Worlds First Review - Dahua - IPC-Color4K-X / DH-IPC-HFW5849T1-ASE-LED - Full Color 4K Camera

Zak

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Real world experience with these cameras tell us differently...We cannot tell you how much better someones images and stability of their system got once they quit running the cameras at close to rated specs. Look at all the threads where once someone got off their Hollywood 30FPS and reluctantly dropped the FPS to 15FPS and all of sudden their system became stable, the image quality improved, etc...

This camera is a great camera, but all cameras need light - simple physics. You either need to have enough light, use the built-in light, or go with a camera with infrared capabilitiies.

FPS and bitrate are two totally different things. Shutter speed stops blur. I have not seen how FPS impacts shadows, but ok....

Again, it is shutter speed that affects blur, not FPS. A properly adjusted camera with the correct shutter speed and running 15FPS will give you smooth and blur free video...

Watch these, for most of us, it isn't annoying until below 10FPS, and certainly sufficient enough for anything these cameras are intended to capture...and certainly enough for what you want to capture. But hey go for blur and 30 FPS....



In both videos I like 30fps best. The movement is natural.

Please create a different thread if you would like to continue this discussion or do a search on the lots of threads out there demonstrating and discussing this. This thread is about a particular camera....
My questions in original msg to this thread concerned this IPC-Color4K-X / DH-IPC-HFW5849T1-ASE-LED camera which I am about to buy. Anyone?

You wanted to talk about fps (which itself was interesting, thank you for that).
 

wittaj

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I have now after long waiting desided to order 3-4 of these DH-IPC-HFW5849T1-ASE-LED (possibly the Andys' unbranded ones Color4k-X). I have waited for the prices to come down but it seems that they are not. It seems that Dahua rather EOL and sell the stocks out than just lower the prices when the product mature.

Couple of urgent questions for you before I buy:

1) Specs says that Main stream: 3840 × 2160 @(1 fps–25/30 fps) . Which one is it 25 or 30? I prefer 30 but does does it need change PAL to NTSC and/or switch off smart/AI abilities? I want it to record 3860x2160/30fps here in Europe.

PAL does one FPS and NTSC does the other (forget which way lol)

2) I think that at the same time than this 5849T1 Dahua announced model IPC-HFW3849T1-AS-PV-S3. Now this 3849T1 model is already EOL ! Do you know if this 5849T is going to EOL soon because it seems to be same specs without Fullcolor? Does anyone have any info of the replacing model? When it does how long usually Dahua provide firmware upgrades to EOL cameras?

The 3849 is a TIOC camera and the 4K/X is not. the 3849 sucks and are lots of threads on how horrible it is and that is why they are EOL the POS...

3) Does Dahua still record videos with FTP to NAS with this .dav/.idx format? Hikvision record ONLY still pictures with FTP and NOT videos which was a nasty surprise. I prefer FTP over NFS to NAS.

4) These Fullcolor cameras do not use/have IR, right? In my yard I have always some ambient city lights therefore it is not a big issue to use white light. Up here in the north summer nights are always bright and snow in the winter reflects the ambient lights effectly and therefore I assume that I do not use white LEDs of camera maybe at all. But in the darkest cloudy/rainy nights of the late autumn I may need some extra white lights provided by these LEDs of the cameras, maybe. Can these cameras see movement in basically pitch-black nights and when ambient light is not enough the camera switch on LED(s) automatically? The camera LEDs should be on only when needed. Are the LEDs automatically adjusted based on the ambient light or I just need to preset the lever they are on (meaning that how smart is the warm light control)?

That is correct - full color cameras do not see IR and they are not magic. All cameras need light. These cameras are intended to produce clear pictures, so they do not have the ability to turn the LED on when motion as that would mess with the exposure and thus defeat the purpose of the camera. Further, without any light, the image would be dark and then the camera cannot see movement. If you do not have enough ambient light and do not want to use the built-in infrared, then you are better off with a camera with infrared capabilities.

Andy maybe would be the best to answer these questions. Andy? Comments?

Thanks in advance for your answers.
Answers in Bold
 
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Zak

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Answers in Bold
They truly are Bold answers. :D

Some comments to your answers:
1) PAL/NTSC 25/30 but my questions is/was that can this camera produce 30fps regardless of selected TV system or does it depend on the selected system (frequency). This PAL/NTSC is "old school" with analog signals. It should not matter anymore in digital world with computers. It is more about computing power where you can produce certain fps with certain resolution.

2) So you do not know if 5849T1 is about to EOL. That is still important to me. I do not want to buy already obsolite cameras.

