Review - Dahua SD49225XA-HNR 2MP 25x Starlight + IR PTZ AI Camera with Deep IVS & SMD Plus

[fresnoboy]

Hi guys. I just got the camera installed a couple days ago (from Andy of course!), and have worked through the thread trying to optimize the settings. This is my first PTZ camera, so while I am used to most of Dahua settings (I have 20 cameras all feeding a Blue Iris system) work But I still have some problems, and would love some help:

The camera is mounted about 15 ft high on a large tree, that reaches over the street our house is at. From this location, it can see all the way down the street towards a T interaction at the end, probably 600 ft or so. There is another 150 ft in the opposite direction. The camera can see the our mailbox and drive way if it looks down, maybe 15 ft away. It can also look at our house and a full zoom into the outer rooms' window really well. The neighbors across the street were really scared after they thought a prowler was in front of their house in the middle of the night, so were very happy for me to mount a camera on this location, even though it can easily see into their property. We have cameras all around our house, but they could not see into the street on the other side of the fence unless they were zoomed in. This PTZ fixes this gap very nicely.

A few questions for folks:

1) At night when looking down the street towards the intersection, it doesn't begin zooming in until the car is about halfway down the street, and the headlights blind the camera so you can't make out much detail until the car gets very close. Are there settings that I can change that help it adjust so the headlights don't cause massive blooming?

2) When the car gets very close to the camera and turns into the neighbors house or under the camera to cross to the other side of the street, the camera breaks track and goes back to the preset it was set at. It doesn't follow the car to the other side of the camera. I have tried setting the tracking target size to as low as 25, and as high as 60, and it doesn't keep the lock.

3) I am having trouble with BI controlling the presets. As strange as it sounds, BI only seems to be able to get the camera to go to preset 2. None of the other presets (there are 5 right now) seem to work in BI. They work fine if I log into the camera. But not via BI. Any idea as to what could cause such odd behavior? The settings for the various presets are exactly the same in BI.

Does someone have this camera set up well in BI, and can show me all the settings in BI that are in use for you?

Thanks!

 

[wittaj]

Great camera. But not plug and play and you need to dial it in to your settings!

The AI is great, but the camera also needs time to identify the target and determine if it meets the criteria, so at night and dark, it can have some difficulty and the headlights may be contributing to that. You can live with it or also use SMD or IVS with a minimum object size to track instead.

You can use backlight and HLC to knock the headlights down, but I always recommend trying the others as well and see which one works best for your location.

When the car goes under the camera, at that point the vehicle is probably moving too fast in relation to the camera and loses it or the track time needs to be increased. There is also a PTZ speed setting that might make that a little better. But I suspect the vehicle is simply moving too fast and too close to the camera.

Mine works flawlessly in BI - I just added it and hit find/inspect and let BI do it's thing. Now you have to re-run that every time you add presets, so if you added any presets after you added it to BI, do another find/inspect. Here is my PTZ tab:

 

[fresnoboy]

OK, doing another find/inspect fixed the presets issue. Thx! The IR control in BI doesn't seem to work - is there some setting that I need in the camera to make this work? It's set to SmartIR now, but if a car parks about 50 ft away, the IR seems so strong I can't read the plate in the video. The camera has a setting called "ZoomPrio". What does that do? IT seems even brighter than SmartIR for the parked car, but there is an internal reflection that shows up where I can see the letters on the plate.

In the camera settings, I had zoom speed set to 100, is that right (I think its the default). The mode was set to semi-auto, but is auto a better setting to avoid the camera losing track? Or is there a different setting for the speed of the zoom when the camera is autotracking?

The car is not going very fast, maybe 20 mph, but it's pretty close to the car. If it kept slewing the same direction it was slewing before it would keep tracking and then the car would get farther away. What should be target tracking size be in my configuration?

PS I have a intrusion zone that is most of the unzoomed field of view. I have it set to appear and and enter/exit. Is that the proper setting for this wide a field of interest?

Thanks for the quick reply!

 

[wittaj]

Yeah, the IR control probably isn't going to work in BI. I haven't got that feature to work for any camera in BI, but I haven't tried to hard either, but maybe someone has.

So with a camera like this, there is always going to be a compromise. IR and reflective plates are a recipe for a white plate as it appears the IR is too strong. In reality it is that the shutter set to auto is going to slow. Smart IR is looking at the entire image and then adjusts the IR appropriately, but on plates it will be a washout due to the reflective nature. Smart IR in theory lessens the IR as a subject gets closer so that you can see details as most cameras the IR will completely wash out a face at close distance like you see with plates. That is theory and most say it is still to bright. That is where the next step comes in...

