Strange hiccup during recording

CAL7

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I'd appreciate it if someone would look at this short video and give me some idea what is happening. Two times, at the 9:15 and 9:19 points, it seems to stop recording, as indicated by the time code. At 9:15, the picture seems to be still for 3 seconds, then jumps to 9:18. A second occurrence is then at 9:19 for 3 seconds. It seems random that two are back-to-back in this sample; single instances occur many times during a day but not usually in pairs.

The camera is a Dahua T3241T-ZAS recorded by BI. Thanks in advance for any help.


View attachment lv_0_20221128161704.mp4
 

wittaj

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Could be anything. What FPS are you running? If you are running max FPS, the camera may not be keeping up.

Could be a power issue - either the POE switch, a cable.

Could be the HDD you are using.

Could be the computer you are using for BI.

Are you cameras going thru the router?

Are the BI logs showing loss of signal?

Post some screenshots of your camera encoding settings and from BI the Camera status page that lists all the cameras, bitrates, MP/s, etc. along with typical CPU % and CPU version and amount of RAM, along with a network topology diagram.
 
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CAL7

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Thanks @wittaj @BORIStheBLADE @fenderman

Could be anything. What FPS are you running? If you are running max FPS, the camera may not be keeping up.

Could be a power issue - either the POE switch, a cable.

Could be the HDD you are using.

Could be the computer you are using for BI

Are the BI logs showing loss of signal?

Post some screenshots of your camera encoding settings and from BI the Camera status page that lists all the cameras, bitrates, MP/s, etc. along with typical CPU % and CPU version and amount of RAM.
The CPU is an i5-6500 typically running 40-45%. 16GB RAM. The camera is at 15fps. Here is what BI shows (ip=50.57):

1669679151413.png

1669679436004.png

The log I am looking at doesn't show signal loss, but I may not be seeing the right log. The MOTION at 3:16:40 is the alert that was triggered in my video above. The "glitch" is seen as a motion event.
1669679598950.png

Does your camera have maybe day/night mode set to auto? I've seen one of my cameras do something like this when switching during low light scenarios..
Frankly, the Dahua profile management for Day/Night confuses me, so the short answer is "I don't know." This is the setting I have:

1669679779005.png
In the "Day & NIght" setting, everything is unchanged from the default.

Do not use any smart or + codecs.
I don't think I am. It is set to h.265 but not any of the + or smart.
1669679907474.png
 

fenderman

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Thanks @wittaj @BORIStheBLADE @fenderman


The CPU is an i5-6500 typically running 40-45%. 16GB RAM. The camera is at 15fps. Here is what BI shows (ip=50.57):

View attachment 146795

View attachment 146796

The log I am looking at doesn't show signal loss, but I may not be seeing the right log. The MOTION at 3:16:40 is the alert that was triggered in my video above. The "glitch" is seen as a motion event.
View attachment 146797


Frankly, the Dahua profile management for Day/Night confuses me, so the short answer is "I don't know." This is the setting I have:

View attachment 146798
In the "Day & NIght" setting, everything is unchanged from the default.


I don't think I am. It is set to h.265 but not any of the + or smart.
View attachment 146799
You are, AI codec is your issue. It is not compatible with blue iris.
 

CAL7

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Does your camera have maybe day/night mode set to auto? I've seen one of my cameras do something like this when switching during low light scenarios..
In diagnosing my original problem, I realized that I am really ignorant about the profile and video settings for my Dahua cameras. Is there a "best practices" or tutorial anywhere that gives a detailed analysis of what these settings do?
 

BORIStheBLADE

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In diagnosing my original problem, I realized that I am really ignorant about the profile and video settings for my Dahua cameras. Is there a "best practices" or tutorial anywhere that gives a detailed analysis of what these settings do?
To be honest I'm the wrong person to answer. I have very little experience in this department. I'm still learning myself.

If you have tried all the settings others have mentioned earlier and that doesn't resolve your issue I'd would try setting under profile management a schedule so its darker when it turns to night mode or setting it to full time so it stays in whatever mode you're in.
 

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wittaj

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Since it wasn't a codec or FPS issue, go back and see what I posted and requested in Post #2:

Could be a power issue - either the POE switch, a cable.

Could be the HDD you are using.

Could be the computer you are using for BI.

Are you cameras going thru the router?

Are the BI logs showing loss of signal?

Post some screenshots of your camera encoding settings and from BI the Camera status page that lists all the cameras, bitrates, MP/s, etc. along with typical CPU % and CPU version and amount of RAM, along with a network topology diagram.
 

BORIStheBLADE

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If you haven't tried a different POE switch I'd try another one.
Do you have a location you swap cameras to see if it happens in another location?
 
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fenderman

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Sorry to say that this camera is still struggling. Here are its current settings:
View attachment 146869

View attachment 146870

And a snippet of 67 seconds of video with four dropouts. Any and all ideas are welcome.
View attachment 146871
What you are observing are not dropouts. That is the camera improperly adjusting itself for the lighting conditions. There is likely something about the way the light hits it or the surrounding areas that is causing that so you might have to set your exposure settings manually which usually results in a better picture anyways. These are not analog cameras. If you were dropping packets the image would freeze or you would see ghosting.
 

wittaj

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Yeah after watching the latest one, I agree that it is the camera not being able to adjust to the lighting conditions. Force it to color in DAY profile and that should fix it.

In terms of other camera settings, I am not sure what other settings you tried, but here is my "standard" post that many use as a start for dialing in day and night that helps get the clean captures, but also helps with AI:

Every field of view is different, but I have found you need contrast to usually be 6-8 higher than the brightness number at night.

We want the ability to freeze frame capture a clean image from the video at night, and that is only done with a shutter of 1/60 or faster. At night, default/auto may be on 1/12s shutter or worse to make the image bright.

In my opinion, shutter (exposure) and gain are the two most important parameters 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.

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 0-4ms exposure and 0-30 gain (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 or white light.

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 static image results in Casper blur and ghost during motion LOL. What do we want, a nice static image or a clean image when there is motion introduced to the scene?

In the daytime, if it is still too bright, then drop the 4ms down to 3ms then 2ms, etc. You have to play with it for your field of view.

Then at night, 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.
 

CAL7

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What you are observing are not dropouts. That is the camera improperly adjusting itself for the lighting conditions. There is likely something about the way the light hits it or the surrounding areas that is causing that so you might have to set your exposure settings manually which usually results in a better picture anyways.
Force it to color in DAY profile and that should fix it.
Thank you, gents. Here is what I am using for the Profile. I don't want to use fixed times forever, but for testing I thought it best to use a time schedule so I know there is no automation getting in the way.

1669766836823.png

For Exposure, I am setting everything to manual for the same reason as above. I'll tweak it once I have vanquished the gremlin. Thanks @wittaj for the settings guidance.

And here are the fixed settings for the Mode in each profile.

1669766887888.png


1669766912984.png

I appreciate all the help and will let you know how it goes.
 
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