WantedToBreakIn....

[eatmorfood]

Hello Everyone! This is my first post.
I bought some hikvision ds-2cd3332-i cams due to reviews and price and just wanted some opinions on whether i made the right choice.
Is the security video in this link look like good quality to everyone - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLM6WNPXVnoWFnqFefliLE3KHTgBlI-VaX

Here is the text I put in the description:
Im not an enthusiast or anything but i chose this model due to price, reviews, didn't have the standard IR ring and matched the color of my house so it's not as obvious under the eave. recording at 8k kbps, full 3mp, variable bitrate, medium quality, 1/30th exposure, wdr 20%. the last video is a mashup of the original clips, zoomed in. i tried to keep the resolution and quality the same. Is this considered good quality considering the cost of the camera and circumstances? i know i could bump the quality up to "highest" and up the bitrate to 12k but i have not chosen to do that because i have a few other same model cameras recording at the same time on an Intel I3 laptop (BlueIris) which doesnt need any more stress (runs about 50% processor) and it chokes my upload if i set the quality really high viewing the cameras interface remotely - that's why i use the BI webserver instead with all cams set to around 50% quality & resolution.

Thank you in advance!

Oh and by the way, he never got to do what he came to do because I stepped out on the front porch as soon as i saw the flood light come on...

Chris

 

[klasipca]

Nice quality with the flood light on, without it not so much. Did he run away?

 

[nayr]

he must be new at this, thats the first time I seen someone afraid of motion lights.

nice good image

 

[klasipca]

noticed you had additional video where the guy simply walked away. Also like your zoomed in video, it might be enough to id someone, but really shows that more resolution or zoomed in view would be beneficial here

 

[eatmorfood]

thank you for your comments. I'll consider bumping the quality to max on this cam - I mean, that's why you buy IP cams right, to get good quality and to have good evidence when you need it. I dont do forums that much but this looks like an interesting section to see peoples security feed examples. i'll also check your links in your signature too!

 

[Kawboy12R]

I'd put the cam at highest quality. Bumping up the bitrate from 8k at 3mp won't gain you much. Nice floodlight as well. It did take a few seconds to improve things when it went from pitch black to well lit but the very brief overexposure was DEFINITELY worth it. For covering the two cars parked in the same spot the next size longer lens would've helped zoom in a bit on his face but all in all not a bad lens choice for that location if you've only got one cam covering the driveway. I prefer about 6-9mm lens length for my driveways when parked close to the house (I've got varifocals on both drives and sometimes tweak them day to day depending on where each car is parked) but I generally only park one car wide because I've got two skinny driveways. I'd pick 6mm if using a fixed lens cam. Your cars can't really move a bit wider side to side so a longer lens would probably cover a prowler better approaching each door on the sides of coverage, improve the coverage on each car, but a bit at the expense of covering more of the front yard with the one cam.

When something like that happens here I go asking the neighbours if they're missing anything after I've copied the footage onto DVDs to hand out plus some paper printouts. Lately though, if they're missing anything they come to me asking if I caught anything suspicious on my cameras. One guy nailed my next door neighbour's unlocked car, checked out the guy across the street, but skipped my driveways completely. Lucky for him I guess or he would've been internet famous. In a separate incident my other-side neighbour was also missing something but skipped my car in the adjacent driveway. My neighbour's car was too far away from my cam on that side for an ID. I'm either getting luckier or word is spreading to skip my place. The funny thing is that the second incident involved the kid posting things on Facebook with my friend's phone that he couldn't delete after he was caught. If he hadn't been only 14 he'd have been internet famous with the things my friend recovered from his returned phone after the cops caught him. There's not much sense damning a 14 yr old even when his mom sends him out looking for money for drugs. His mom, however, deserves all kinds of creative punishments.

 

[eatmorfood]

I actually just put up another one a few weekends ago. It covers along the front of the house towards the front door. We didn't really need it but I like to keep tabs on things. If my porch light goes off, I want to know why without having to get up off the couch - I've found that normally the damn thing just goes off by itself for no apparent reason...
here is a pic scaled and quality reduced (email alert). its the same model cam.


Here is what they look like installed.
not sure what's up with the corner soffit vent, i bought the house with it like that.

they really blend in well with the house and don't attract attention (unless you are a spider who likes to spin a web and send me hundreds of email alerts...)

I went ahead and bumped the settings to max on the cam pointed at the cars.
But then i started reading about the 4mp cam that Hikvision has (DS-2CD2342WD-I) and couldn't resist and just bought that yesterday - just waiting on it to come in.
I didn't buy it due to the 4mp, but I also got it for being 4mm. I started reading about digital zoom vs optical zoom and i agree, I needed to bump the optical zoom for the driveway cam.
I like having the nice wide view but I think the 4mm will be a little bit of an improvement when someone else decides to check out our cars - its not the first time.
As a matter of fact, let me dig up the video...

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLM6WNPXVnoWFkLh9xFmIAIVMxpX0TYjNP

I read about the IR flashing or something or another on the 4mp cam on this forum.
I made sure to get one that i can update the firmware on.

thanks for your post!

 

[Kawboy12R]

Hey, @tomhanman is looking for some real world FOV angle measurements on a 2342 in this thread. A fellow could even get pretty close by bench testing it inside measuring distance and width of view against a wall...

 

[eatmorfood]

So I got the new 4mp cam and am configuring it now.
Do i want h264+?

