Worlds First Review - Dahua DH-IPC-PFW5849-A180-E2 - Dual Lens 180 Degree Full Color 4K (8MP Stitched) Camera

[HMC8403]

I noticed something for the first time today; a car parked in front of my house that looked a little smushed and then saw the middle window on the house across the street. After playing around I found that 85m was the best setting for the horizontal splice but the vertical alignment is still a little off.

The car remains smushed in BI and the NVR but looks normal though the cameras GUI.

 

[jayson436]

I kinda dislike the new UI. Its pretty awful.

@HMC8403 look under the settings on that page for a drop down in purple named Time Settings or something like that.

View attachment 150800

Are the time plan settings working for you correctly? I have my Night setup to do B/W mode during the "witching hours" and it shows me B/W on the camera while I'm this setup menu but the moment I leave this schedule page it seems to go back to my "Day" color config even when it's between the appropriate time I have setup for Night.

Edit...
My camera switched to B/W in the middle of the day which led me to realize the Time profiles are off by 12 hours!?

 

[flint350]

Possibly I missed it, but I don't see any way to access E-PTZ within Smart PSS which is what I use to access all cameras (6) on my Dahua NVR. If that is true, I was thinking of the possibility of setting up a record stream from the camera via nfs to my local NAS (wdmycloud). Hopefully it could then record within the NVR (no e-ptz) and also to the NAS which should allow e-ptz.

 

[mephisto_uk]

I just got this camera, thanks to @EMPIRETECANDY for that. The quality is really great, night image with some lights from lamp posts also is unbelievable clear with no need to use the camera built in lights. I'm impressed, hopefully no more spider webs going forward.

Just one thing that is annoying, the vertical stretching of the image, Is there a way to display the image without stretching it? It is definitely doing something wrong with the aspect ratio, if you play a ultrawide video on a regular monitor, you get black bars on top and bottom, why not have the same here? a NVR/BI can easily zoom in/out on the image, so I don't see why the need to stretch it vertically.

 

[jayson436]

I just got this camera, thanks to @EMPIRETECANDY for that. The quality is really great, night image with some lights from lamp posts also is unbelievable clear with no need to use the camera built in lights. I'm impressed, hopefully no more spider webs going forward.

Just one thing that is annoying, the vertical stretching of the image, Is there a way to display the image without stretching it? It is definitely doing something wrong with the aspect ratio, if you play a ultrawide video on a regular monitor, you get black bars on top and bottom, why not have the same here? a NVR/BI can easily zoom in/out on the image, so I don't see why the need to stretch it vertically.

View attachment 153549View attachment 153550

this has been discussed above in this thread. The only encode mode that has the proper aspect ratio is 3840x1080. Less resolution or wonky aspect.. pick your poison.

 

[bigredfish]

I’d buy one if they’d fix it. Seems either dumb or lazy, but I’m not a camera engineer

 

[flint350]

In Smart PSS, you can choose to use either "original scale" or "full window" scale. I find that the scaling works pretty well and leave the "full window" size. It somewhat mitigates the bowing and looks fine on my 32" monitor. Examples from today - 1st is "original scale" from the 4096 X 1800 resolution. Second is Smart PSS enlarging the image to full window size, also from 4096 X 1800. I tried the lower resolution and the 'improvement' in scaling was not enough to make me change to that.

ORIGINAL SCALE (top image)





FULL WINDOW SCALE (by Smart PSS)

 

[mephisto_uk]

this has been discussed above in this thread. The only encode mode that has the proper aspect ratio is 3840x1080. Less resolution or wonky aspect.. pick your poison.

This i clearly a bug/bad code on firmware then. are there plans to resolve this issue?

I’d buy one if they’d fix it. Seems either dumb or lazy, but I’m not a camera engineer

I also didn't expect the ratio to be this bad. Doesn't seem to be rocket science as there are other cameras doing the same 180 degree without stretching the image.

In Smart PSS, you can choose to use either "original scale" or "full window" scale. I find that the scaling works pretty well and leave the "full window" size. It somewhat mitigates the bowing and looks fine on my 32" monitor. Examples from today - 1st is "original scale" from the 4096 X 1800 resolution. Second is Smart PSS enlarging the image to full window size, also from 4096 X 1800. I tried the lower resolution and the 'improvement' in scaling was not enough to make me change to that.

ORIGINAL SCALE (top image)

View attachment 153562



FULL WINDOW SCALE (by Smart PSS)

View attachment 153564

I guess this is the dahua NVR? I'll try to find an equivalent setting in BI

 

[flint350]

Yes, Dahua NVR 5208 and Smart PSS. The stretch to full window works well if you're not too picky. As for why the camera has an 'odd' aspect ratio, I imagine it's mostly due to using two inexpensive lens to keep the price point reasonable. The much more costly panoramic models with 4 X 2MP sensors do a much better job, but at more than 4 times the price. Horses for courses.