So you have to switch the shutter from auto to a manual shutter. Start at 1/120 and see what happens. Whenever you speed up the shutter, you need more light for the faster shutter, so the image will darken and may darken quite a bit. So then you try a slower shutter 1/100, 1/60, 1/50, 1/25, until you found that balance.

Now because you have set a shutter speed that can get better details and less blur, the "range" of the camera is now less because what you could see way out in the distance when zoomed out is now too black. So it is a compromise between getting details and still having an acceptable range on a wide out zoom.

ZoomPriority IR is similar to SmartIR in that it will make the IR brighter as you zoom in to something far away. Best to play with all the IR options and pick the one that works in your location.

Since you tried the PTZ at 100, try default or a slower one and then tracking size to the smallest and see if it will track it. It will come down to is this needed or are you better getting close ups as they approach and get that front shot compared to the back shot. 20mph with what sounds like a PTZ very close to the street and thus the car is actually moving fast for tracking. The tracking works best at a distance. I can auto track jets because they are not right up on the camera and they are going much faster than 20mph LOL.

Post a video of it in action and we can probably further dial it in or tell you if that is a limitation based on location.

I have found the intrusion zone with appear and enter/exit as the best option in most instances. Sometime a tripwire (or a z pattern tripwire or multiple trip wires) make the most sense. The multiple IVS allows you to then set up better dialed in options. So maybe a vehicle to try to track all the way a tracking size of 25 works, but then people are too small, so you set up that IVS just for vehicle and then set up another IVS just for human with a tracking size of 50. When using the AI human or vehicle, do not put in a min object size, leave it 0.

 

[ljw2k]

I reckon tracking success on this camera at night is 20-30% efficient but daytime 80-90% as you have stated car headlights I presume you are trying to track cars at night then I am sorry to tell you that you are wasting your time unless you have lots of street light.
You can do whatever settings you want it won't work with this camera which is a budget PTZ remember.

 

[fresnoboy]

Yeah, the IR control probably isn't going to work in BI. I haven't got that feature to work for any camera in BI, but I haven't tried to hard either, but maybe someone has.

So with a camera like this, there is always going to be a compromise. IR and reflective plates are a recipe for a white plate as it appears the IR is too strong. In reality it is that the shutter set to auto is going to slow. Smart IR is looking at the entire image and then adjusts the IR appropriately, but on plates it will be a washout due to the reflective nature. Smart IR in theory lessens the IR as a subject gets closer so that you can see details as most cameras the IR will completely wash out a face at close distance like you see with plates. That is theory and most say it is still to bright. That is where the next step comes in...

So you have to switch the shutter from auto to a manual shutter. Start at 1/120 and see what happens. Whenever you speed up the shutter, you need more light for the faster shutter, so the image will darken and may darken quite a bit. So then you try a slower shutter 1/100, 1/60, 1/50, 1/25, until you found that balance.

Now because you have set a shutter speed that can get better details and less blur, the "range" of the camera is now less because what you could see way out in the distance when zoomed out is now too black. So it is a compromise between getting details and still having an acceptable range on a wide out zoom.

ZoomPriority IR is similar to SmartIR in that it will make the IR brighter as you zoom in to something far away. Best to play with all the IR options and pick the one that works in your location.

Since you tried the PTZ at 100, try default or a slower one and then tracking size to the smallest and see if it will track it. It will come down to is this needed or are you better getting close ups as they approach and get that front shot compared to the back shot. 20mph with what sounds like a PTZ very close to the street and thus the car is actually moving fast for tracking. The tracking works best at a distance. I can auto track jets because they are not right up on the camera and they are going much faster than 20mph LOL.

Post a video of it in action and we can probably further dial it in or tell you if that is a limitation based on location.

I have found the intrusion zone with appear and enter/exit as the best option in most instances. Sometime a tripwire (or a z pattern tripwire or multiple trip wires) make the most sense. The multiple IVS allows you to then set up better dialed in options. So maybe a vehicle to try to track all the way a tracking size of 25 works, but then people are too small, so you set up that IVS just for vehicle and then set up another IVS just for human with a tracking size of 50. When using the AI human or vehicle, do not put in a min object size, leave it 0.

Thanks for the insights. I'm ok with less range - it's a T intersection on the 600 ft side of the street, and a dead end on the 150 ft side of the street. The 25X zoom is probably overkill for this area, but compromising range for better legibility is a good tradeoff here. Will play with that tonight.

