of an issue. I assume "H"
means "high" profile. Driven by curiosity ... what are the drawbacks you have in mind? High CPU usage? Thanks

 

[wittaj]

@wittaj I fully agree with your comments on the H.265 codec. Using on the cams created more problems than benefit for me too.
E.g. scenes with short gras moving become blurry quickly and often there are visual effect that reoccur on every I-frame interval
as long as bandwidth isn't set to high values. Much higher that the ones needed for H.264.
However, my mileage is different indeed I use the H.264H on all my Dahua cams without being aware of an issue. I assume "H"
means "high" profile. Driven by curiosity ... what are the drawbacks you have in mind? High CPU usage? Thanks

Yes, moving grass is an excellent example showing how H265 would macroblock the whole area and create that blurry look.

All things being equal the H.264H will generally produce the best results. It results in a little more processing power in the camera, but as long as someone isn't trying to run the camera at every rated spec, it usually isn't a problem.

The biggest issue would be with a VMS system. Some systems wonk out with any codecs used outside of plain ole H264 or H265, so if you are using a VMS and notice issues, that would be the first thing to change.

 

[looney2ns]

Thanks @looney2ns! Followed your recommendation and it works great. However I need to correct
my above statement. The issue of disappearing IVS rules is reproducible with IE11, Chrome+IE-Tabs
or Pale Moon. The steps to reproduce are:

• Starting of with the working setup. IVS as in attached picture #1
• create backup
• manual reboot

Now in life view the IVS lines for cam-module #2 are gone. Double checked if the display settings
are "on" and they are. Same picture no matter which browser I use. See screenshot #2. In IVS
settings all rules are gone and clicking on the "plus" sign doesn't do anything, nor does refresh.
Pressing "save" results in an error message as shown in screenshot #3.

Loading the saved config file brings all back to normal. Also verified IVS to be working
again thanks to my wife

Any ideas as I'm sure I'll forget to load the config on some power outage, reboot, ... in the
not too far future. Thanks

I am not seeing that problem with the sample I have here. It all works as expected.
I'm using Chrome plus IETab.

I would try this: Clear the cache for the browser, uninstall all Dahua camera plugins.
Then try again.

 

[thomas-nau]

I am not seeing that problem with the sample I have here. It all works as expected.
I'm using Chrome plus IETab.

I would try this: Clear the cache for the browser, uninstall all Dahua camera plugins.
Then try again.

Thanks for the suggestions. I did clear the browser cache when I tried this afternoon.
Also checked IE for installed plugins but the list was empty beside some Microsoft ones.
Would you mind pointing me to the location where plug-ins are stores or to a recipe to
get rid of them? I remember having accepted using them in the past on first access of
one of the cams so I assume they are still around somewhere

 

[looney2ns]

Window Start menu, scroll down.