 

[Parley]

Yes, Dahua NVR 5208 and Smart PSS. The stretch to full window works well if you're not too picky. As for why the camera has an 'odd' aspect ratio, I imagine it's mostly due to using two inexpensive lens to keep the price point reasonable. The much more costly panoramic models with 4 X 2MP sensors do a much better job, but at more than 4 times the price. Horses for courses.

Let me just say that the Hikvision version does not have that much distortion in the same price range. Attached is a picture from the front of my house. Dahua should be able to clean it up.

 

[mephisto_uk]

Let me just say that the Hikvision version does not have that much distortion at the same price range. Attached is a picture from the front of my house. Dahua should be able to clean it up.

View attachment 153636

Damn, I wish I had known this before, it looks really good compared to mine

 

[EMPIRETECANDY]

The 4K-T180 and 4K-B180 has some good update, please check the update here, the 180 cams we sold around 100pcs till now, the feedback is bit good,for the ratio issue i am still talking with dahua, the smaller size make the hardware a little limited compare to hikvision's bigg size.

IPC-Color4K-T180
IPC-Color4K-B180

IPC-Color4K-T and IPC-Color4K-T180 230105 Firmware | IP Cam Talk

 

[mephisto_uk]

Updated mine here, all good so far. Fingers crossed we can get the aspect ratio sorted eventually

 

[Wildcat_1]

Enjoy the new FW update. As.I mentioned, includes a lot of bug fixes I had put forward and this is a nice round up of those and the other improvements I was pushing for in the 4K-T (includes the 180) line.

The aspect ratio is tied to the current HW being used and plays a critical part to the more squashed appearance as shown in my videos (full res vs spatially confirmed that I demonstrated). You'll always get effects when using the wide angle lenses like this, look at anamorphic lenses on cinema cams etc where we have to de-squeeze in post, therefore this is nothing new BUT absolutely is impacted further by lens /optics package choice. However what I'm working on with Dahua is that since the A180 is HW bound/constrained to current package if we can work on a de-squeeze equivalent in upcoming FW. Relatively simple to implement especially with on-cam processing BUT to be fair, not generally made for on-cam use, usually through additional off-cam SW BUT nothing says it cannot be an option either on-cam through export menu / stream output and / or through NVR updates as it receives the streams (this latter one is a stretch right now for short term, no pun intended, since Dahua has released new NVRs so may take a little longer but IS an option). Either way I'm going to continue to push the ideas and show how this can be implemented to Dahua dev engineers in efforts to give the best of both worlds. The wide angle and associated resolution is very good for extreme coverage, use in E-PTZ (one of the key benefits of this cam along with how it can trigger real PTZ activation to multiple hot zones as I mentioned before) but giving users an option (for current gen) and a way to Dahua to implement with new HW choices in 2nd gen, I think will take this already great cam to the next level. For the record, I still favor the turret version and believe that one as I've mentioned here is the way to go with the 180, nice small, powerful package, easy to deploy in a wide range of scenarios.

HTH

BTW linking to my post I made in this thread RE: chosen, non-standard resolutions being employed by Dahua & His, spatial conformity and the importance of deploying these wide angle solutions correctly in a camera package for manufacturers HERE. My hope is that we will see a push towards conformity, closer to known standards, closer to true anamorphic (when utilized in these types of cameras) which is then easier to correct (FW/SW) and results in a much less distorted image. This of course means optics choice is key too.

Lastly, I'm also thinking about picking up a Hik and doing a comparison to both. I'll see what I can do

 

[jayson436]

Are time plans fixed? Eptz working?

Enjoy the new FW update. As.I mentioned, includes a lot of bug fixes I had put forward and this is a nice round up of those and the other improvements I was pushing for in the 4K-T (includes the 180) line.

The aspect ratio is tied to the current HW being used and plays a critical part to the more squashed appearance as shown in my videos (full res vs spatially confirmed that I demonstrated). You'll always get effects when using the wide angle lenses like this, look at anamorphic lenses on cinema cams etc where we have to de-squeeze in post, therefore this is nothing new BUT absolutely is impacted further by lens /optics package choice. However what I'm working on with Dahua is that since the A180 is HW bound/constrained to current package if we can work on a de-squeeze equivalent in upcoming FW. Relatively simple to implement especially with on-cam processing BUT to be fair, not generally made for on-cam use, usually through additional off-cam SW BUT nothing says it cannot be an option either on-cam through export menu / stream output and / or through NVR updates as it receives the streams (this latter one is a stretch right now for short term, no pun intended, since Dahua has released new NVRs so may take a little longer but IS an option). Either way I'm going to continue to push the ideas and show how this can be implemented to Dahua dev engineers in efforts to give the best of both worlds. The wide angle and associated resolution is very good for extreme coverage, use in E-PTZ (one of the key benefits of this cam along with how it can trigger real PTZ activation to multiple hot zones as I mentioned before) but giving users an option (for current gen) and a way to Dahua to implement with new HW choices in 2nd gen, I think will take this already great cam to the next level. For the record, I still favor the turret version and believe that one as I've mentioned here is the way to go with the 180, nice small, powerful package, easy to deploy in a wide range of scenarios.