3) Sure cameras needs light, but the question is how much :)
You are saying that ability to turn on LEDs is related to messing up the exposure. I think that with smart cameras that should not be the case. If AI is smart enough it can predict the right conditions based on the dim light and preset the values before LEDs are on so that the image do not get messed up. Naturally if there is zero light (like windowless coal cellar without any source of light) there is no picture to use to predict. And also, normally the placement of CCTV do not change. You actually can predict conditions based on history, meaning that if you have several day/night circles you can predict how the picture change when LED(s) are put on in present circumstances and preset the parameters so that automatic values do not mess the image. With the question I meant that how smart is the LED system in this particular camera. Is it just a dumb ON/OFF or does it automatically adjust the LED levels so that in certain point of the image always reach certain level of light (candela) when sensors detect movement that is setup to trigger the LEDs in those conditions.
 

wittaj

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@Zak - we are talking about cameras that still "require" internet explorer LOL. We are talking about cameras without a lot of computing power. All I can tell you is if you switch it in the camera to PAL you get one upper limit FPS and with NTSC you get another. Not sure what else to tell you, but that is the way the camera behaves... Everything else is the same so it doesn't freaking matter which one you pick except for upper limit of FPS...

The 5849 is the newest 4K/X - one wouldn't think it is EOL but we won't know until Dahua decides to do so. We have much older cameras like the 5241 and 5442 series that are not EOL. If the camera sucks or is being replaced with a newer model we see EOL quicker - that doesn't appear to be the case with this camera.

You expect too much from these cameras LOL. To be clear, these built-in lights do not act as motion lights - they are either on or off. They do have the ability to adjust the amount of power the LED comes on based on lighted conditions, but it is not going to go up and down based on motion. Further you can set up different profiles to say you want 10% from 8pm to 10pm, 25% from 10pm to midnight, 100% from.....
 

wittaj

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Zak. I would advise you contact the manufacturers of the cameras that you may wish to purchase. Hopefully they can answer your multiple queries. Good luck.
Except the home owner isn't their target market so they will tell him to talk to an authorized dealer if the call even gets that far lol....
 

CCTVCam

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In both videos I like 30fps best. The movement is natural.
You won't see a difference between 15 and 30 fps.

If you want 30fps on multiple cameras then you'd better start a thread about what CPU you need and how much storage because you're literally doubling your storage requirements and the whole excersise is going to get expensive fast. You're not shooting a movie here. What you want is a system that can capture pictures that enable you or law enforcement to identify the suspect. If you want to win oscars, I suggest you buy a RED camera and lenses, a Kray for processing and a data centre for storage. BTW, you might have to cancel Christmas to pay for it.
 

David L

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These cameras serve a different purpose than drones and gopros...

FPS isn't what fixes blur, it is shutter speed.... FPS only addresses smoothness... My plate camera recording 8FPS with a 1/2000 shutter gets clean images, whereas my neighbors 30FPS on auto settings results in blur...

Running a camera at every rated spec can cause other issues and impact image quality.

Keep in mind that these type of cameras, although are spec'd and capable of these various parameters, real world testing by many of us shows if you try to run these units at higher FPS and higher bitrates than needed that you will max out the CPU in the unit and then it bugs out just long enough that you miss something or video is choppy or pixelated or you get lost signals. My car is rated for 6,000RPM redline, but I am not gonna run it in 3rd gear on the highway at 6,000RPM...same with these types of units - gotta keep them under rated capacity. Some may do better than others, but trying to use the rated "spec" of an option available is usually not going to work well, either with a car or a camera or NVR.

Or growing up and my parents are driving on the highway up a steep grade, in the summer we would hit the turbo button (turn off the AC LOL) on our little 4 cylinder so that we could stay the speed limit going up the hill. Same thing running a camera at rated spec.

Look at all the threads where people came here with a jitter in the video or video dropping signal or IVS missing motion or the SD card doesn't overwrite or despite the proper shutter speed they can't get a good freeze frame picture and they were running 30FPS and when people tell them to drop the FPS and they dropped the FPS to 15FPS the camera became stable and they could actual freeze frame the image to get a clean capture. The goal of these cameras are to capture a perp, not capture smooth motion. When we see the news, are they showing the video or a freeze frame screen shot? Nobody cares if it isn't butter smooth...getting the features to make an ID is the important factor. As always, YMMV...

Further, these types of cameras are not GoPro or Hollywood type cameras that offer slow-mo capabilities and other features. They "offer" 30FPS and 60FPS to appease the general public that thinks that is what they need, but you will not find many of us here running more than 15 FPS; and movies are shot at 24 FPS, so anything above that is a waste of storage space for what these cameras are used for. If 24 FPS works for the big screen, I think 15 FPS is more than enough for phones and tablets and most monitors LOL. Many of my cameras are running at 12FPS.

