CCTVCam
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- Sep 25, 2017
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Disappointing they removed the IR on the 5442 180 as it kind of defeats the point in having a low light camera when it can't see without some light. For some applications that may be ok, but for others where there is no light and light cannot be provided or where stealth is required, having the ir is useful.
I have a potential spot where I could use a 180 camera, but at night, after a certain time, there'd be no light making IR the only option.
A great compromise here would be to have both IR and led's in 1 camera and have ir to use B&W to see the trips / motion (whichever detection the user chooses to use) and then have the leds switch on and the camera revert to full colour for the recording support by the led light. Given switchover is near instantaneous these days, this should be a real possibility.
I have the 4Kt's but they require several improvements in my opinions:
1. They still require some light despite being better than the 5442 in low light (which is not a moan about the 4kt but a reason why the 5442 still needs an IR option)
2. The dof is very shallow - note to Dahua here, you cannot rely on larger apertures with bigger lenses because it reduces the dof.
3. The firmware is a little unstable in so far as even using IE, in my experience, they switch settings themselves every so often eg. you set encoding at say 16800 and H264H. The camera will stay at that for ages and then 1 day you'll log in and find the cameras reverted to H264 non H @ 4000kbs on it's own.
4. Although the bit rate can be set high, I personally believe the in camera compression is too high. From what I can see on the bit rate vs the reported stream rate in BI, the compression ratio is 16:1. Background detail is often full of artefacts (especially obvious when you zoom in) I'd like to see at least an option to reduce the compression for a better picture at the cost of file size. It would also have the advantage of reducing the load on the camera as less compressing = less cpu cycles. I can't see why Dahua couldn't offer a firmware option for a H264 UHQ (Ultra High Quality) that maybe had a compression ratio of say 8:1 or maybe even 6:1. This would double file size but if it was optional, users could choose what was important to them - recording space or quality. A warning on file size could be put in the option. I'd hope to see a substantial improvement in background detail.
5. Optics are important. Whilst it's always a balance between glass quality and cost, a better lens = a sharper richer picture.
I have a potential spot where I could use a 180 camera, but at night, after a certain time, there'd be no light making IR the only option.
A great compromise here would be to have both IR and led's in 1 camera and have ir to use B&W to see the trips / motion (whichever detection the user chooses to use) and then have the leds switch on and the camera revert to full colour for the recording support by the led light. Given switchover is near instantaneous these days, this should be a real possibility.
I have the 4Kt's but they require several improvements in my opinions:
1. They still require some light despite being better than the 5442 in low light (which is not a moan about the 4kt but a reason why the 5442 still needs an IR option)
2. The dof is very shallow - note to Dahua here, you cannot rely on larger apertures with bigger lenses because it reduces the dof.
3. The firmware is a little unstable in so far as even using IE, in my experience, they switch settings themselves every so often eg. you set encoding at say 16800 and H264H. The camera will stay at that for ages and then 1 day you'll log in and find the cameras reverted to H264 non H @ 4000kbs on it's own.
4. Although the bit rate can be set high, I personally believe the in camera compression is too high. From what I can see on the bit rate vs the reported stream rate in BI, the compression ratio is 16:1. Background detail is often full of artefacts (especially obvious when you zoom in) I'd like to see at least an option to reduce the compression for a better picture at the cost of file size. It would also have the advantage of reducing the load on the camera as less compressing = less cpu cycles. I can't see why Dahua couldn't offer a firmware option for a H264 UHQ (Ultra High Quality) that maybe had a compression ratio of say 8:1 or maybe even 6:1. This would double file size but if it was optional, users could choose what was important to them - recording space or quality. A warning on file size could be put in the option. I'd hope to see a substantial improvement in background detail.
5. Optics are important. Whilst it's always a balance between glass quality and cost, a better lens = a sharper richer picture.
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