Maybe not a video but I know I see Wittaj or others post how those settings impact video all the time.
Teaser Info and Mini Review - Empiretech B52IR-X3 Triple Lens Camera
- Thread starter Ri22o
- Start date
CaptainCrunch
Getting comfortable
There are a number of people who are great about explaining things when someone asks about something. However, that information is scattered throughout various threads. I haven't seen that information consolidated anywhere. If it is and I just haven't run across it, great, I'll find it eventually. My comment was in no way meant to suggest the experienced users on here aren't helpful.
It is out there, but it is hard to find as so many posts would have the same words in it. Here is the layman's answer. A technical person may be able to "refute" the actualities, but this is the average person understanding of how these settings impact video quality.
These are completely digital signals, so every variable can impact focus, some more than others.
Also keep in mind that the firmware is written to provide a bright static image as the light quality degrades, so anytime a big range is provided, in the absence of bright light, the camera will always favor the range that results in the brighter image. But many times that then results in blur motion. So you have to take the time to adjust the parameters on your field of view with motion.
To get the clean captures we see people post here, we have to fight the urge for tuning an image based on the static image. Most of my cameras at night are darker than most people would set up. I have learned that after a day or two, we get used to the darker image, but it can be a shock at first.
As people say, these cameras are not shooting Hollywood movies, we are trying to get clean captures of perps. So we have to always test our settings with motion because one bad setting like high gain can completely negate and wipe-out a fast shutter setting.
Those of us that have got into setting cameras up for LPR have noticed that even something like saturation on a B/W image can impact whether the image is blurry or not.
In some instances there can be a focus difference between white light and infrared. It is easier to mitigate this on a varifocal as it comes with a focus adjustment. Sometimes adjustments need to be made on fixed lens settings to overcome this for certain fields of view.
For the image settings that have a range of 0-100, most cameras are going to do best with settings between 40-60. Doesn't mean you can't squeak a 70 out of brightness on some cameras, but usually not getting out to the extremes is the best.
As we have seen, shutter speed is more important than FPS. A camera on default/auto settings rarely performs well as the light drops.
Associated with that setting is Gain. Too many people hear about shutter speed is more important and simply go to shutter priority - but that setting will crank the gain up in many instances to 100. A gain of 100 negates the faster shutter and can make the image worse than if left on default/auto settings. It is best to try to keep gain below 60. Some cameras can go higher, but it increase the chance of ghost blur.
And there are exceptions - I have found that running sharpness low (like below 10) greatly improves plates for LPR.
For cameras that have an iris adjustment, it is really just playing with the gain. Physically it's fixed so there is no true variable aperture. Best to keep iris at default.
Gamma is another way to improve the brightness at night. While not as bad as gain, too high of gamma will contribute to ghost blur.
Saturation is how the camera perceives color. Some cameras are better at representing color than others. I try to keep that at default, but I have a few cameras that are either too washed out or too deep in color and I adjust those.
Exposure Compensation is supposed to only work if you are running the camera in default/auto settings. It is a one-stop-shop slider to adjust an image for wide ranges of light in one field of view. Now some setups of parameters this can adjust, but it is best to just keep it at default.
Because these images are completely digital, there is a lot of noise in them as the light diminishes. Take a low lit scene and turn off NR and watch the screen dance with pixels LOL.
NR takes images at different exposures and combines them to remove the dancing pixels.
Too high of NR and the image will get soft.
Too high of NR and motion will be a soft blur.
It is best to keep NR as low as you can. In the day that might be off or say 20. At night, try to fight the urge for a nice static image and not let NR go too much above 40. I figure it is easier to denoise an image post processing than it is to remove blur post processing.
In theory 2D NR is for the stationary field of view and the 3D is for the object in motion. So in theory you could run 2D NR a lot higher to take out the dancing pixels in a static view and make 3D NR lower to address the blur of an object in motion.
The wider the field of view, the more you can get away with a spread - say 2D at 50 and 3D at 30. But a varifocal zoomed in tightly will result in significant halo/blur effect around the object in motion if the numbers are too far apart.
In most situations, I have found it is best to keep them about the same. But I always try a spread with any new camera as every firmware and camera is different. A few of mine respond ok with the numbers different.
bigredfish
Known around here
As mentioned, there is no ONE place to get all of that info. Frankly it would be a book.
Take the Dahua camera user manual, which is basically cliff notes, and expand it with detailed explanations, on many dozens of controls, and you'd have literally hundreds of pages.