In fact, many times if a CPU is maxing out, if it doesn't drop signal, then it will adhere to the FPS but then slow the shutter down to try to not max the CPU or cut bitrate or be slow to detect an object, etc, which then produces a smooth blurry image..that is the video my neighbor gets who insists on running 60FPS. He gets smooth walking people but you can't freeze frame it cause every frame is a blur, meanwhile my 12FPS gets the clean freeze frame. Shutter speed is more important the FPS. We both run the same shutter speed by the way, but his camera CPU is maxing out and something gotta give when you push it that hard.

Sure 30 or 60FPS can provide a smoother video but no police officer has said "wow that person really is running smooth". They want the ability to freeze frame and get a clean image. So be it if the video is a little choppy....and at 10-15FPS it won't be appreciable. My neighbor runs his at 60FPS, so the person or car goes by looking smooth, but it is a blur when trying to freeze frame it because the camera can't keep up with his other settings.. Meanwhile my camera at 15FPS with the proper shutter speed gets the clean shots.


So a few of my cams have a system status screen, and they call it a CPU, so that is why I am calling it a CPU, but this shows this camera running at 8192 bitrate, H264, CBR, and 12 FPS is hitting the camera processor at 47% and jumps to 70% with motion. If I up the camera to 30 FPS, the usage is in the high 90% range, but then with motion, it maxes out and would get unstable.

Or if I keep it at 12 FPS and use the camera motion detection, the CPU in the camera goes to 60% idle.

This would be nice if all cams had this so we could see how our settings impact the performance of the camera. I think running these cams close to capacity is probably harder to overcome than a computer spike at 100% CPU.

At the end of the day, if the consumer wants cameras that can do 30FPS, they will not look at any cameras that do not have that rated spec, so some companies will throw that in to appease the person looking for that. Unfortunately, that is marketing. It takes someone with experience in the industry to know for sure if it is really capable of what marketing says.

And in a few scenarios maybe you can squeak 30FPS out of these cameras - maybe without using IVS or motion detection and just watching a simple feed. But maybe when two users log in, it can't handle it for example. The more features you use, the less likely it will work as one expects.

And if the complaints get bad enough, we have seen firmware updates to popular models that do just that - cut FPS or some other feature...

View attachment 146322

We wouldn't take these cameras to an NBA game to broadcast, nor would we take the cameras they use at an NBA game to put on a house. Not all cameras are alike and the approach of "a camera is a camera" mentality will result in failure. Another example, I can watch an MLB game and they can slow it down to see the stitching on the baseball. Surveillance cams are not capable of that, so more FPS isn't needed and is simply a waste of storage space and potentially causing something to be missed while the camera CPU is maxing out.
Extremely well said. I first thought like the Noobs when I first got here too. It is too easy to get caught up with the Marketing of high numbers on everything today, MP is a good example, but as proven thousands of times here, this won't work with these Security CAMs...Best to look at it like most everything being Marketed out there today, ex. Max bandwidth but in reality you really average this lower bandwidth.
 

CCTVCam

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Reolink are toys in most people's opinions to what we generally purchase on here. If a buyer wants Ring, Arlo, Reolink etc there are pently of websites out there that deal with consumer level cameras. On IP Cam Talk, generally we are focused on fuil professional cameras to get superior results to the consumer offerings. Most professional manufacturers don't give consumer level support because they expect purchasers of professional cameras to be professional installers and thus to have the necesary knowledge tos et up and use professional products.

Anyway, back to the 4Kx....
 

paul@austins.tv

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Reolink are toys in most people's opinions to what we generally purchase on here. If a buyer wants Ring, Arlo, Reolink etc there are pently of websites out there that deal with consumer level cameras. On IP Cam Talk, generally we are focused on fuil professional cameras to get superior results to the consumer offerings. Most professional manufacturers don't give consumer level support because they expect purchasers of professional cameras to be professional installers and thus to have the necesary knowledge tos et up and use professional products.

Anyway, back to the 4Kx....
It was only a joke! And to transfer the hassle for wittaj.
 

Zak

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Someone in hacker news is saying that "... firmware of all of them - yes all of them, including the EU/US premium vendors - is insecure crap ...".
And the dude specifically mention this model. Link.

Any comments about this?

Because in here you recommended this camera I ordered a few from Andy. On their way. We'll see if they are worth it.

It is pity that in this camera there is still this old web 3.0 version instead of 5.0. Obviously the new 5.0 needs Taurus chipset and the new GUI is not going to get ported to this model, right? And still, this is all about GUI and not better parameters and faster code?
 

wittaj

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Someone in hacker news is saying that "... firmware of all of them - yes all of them, including the EU/US premium vendors - is insecure crap ...".
And the dude specifically mention this model. Link.

Any comments about this?

Because in here you recommended this camera I ordered a few from Andy. On their way. We'll see if they are worth it.

It is pity that in this camera there is still this old web 3.0 version instead of 5.0. Obviously the new 5.0 needs Taurus chipset and the new GUI is not going to get ported to this model, right? And still, this is all about GUI and not better parameters and faster code?

