This is as close as it gets so far:
All, as I mentioned in my 59232 review, I had purchased some other PTZ’s and would be reviewing. Glad to say that the SD5A425XA-HNR showed up today and looking forward to putting through its paces. This is one that on paper looks to be a great day and nighttime contender to the 49225 and I'm...
ipcamtalk.com
But your issues are going to be present regardless of which PTZ as those limitations exists across all auto-tracking PTZs, including much more expensive Hikvisions being discussed
here.
As I am sure you have found out, these are not plug and play. You have to dial them in to your field of views. But once you do, they are incredible. Mine hits the mark over 95% of the time. And some field of views are problematic as well.
But yes, autortrack PTZs once the tracking stops will either return to the preset it started at or with a VMS system you could tell it to go somewhere else. It is why many of us use spotter cams to help get it looking the right way if an object stops and starts again.
You can usually get it to not loose tracking so quickly if you change the target ratio a bit or turn PFA off, and I think this thing learns LOL. If the target ratio is too large, it will miss faster moving objects and lose tracking faster when an object stops.
My 49225 when I first got it would immediately lose track if someone stopped. Now it will hold at least 10 seconds if someone stops.
Do not run default/auto settings.
It is a matter of getting the brightness/contrast and target ratio settings correct.
I always knew that you shouldn't chase a bright picture - it looks nice and people migrate towards a brighter TV for example, but upon closer examination, most images need to be toned down in order to get all the details.
You will be surprised how much changing a parameter like gamma could impact tracking. For example, if you have a pesky tree or something in the middle of the view during an autotrack, just by changing some image parameters you can get autotrack to pass it. Making the image a little darker at night actually helped with tracking someone across the street, which was opposite of what I thought you would think to do. So add some contrast to your image and see if it improves.
I have a yard lamp post that more times than not autotrack would get stuck on it as someone was walking and the autotrack would only go so far. Because my image has soo much contrast (bright white concrete a third, blacktop road a third, grass a third), knocking down the gamma made the lamp post not be so "trackable" lol, and along with that I turned of PFA and that gave it just enough time to retrack the person walking past the lamp post. The camera may still autotrack the lamp post when a small kid goes by, but an adult it was autotracking past the lamp post.
Ideally for an intrusion box or tripwires, you should have the initial field of view be such that the camera doesn't have to initially pan too much up/down or left/right to get the object in the center of the screen to start tracking. The closer the object is to the center of the image, the better the chance that it will track correctly.
The reason it starts looking upward or left or right is usually because the intrusion box is too big so the camera identifies the object before it is in the center of the field of view and then sometimes something else matches the "algorithm signature" of the initial object and then starts trying to track something that isn't there. Adjusting the field of view and the locations of the IVS rules to be closer to the center can fix that.
Autotracking PTZs are great, but they have limitations like everything else. Installed in a wrong location or with fields of view that do not give it a chance will be problematic.
