Blue Iris accepts Dahua cams just fine. Performance is outstanding.
Keep in mind auto-tracking is great, but it isn't perfect. Lot's of factors can influence the ability to track. They certainly are not plug and play.
Some say the Hiks track better, others say the Dahua tracks better. Kinda like comparing Honda and Toyota. The Hiks are a lot more. I think someone said their Hikvision ds-2df8236i5x-aelw tracks better than the 49225, but it is $3,600.
Generally the cameras you identified all track generally the same. Some will say the 49225 tracks better than the 49425 as it can get more light to the sensor since they are the same size sensor.
It would help to show some video of what you are experiencing, and if you have an SD card in the camera it will allow you to show the object tracking box on the screen so we can see what it locked onto instead would be very helpful.
As you are seeing, these are not plug and play. You have to dial them in. But once you do, they are incredible. Mine hits the mark over 95% of the time.
Are you running default/auto settings?
It is a matter of getting the brightness/contrast and target ratio settings correct.
I always knew that you shouldn't chase a bright picture - it looks nice and people migrate towards a brighter TV for example, but upon closer examination, most images need to be toned down in order to get all the details. You will be surprised how much changing a parameter like gamma could impact tracking. For example, if you have a pesky tree or something in the middle of the view during an autotrack, just by changing some image parameters you can get autotrack to pass it.
Making the image a little darker at night actually helped with tracking someone across the street, which was opposite of what I thought you would think to do. So add some contrast to your image above and see if it improves.
I have a yard lamp post that more times than not autotrack would get stuck on it as someone was walking and the autotrack would only go so far. Because my image has soo much contrast (bright white concrete a third, blacktop road a third, grass a third), knocking down the gamma made the lamp post not be so "trackable" lol, and along with that I turned of PFA and that gave it just enough time to retrack the person walking past the lamp post. The camera may still autotrack the lamp post when a small kid goes by, but an adult it was autotracking past the lamp post.
Ideally for an intrusion box or tripwires, you should have the initial field of view be such that the camera doesn't have to initially pan too much up/down or left/right to get the object in the center of the screen to start tracking. The closer the object is to the center of the image, the better the chance that it will track correctly.
The reason it starts looking upward or left or right is usually because the intrusion box is too big so the camera identifies the object before it is in the center of the field of view and then sometimes something else matches the "algorithm signature" of the initial object and then starts trying to track something that isn't there. Adjusting the field of view and the locations of the IVS rules to be closer to the center can fix that.
The target track size plays a big role as well. Sometimes just changing that number by 1 can significantly improve or deteriorate the tracking ability.
Autotracking PTZs are great, but they have limitations like everything else. Installed in a wrong location or with fields of view that do not give it a chance will be problematic.
A camera losing track is usually changing something as simple as adjusting the field of view to get more of the object in the center can make all the difference whether it tracks correctly or not. Or changing brightness/contrast. Or the target track size.