YES - it is common knowledge that EVERY camera manufacturer firmware has been hacked, including high-end Axis.

Even NDAA compliant Verkada was hacked and 150,000 cameras in private companies, along with prisons and public school systems were part of it, which would be government funded..




It is why we recommend DO NOT LET YOUR CAMERAS TOUCH THE INTERNET. You isolate them via VLAN or dual NIC. Do not set the camera up with P2P or UPnP.

I repeat, do not let your cameras touch the internet and you are fine.

Many here like the older GUI better. The 5.0 is still buggy. And no this model will not get the new GUI.

I have the this camera on the old GUI and the new 4K/T on the 5.0. From a performance perspective you will not see a difference. We are not in the GUI that often. After you set it up, you will rarely be in it.


 

David L

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No Phone Home here!!!

For Remote access to your Cameras, setup a local VPN Server (Very easy to do on Routers these days). I use OpenVPN and WireGuard on my pfSense Router. OpenVPN works on Asus Routers, assuming other routers now have OpenVPN too...if you have neither:


If you are using Blue Iris, use their Web Server UI3. Set your VPN client (laptop/phone/tablet/etc.) to access that Server/IP and your in.

No matter what Cameras you use, never let any of them have access to the Internet.
 

wittaj

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Question regarding the auto illumination function. I understand there are two illumination settings -- auto and manual. I assume manual is a simple on/off toggle, but how does auto function? Does it activate the LEDs upon sensing motion? Or does it adjust illumination based on ambient lighting?

The Annke NC800 has a similar function, and it activates its LEDs upon sensing motion. Hoping the Dahua does the same.
Nope, it is not motion sensing. Under auto it will adjust based on the available light.
 

wittaj

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Thanks. I thought @Wildcat1 mentioned that early versions permitted motion-based activation. Has that feature now been deactivated?
Nope, it has never had it. These cameras are made to prioritize picture quality and having the lights go on and off with motion impacts the exposure right at the moment you want that clean capture.

Further, motion is determined by what the camera sees, so if the image is dark, it won't know there is motion. These cameras do not have PIR in them.

Keep in mind Hikvision has eliminated that feature in firmware updates for that very reason - people were missing triggers.

If you want that, you need a TIOC camera that prioritizes that over picture quality. These cameas have infrared so that it can see motion with lack of visible light. The 4K/X and 4K/T do not see infrared, so without any light, the image is black (or very dark).

There is talk of adding as an option in a future firmware update, but it would be low priority.
 

amaheshw

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Nope, it is not motion sensing. Under auto it will adjust based on the available light.
Thanks. I thought f
Nope, it has never had it. These cameras are made to prioritize picture quality and having the lights go on and off with motion impacts the exposure right at the moment you want that clean capture.

Further, motion is determined by what the camera sees, so if the image is dark, it won't know there is motion. These cameras do not have PIR in them.

Keep in mind Hikvision has eliminated that feature in firmware updates for that very reason - people were missing triggers.

If you want that, you need a TIOC camera that prioritizes that over picture quality. These cameas have infrared so that it can see motion with lack of visible light. The 4K/X and 4K/T do not see infrared, so without any light, the image is black (or very dark).

There is talk of adding as an option in a future firmware update, but it would be low priority.

Thank you! Can you recommend someTIOC cameras? Dahua sells several, but starting points would be extremely helpful.
 

wittaj

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Thank you! Can you recommend someTIOC cameras? Dahua sells several, but starting points would be extremely helpful.
If you want active deterrence, your best bet is to go with the 2MP IPC-T5241H-AS-PV that will blink the white light. This is on the ideal MP/sensor ratio and will perform comparably to any similar 2MP fixed lens camera by Dahua. I have two of them. I have some of the other active deterrence cams as well, and would opt for the 2MP in every instance except for indoor, one could go with the IPC-HDW3449HP-AS-PV that has the red/blue lights that will bounce off the walls and be much more impressive than outside. Outside the red/blue light is more gimmicky than anything else. Nobody will see it unless they are looking at the camera. And the distance isn't very far due to not being an ideal MP/sensor ratio.

You can make it siren or say "You are under surveillance" or add your own audio.

The video quality at night is comparable to any similar camera on same sensor and lens size. The biggest problem is people buy this camera expecting to IDENTIFY at 60 feet and no 2.8mm or 3.6mm will do that. But if you are under 15 feet it will be ok.
 
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Hi, I bought these cameras last year and have been loving them. Unfortunately, I was lazy and didn't install the water proofing covers as it was our dry season. I guess where the story goes is clear . My question is if, and how I replace the ethernet port which is now rusted out. Could I cut it off and reattach a female rs42? Any suggestions or info would be much appreciated.
 
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