I hadn't thought about having different rules for pedestrians than autos. Makes total sense. Will set that up. I do have questions about why the camera abandons a track - I notice today it will hold onto a pedestrian pretty well, and then off a sudden break track, and then could go back the preset and track again and track on the pedestrian again. That is with the target track set high, like 60. What are good numbers for cars and pedestrians?

Also not generating alerts reliably when the camera locks on to a target and tracks it. Is that because I don't have the motion sensor settings in BI correct? Is there a way to have a BI alert always triggered when the camera locks onto something? Also, should I have to motion sensing in the camera active? I have that on as well as the IVS settings.

I do have BI changing the presets on the PTZ when one of the fixed cameras sees something. One of the cameras sees through the gate and fence at dead end side of the street, and if it detects motion there, I tell the PTZ to switch to a preset that targets that area. But I am not sure my idle motion timer worked to get it to go back to the home preset after 10 mins of inactivity. I could try that with BI I guess, but is the IDLE motion timer supposed to work for this?

Thanks again for the help!

 

[wittaj]

Sounds like you have the track time too small (probably default of 15 or 30 seconds). You need to up it if you want to track longer. Do like 180 seconds or longer and it will track until it reaches that time or the object is out of range/sight.

You can either pull the ONVIF triggers into BI (check box on the add camera setting and then check box for motion that pulls from camera). I just let BI use the motion setting and it alerts and triggers the entire time the PTZ is tracking as there is always motion. Sounds like a setting in BI you need to adjust. Post some screen shots of your BI settings.

Turn off smart motion - you don't want to use both that and IVS - pick one or the other, but IVS will generally be the best bet.

I use the trigger cameras from the main motion tab of the camera setting and not the alerts tab - I like you found that it can get wonky and then get stuck. I haven't tried the option to reset it back in the camera itself as I found BI was doing the job in my situation, but the idle motion should work from the camera setting itself.

 

[fresnoboy]

Weird, I am sure I had the track time for the home preset set to 240, but I just checked it and it says 15 secs. It seems to like to reset things to 15 secs a lot. Is there a trick to keeping at the high setting?

I'll turn off SMD and let it stick with IVS.

How do you trigger the PTZ camera from a fixed camera if you don't use alerts? I've never seen that before.

here are my motion settings in BI:



And my object detection settings:




thx!

 

[wittaj]

Uncheck the object detection box in BI - that is what is causing the trigger issues. Maybe try decreasing duration time. For my PTZ I have it on 0 so it starts the moment the PTZ moves.

Some of these cameras are wonky on saving a setting. A general rule around here a lot of us go by is hit the save button 3 times and watch for the little "saved" thing to pop up in between each save. After the third, then hit the refresh to be sure that it took. For some that are still problematic, we send an API command at some interval to force it. Some are good at programming and write a script, I just use Task Scheduler for one of my wonky cameras that won't keep a setting.

Here is another way to move the PTZ from another camera by not using the Alerts Tab. Just go down to the When Triggered and then check the camera groups and move to which preset. It does require you to put the PTZ in a group, but just make a group where the PTZ is the only camera. Plus, since you now know about this option, this is how you can get around that problem you are having when a car goes beneath the PTZ - have another camera on the other side call up a present when the vehicle passes.

 

[fresnoboy]

Uncheck the object detection box in BI - that is what is causing the trigger issues. Maybe try decreasing duration time. For my PTZ I have it on 0 so it starts the moment the PTZ moves.

Some of these cameras are wonky on saving a setting. A general rule around here a lot of us go by is hit the save button 3 times and watch for the little "saved" thing to pop up in between each save. After the third, then hit the refresh to be sure that it took. For some that are still problematic, we send an API command at some interval to force it. Some are good at programming and write a script, I just use Task Scheduler for one of my wonky cameras that won't keep a setting.

Here is another way to move the PTZ from another camera by not using the Alerts Tab. Just go down to the When Triggered and then check the camera groups and move to which preset. It does require you to put the PTZ in a group, but just make a group where the PTZ is the only camera. Plus, since you now know about this option, this is how you can get around that problem you are having when a car goes beneath the PTZ - have another camera on the other side call up a present when the vehicle passes.

View attachment 81851

I'll turn off the objection detection. I thought the meaning of that tab was to additionally trigger when an object was detected. Does it mean that an object must be detected? Should I have this off on my fixed cameras too?

Ok, I had never used camera groups before. I'll give that a try.

On the target track ratio settings, what do you find works well for autos vs people in your setting?