 

[eatmorfood]

Just mounted the 4mp cam. Here is a shot at full res.

 

[nayr]

imho looks like you went for two wide of an angle for this location.. you could of gone much narrower, anyone coming up to try your door handles is going to sit in-between both cars so they can try em both.

at night tonight, go croutch down behind your cars, bet your not going to get a decent ID unless you have a ton of light.. i think you'd of been better off with a 6-8mm lens here.. the hoods and roofs of your cars are no value to watch, and thats most of the image.

 

[eatmorfood]

thanks for the feedback. I agree with you. But Im still trying to get used to going from 2.8 to 4mm. I like seeing as much as possible but seeing the neighbors comings and goings, their flood light going on and off all night wasn't necessary. I think this 4mm may be a good fit for me.

also wanted to share the h264+ option.

at highest settings, at night, with h264+ OFF, it was pulling these numbers:
1860 kB/s
14.88 mbps
1.86 MB/s


h.264+ ON
adds one more field - average bitrate 6560 - clicking the field does not present options like clicking the max field so i left it.
max 16384 (grayed out)
200 kB/s
1.6 mbps
.2 MB/s

I found some posts on this forum regarding the h264+ but i think they were older - didn't look exhaustively.
something about green in the video, etc.
so far none of those issues.

I would note that the video looked blurry to me at night.
I had WDR turned on @ 20% - that's what I had my 3mp set at.
On the 3mp cam, it just seemed to alter the brightness of the picture.
turning WDR OFF on the 4mp cam made the picture look much better - less grain, sharper

off


on


Adding to this post.
About an hour after i turned on the h264+, I noticed the feed went out in BI.
I could log into the camera with no issues but could not view the feed anymore.
I rebooted the camera which didn't resolve.
Turned off H264+ and the feed came back.
Flipped it back on (which reboots the unit) and feed would not come back.
Guess im sticking with h264+ off.
not sure why it all of sudden wouldn't work anymore when it was working fine.
I think it may have coordinated with the sensor going from black white to color with the sun coming up as it occurred around the same time when the other cam switched.
but i did test it earlier and had the flood light come on which turned it from bw to color while in h264+ mode.

if it helps, here is the fw version.
i havent looked into any updates yet.


and about an hour later i noticed in BI that the yellow exclamation on this new 4mp cam.
the framerate was like .5.
tried disabling and re-enabling the camera in BI saw the feed drop a few times.

changing the video quality from highest to higher seems to make it work fine at 15fps.
changing it back to highest makes it drop to .5 again.
it was working fine at the highest settings all day yesterday and last night.

guess we'll see how it goes from here.

update - 12pm.
I kicked back on h264+, left the settings on higher - no issues.
will update if I have more issues.

update - the next day.
working fine in h264+ all night until the night/day auto switch.
once again, i was out before the switch and it did switch to color mode.

 

[nayr]

what do u have noise reduction set to? if you use WDR you have to turn NR way down or else it will blur.. WDR is just a blur factory IMHO lol, its better without it.. especially at night.

getting a nice good image in the dark is easy, getting detail of moving prowlers without a bunch of gain.. that's the trick.. dont want to find out after the fact, any time you change night image settings go out there and prowl around in the worst possible lighting conditions and make sure you didnt make things worse.. its a trick cameras will do to you with image processing, the fixed objects look great but they are not the things stealing from you.

it looks pretty high, but your garage door is likely tall huh? might put a blinking light up there just so you draw a prowlers gaze up into your eye in the sky.

im glad you replaced that 2.8mm at least, im sure it was pretty much useless at these distances for getting any ID

people's issues with h265 was likely just lack of decoder support, trying to play it back without hardware support would be murder on even the best computers.

 

[eatmorfood]

Just wanted to post an update on the hik 4mp turret cam

This camera seems to have slowly begun to degrade.
I could use it at full resolution on the highest settings for a week.
Then it stopped showing video and I had to set the compression to "higher".

Today it stopped showing video on "higher" and I have to set the compression to "medium" for it to work at full resolution.
The picture does not look good with "medium" so I now have it set to 1080p on "highest".

Rebooting the camera does not fix the issue, only lowering the video quality/compression.
I can access the camera no problem at full resolution with highest settings, it just stopped showing any video with this setting in the web interface (or in BI).

as previously mentioned, the other issue is when I use h264+, when the camera switches to day mode automatically, the video goes out - i think this is a firmware issue but not a big deal.
i checked and it is at the current firmware.

but the main problem is that it does not work at highest resolutions any more.

Its the legit english version and i have contacted the seller.

 

[beepsilver]

I have several 4MP Hikvision cameras. On MY system these cameras do not perform well AT ALL with variable bitrate--all the cameras would go offline randomly despite trying different bitrates. So I have them all set to constant with a max bitrate of 8192 using the highest resolution & fps--and they perform flawlessly. However, even with constant bitrate set, if I set the max bitrate too high even while using constant, then I start to see similar problems again.

You may want to reboot your camera if you decide to make this switch.

H.264+ was desirable before Blue Iris began supporting Hardware Acceleration (HA). It functioned very well. But with the advent of HA, H.264+ no longer worked (color swapping on the streams). I switched over to the standard H.264 because the cpu savings was just too great with HA enabled--and it's even better now with HA + VPP enabled.

 

[eatmorfood]

I've got it working at full res with a constant bit rate set at 8192. anything over 8192 at full res will no longer show any video.