HTH

BTW linking to my post I made in this thread RE: chosen, non-standard resolutions being employed by Dahua & His, spatial conformity and the importance of deploying these wide angle solutions correctly in a camera package for manufacturers HERE. My hope is that we will see a push towards conformity, closer to known standards, closer to true anamorphic (when utilized in these types of cameras) which is then easier to correct (FW/SW) and results in a much less distorted image. This of course means optics choice is key too.

Lastly, I'm also thinking about picking up a Hik and doing a comparison to both. I'll see what I can do

Does EPTZ function correctly to zoom in a recoding on a NVR or is it only supported in the Webview of the camera? I also had issue with the time plan being off by 12 hours. I never got any reply to if this was a bug or not.

 

[Wildcat_1]

Are time plans fixed? Eptz working?

Does EPTZ function correctly to zoom in a recoding on a NVR or is it only supported in the Webview of the camera? I also had issue with the time plan being off by 12 hours. I never got any reply to if this was a bug or not.

E-PTZ works on Dahua NVR's with the latest FW (was a small release FW with E-PTZ support added). It will be part of mainstream FW rollout for NVR FW going forward. I tested this on a 5216 I/L and works fine
Time plan being off by 12 hours I had not heard about and have not experienced myself on the multi cams I have of this one. Feel free to ping me directly and if you can show the issue or reproduce on demand, let me know the steps and I will try as well

HTH

 

[EMPIRETECANDY]

After some further talking with dahua and we found the @flint350 explain is right, but i dig further, i will explain why IPC-Color4KT-180 use the little distoration ratio compare than hikvision's ratio. I think the dahua ones still better than the hikvision one as a security camera, but if use for a normal watching the origina hikvision ratio is good, we also can do it, but this will kill some cool function on this ePTZ camera.

Here is why.

Original Ratio, pic has a little distoration under 4K. Less Black Frame and wider pics.



The 3840*1080 the pic looks bit smoothly/flat than the original pic. So this would be good for a scenery camera. I also love this ratio. But after you watch the compare pics below you will not think so, esp you are the system operator for a shop or using them as security camera.




So now we think we are at a shop, and we need to watch more details at different corners. So i set up the multi-screen Track Function on smartpss or NVR.



1+3 Mode Original Ratio

1+5 mode, original ratio.


1+3 under hikvision ratio/T80 at 3840*1080 ratio. You see the black frame is becoming bit bigger.




1+5 under hikvision ratio/T80 at 3840*1080 ratio. You see the black frame is becoming bit bigger.





So if you are using it as a security camera, which one you select? By the way, this camera support ePTZ function, if we change to the same as hikvision one, this ePTZ function will be destroyed. So i may do a firmware for a normal view camera(Not too much as a security camera,with a good view)

So this is not a hardware/firmware bug, it's design based on real security camera using.

 

[CCTVCam]

WHy doesn't Dahua look at the lenses the Hik uses and simply obtain these? I doubt they make their own lenses and the price point is similar.. Surely that would cure the issue if the issue is hardware rather than firmware. You can see on the Dahua pics there's more distortion full stop as there's a distinct fisheye effect not see in the Hik to as much effect. (Look at the road in the hik vs Dhua shots and the road has a distinct fisheye curve). The only aspect the HIk does poorely is the stitching as illustrated by the car park shot alebnit it's noticieable untli something critical falls on the join.

I have seen software correct distortion so is there is hope for the Dahua from that angle, but then it comes down to processing power in the camera as every frame will have to be processed and corrected. My gut says the way out of this is for Dahua to look at the lens choice and see if it can source a lens the same as or similar to the Hik. I alos wonder about sensor size and ratio and how similar they are. Is the Hik a larger sensor? Are the pixels binned diferently etc.

 

[EMPIRETECANDY]

@CCTVCam What you care is from a normal view by general watching, I also love that ratio. but for really security users the 4KT-180 will do more job. ePTZ function will be useless if use same 4K ratio as hikvision's. I will try to make a firmware plug in and play same ratio as hikvision's. Don't forget our camera is much smaller than the hikvision one, hardware totally different.
Lots of people use BI here, so i may do a separeate fw for BI users with a falt ratio like hikvision without distort. Will evaluate it and let guys know soon. But this will brick the ePTZ function, but BI users may not use this function.

 

[EMPIRETECANDY]

Update on Feb.20th:
This Friday we may get the beta fw to test. Will update on this Friday and invite guys to test.
Just get the news from RD team, Next week we will have different version Beta fwS to test for the ratio issue, will find a blance among the ratio, resolution,and the eptz angle.