Here's another good piece of the puzzle
Here is a quick guide to what might go wrong with the image of your cctv camera, and how to fix this.
MOTION BLUR:
This is probably the most common issue, new camera owners run into. Many times on this forum I've seen posts like: "I bought a set of cameras recently. The image looks great on factory settings, but all moving objects at night are blurry and I can't identify anything." Leaving factory settings is not a good idea. Motion blur is a result of exposure time (shutter speed) being too long in respect to motion of an object. Your camera captures a given amount...
MOTION BLUR:
This is probably the most common issue, new camera owners run into. Many times on this forum I've seen posts like: "I bought a set of cameras recently. The image looks great on factory settings, but all moving objects at night are blurry and I can't identify anything." Leaving factory settings is not a good idea. Motion blur is a result of exposure time (shutter speed) being too long in respect to motion of an object. Your camera captures a given amount...
I just copied some of your settings and will see how they do. How in the hell are you able to run such low NR levels? If I try anything near that low it looks like shit.
he mounted the camera much higher than you and the infrared works much better on this cam when mounting high.
Also i think he has tons of light on the street. This was also visible on the 25x dome ptz.
I probably benefit from a few things.
It is installed 10-12 feet high so it really gets an advantage of the power of the IR this thing has.
I have it positioned between two homes that are close to each other that the wide and medium range cameras benefit from IR reflection as opposed to IR bounce.
The distance camera is benefitting from some other cameras also pointing in that general area, so there is some additional IR available for that camera only.
The distance camera is benefiting from some white light - not a lot - here it is in color at a 1/120 shutter LOL:
With some cameras, I am able to find the breaking point that if I change a variable by 1 number, the image goes to crap. A snapshot doesn't do it justice but if I change the NR one number and turn off the IR of one camera that is benefitting this general area, it becomes a dancing pixelated mess. While this image is darker, I can live with it for the freeze frame, but I would run the NR a few higher in this instance.
Is this cam compatible with PFA121 junction box?
I currently have 3 Z4E S3 using PFA121.
It would be great not to buy new junction box every time I switch to new cam LOL
I currently have 3 Z4E S3 using PFA121.
It would be great not to buy new junction box every time I switch to new cam LOL
No, it uses its own PFA124. You can modify your PFA121, but the 124 would be better.
CaptainCrunch
Getting comfortable
My day settings seem to be pretty clear but that's the easy part. My night settings aren't bad but I feel they can be better, specifically my distant. It just looks noisy. And that's where I get stumped. I don't know enough to be able to make a change during the day that will result in a better picture at night. I end up having to wait until night and randomly sliding things a little here and there and checking if it's better without really understanding why it's better. It's like an eye exam...which is better...1...or 2?
Those are not too bad considering that bush/tree/shrub is bouncing IR and impacting exposure a bit and preventing a fair amount of IR to get to the street.
Short of trimming or removing, I would try these.
I would drop brightness to 62 and bump gamma to 50 and contrast to 66.
Drop NR to 40 and Sharpness to 44.
Bump Gain to 52
Change shutter to 1/500
Had the IR bouncing on our Doorbell CAM, made a difference once I trimmed the bush.
CaptainCrunch
Getting comfortable
Yeah...a trimmed bush is always better.
I do need to take some off the top. I'm actually going to pull them up but I have to build some planters first. HOA rules say there has to be something planted there.
Fair enough
i will need to post my screenshots and setting lol.
But what are the best settings you have found in blue iris for this camera to only capture activity when there are people on each of the cameras? The IVS rules only being applied to the Panorama camera make this difficult to do....I guess you could have AI confirmations on medium and distant cameras. anything else?
CaptainCrunch
Getting comfortable
It was better last light. Although something interesting happened around 4:30am. I've got all the ir's set at 100%. One of the 3 cameras just went dark as if ir lights had been turned down or off. However, the other cameras weren't affected. I'll check tonight and see if I can figure it out. It's not a schedule issue.
Did a car happen to go by just before that? Or a bug that took up the whole lens?
We have seen some instances where the exposure adjusts to the bright object and gets stuck and doesn't go back.
bigredfish
Known around here
CaptainCrunch
Getting comfortable
No car before hand. I do not know if a bug happened to settle right in front of only that lens.
It stayed that way until it switched to bay mode at 7am. I'm not sure what you mean when you say those times are off.
bigredfish
Known around here
I just saw the 5 second difference in that one pic top left. But obviously you answered that