The change on the alarm track time worked much better. Held the lock all the way down a street when a pedestrian walked down the 600 ft to the intersection.

thx!

 

[wittaj]

The object detection works well to try to minimize false triggers from headlights, shadows, etc. So you had a track time of 1 second. So the object needed to be detected for 1 second and then move 100 pixels so the combination of the two means you were missing triggers. Then the object size resets at 67% means any headlight quickly blinding the camera and the trigger resets for the next event - or the car gets too close and is larger than 67% of the image and it resets. For your night profile, change the algorithm to simple.

I start all my cameras without the object detection on and then only add it and adjust the parameters to deal with a specific field of view for a particular camera. Most of mine that is unchecked.

The target ratio is so location specific. Looking at yours, you would probably want to run a little lower, maybe 30ish. Mine is farther away from the street so I am at 55. But this is where trial and error comes into play and you need to sit at the screen and wait for people and cars to walk by and see if it is getting what you want - or bribe the kid or neighbor kid to walk up and down so you don't have to wait LOL.

 

[fresnoboy]

The object detection works well to try to minimize false triggers from headlights, shadows, etc. So you had a track time of 1 second. So the object needed to be detected for 1 second and then move 100 pixels so the combination of the two means you were missing triggers. Then the object size resets at 67% means any headlight quickly blinding the camera and the trigger resets for the next event - or the car gets too close and is larger than 67% of the image and it resets. For your night profile, change the algorithm to simple.

I start all my cameras without the object detection on and then only add it and adjust the parameters to deal with a specific field of view for a particular camera. Most of mine that is unchecked.

The target ratio is so location specific. Looking at yours, you would probably want to run a little lower, maybe 30ish. Mine is farther away from the street so I am at 55. But this is where trial and error comes into play and you need to sit at the screen and wait for people and cars to walk by and see if it is getting what you want - or bribe the kid or neighbor kid to walk up and down so you don't have to wait LOL.

Ok, that helps me understand what is going on. I haven't changed my BI setup to have different parameters that are day/night. I'll go do that and put your suggestions in place. It still works pretty for the fixed cameras well even without those changes. BTW, is there a way to get BI to switch the cameras into night mode based on it's own day night mode settings?

Would the target track for cars be smaller than people? I did find a pedestrian did get tracked under the camera and other side today after I fixed the alarm time length. Pedestrian data is easy to get - we have 4 kids and walkie talkies.

Thanks again for all the help! I really appreciate it! Hopefully this will be helpful for the next PTZ newb to scan the forums...

 

[wittaj]

BI would have a difficult time switching the cameras, it would be best to use this for Dahua OEM cams:

Dahua day/night switch utility - DahuaSunriseSunset

I wanted to use stronger noise reduction at night and weaker during the day, but Dahua seems to have made a mess of the profile management. On most cameras, there doesn't seem to be a way to have the camera switch automatically between Day and Night profiles when the camera changes between...

ipcamtalk.com

Yeah, in general the car tracking size should be smaller, especially where yours is located.

Time to get the kids out walking LOL and figure out the track sizes LOL.

 

[djborden]

I was told not to use Chrome for changing settings in this camera. I was having the same issue with the changes not sticking(15 seconds for motion tracking). I believe I used Explorer and the settings took.

 

[fresnoboy]

Ok, I have things working much better now. One thing is that when the PTZ is commanded to move to a new preset by one of the fixed cameras, it still doesn't generate a trigger to BI. Usually the PTZ will generate a trigger when motion is detected a few seconds later, but it would be handy to have the camera slew start the alert, and capture the car or people coming into view.

I have the min duration in the motion detect on the PTZ camera set to 0 secs.

 

[wittaj]

What is the pre-buffer time recording set for? I do mine for 10 seconds so I capture before it moves as well.

 

[fresnoboy]

What is the pre-buffer time recording set for? I do mine for 10 seconds so I capture before it moves as well.

You mean the pre-trigger video buffer? I have that set for 2 secs. I can try and change it to 10 and see if that helps.

 

[fresnoboy]

Hmm, doesn't seem to change things... Any other ideas?

 

[wittaj]

How long is your end trigger time set for?

As usual post some screen shots - as soon as the PTZ moves that should be enough motion to trigger. Make sure that the object detection is indeed off too as a reset could happen when the camera is swinging to a preset.

 

[fresnoboy]

Thanks. End trigger is currently set at 10 secs. Motion sensor in BI is set to on, but object detection set to off. Same as the screenshots I posted earlier, except the min duration is now set at 0.0 secs, and objection detection off: