Critique my night settings?

[Philip Gonzales]

Hi,

First of all I want to let everyone know I am very thankful for this site. I found it after buying a few toys on Amazon. After that I set up Blue Iris and purchased a IPC-HDW5231R-Z. Looking to buy more cams, probably mostly a few more 5231R's but maybe also a SD49225T-HN or IPC-HFW8232E-Z or maybe even a IPC-HFW5231E-Z12 as a LPR. I kind of want them all, but waiting on getting a PoE switch and then I will go from there.

Anyway I've been playing with my 5231R but it really does seem like Auto is the best setting for my situation. It kind of bugs me because I usually like tweaking things to make them "better", but I'll be darned if auto isn't giving me what I think to be really good results.

Here's a video of me washing dog/cat poo off of my shoes. Sorry If I'm showing crack when bending down haha. I've taken sample videos of me walking and I've been pretty happy with the results. I'm not too worried about much further than I am standing as I am going to get a cam just for the driveway soon and will likely zoom out on this one for a wide shot/front door area as this cam is mounted just to the side of my front door.




Below is my attempt at playing with the settings.

The following are constant settings that I did not change.

fps: 15
iframe: 30
CBR: 4096 kbps
Encoder: H264 H

Picture - Default

Exposure -
Anti Flicker: Outdoor
Mode: Auto
Auto Iris: ON
3D NR: ON
Grade 50

Above each picture is the changes I made. The first picture is what I believe to be the best one for night time. Please tell me if you see something different. I've tried playing with manual exposure mode to set a custom range that locks the shutter speed at 1/250 or faster but not sure I saw an improvement. Any advice is appreciated. I just want to make sure I'm not missing any potential as I am still a noob more or less. Thanks in advance!

SmartIR
WDR 50%
1 by philipgonzales3, on Flickr

SmartIR
SSA
2 by philipgonzales3, on Flickr


IR Off
WDR 50 %
3 by philipgonzales3, on Flickr


IR OFF
SSA
4 by philipgonzales3, on Flickr

 

[bigredfish]

Video looks great. What kind of white light do you have close by? My experience is that white light still makes all the difference, even with the Starlight series.

May want to check video with movement on some of those other settings, WDR especially gives me great low light still images, but add movement and motion blur is noticeably increased. Not sure bout the newer SSA setting...

Also FWIW I see a noticeable image difference running 8192 bitrate vs 4096. Unless you have some type of bandwidth constraint, why not max it out? I'm the same with FPS- I run max where possible, sure dont think I lose anything..

Some will say match FPS to Iframe, which I do, but not sure how big of a difference there is.

 

[bigredfish]

One more thing to consider, if you get a better picture with IR off, and you have enough white light, why not try forced color? (Of course you're dependent on the white light being consistent)

 

[Philip Gonzales]

Video looks great. What kind of white light do you have close by? My experience is that white light still makes all the difference, even with the Starlight series.

May want to check video with movement on some of those other settings, WDR especially gives me great low light still images, but add movement and motion blur is noticeably increased. Not sure bout the newer SSA setting...

Also FWIW I see a noticeable image difference running 8192 bitrate vs 4096. Unless you have some type of bandwidth constraint, why not max it out? I'm the same with FPS- I run max where possible, sure dont think I lose anything..

Some will say match FPS to Iframe, which I do, but not sure how big of a difference there is.

The white light is from a 6000K front porch bulb.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01NCVRTL3/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I found the videos with movement to be good. I've played back videos of me walking from the mailbox and what not and everything seems pretty clear.

I'll test out the 8192 bitrate, I thought 4096 looked pretty good, I'll see if 8192 looks any better. I'll change my iframe setting as well.

One more thing to consider, if you get a better picture with IR off, and you have enough white light, why not try forced color? (Of course you're dependent on the white light being consistent)

I've tested in color mode and I get motion blur. Tried playing with the shutter speed but I felt black and white looked better. I would love to run in color mode but I think I would need more lighting.

 

[bigredfish]

Good job.!

Yeah I have 1200 lumen bulbs in the two coach lights at the drive/garage so with that and the streetlight I'm fortunate enough to be able to run forced color with good results.

 

[bigredfish]

You know now that you mention it, my bad experience with blur using WDR at night was in forced color. So your testing in B&W using WDR may be the difference.

 

[looney2ns]

Video looks good to me.

 

[Kawboy12R]

Are you running "old" firmware? You're getting waves of ghosting behind you as you exit the door to the house. Software Version 2.460.0000.7.R, Build Date: 2017-03-06 is, I think, the current stable build. Older versions had worse effects from noise reduction.

I'd also add some motion floodlights on the cars. You're too bright up close to be optimized for viewing the cars with that cam, but you're really better off adding another cam with a longer lens for the cars in addition to adding more light.

 

[Philip Gonzales]

Are you running "old" firmware? You're getting waves of ghosting behind you as you exit the door to the house. Software Version 2.460.0000.7.R, Build Date: 2017-03-06 is, I think, the current stable build. Older versions had worse effects from noise reduction.

I'd also add some motion floodlights on the cars. You're too bright up close to be optimized for viewing the cars with that cam, but you're really better off adding another cam with a longer lens for the cars in addition to adding more light.

Firmware version I am on is 2.460.0000000.16.R, Build Date: 2017-09-04. I believe it is the newest one. I'll double check if there are any newer ones here in a bit.

I do plan on getting one above the garage. I was thinking another 5231R may be the best choice. Any opinion on this?

Any ideas what is causing my ghosting? Good catch btw. I didn't notice it at first but after watching the video a few times I see it now.

 

[looney2ns]

Hmmmm, I don't see any ghosting.

5231 would be fine at the garage.

 

[Philip Gonzales]

Hmmmm, I don't see any ghosting.

5231 would be fine at the garage.

I didn't see it either at first @looney2ns but if you replay the video and watch as the door closes. You can see vertical lines ghosted as the door continues to close. Most noticeable for me if you stare at the door of my car as the screen door closes. Not a huge deal but interested to know the cause.

 

[Kawboy12R]

Turn off your 3D noise reduction and see if it goes away. Dahua, IMHO, plays too much with NR, among other things, to give a good static image at the expense of moving targets. They're a lot better than they used to be, but as an example the 5231 gives a smoother, less noisy, static image than my Hik Darkfighter when mounted side by side. First impression is that the Dahua kicks ass until you check moving faces and realize the Hik wins there when locked at the same exposure speed. A Darkfighter is easily 2-3 times the money of the 5231R-Z even when buying in China though. Turn down the 3DNR on the Dahua and nothing changes until there's a huge jump into horrible. They may have fixed this but it was an issue when I got my 5231R-Z. Older Dahuas used to look like cartoons at night at a certain light level but they had little to no noise. No noise sells more cams to consumers at the low end though than better forensic detail because they look at their feed and see "smooth".

5231R-Z is a good choice for the driveway cam as well.

 

[Philip Gonzales]

Turn off your 3D noise reduction and see if it goes away. Dahua, IMHO, plays too much with NR, among other things, to give a good static image at the expense of moving targets. They're a lot better than they used to be, but as an example the 5231 gives a smoother, less noisy, static image than my Hik Darkfighter when mounted side by side. First impression is that the Dahua kicks ass until you check moving faces and realize the Hik wins there when locked at the same exposure speed. A Darkfighter is easily 2-3 times the money of the 5231R-Z even when buying in China though. Turn down the 3DNR on the Dahua and nothing changes until there's a huge jump into horrible. They may have fixed this but it was an issue when I got my 5231R-Z. Older Dahuas used to look like cartoons at night at a certain light level but they had little to no noise. No noise sells more cams to consumers at the low end though than better forensic detail because they look at their feed and see "smooth".

5231R-Z is a good choice for the driveway cam as well.

Thanks for all your help. I'll try turning off 3D Noise Reduction and compare. I'll probably take back to back videos with it on and off as I briskly walk towards the camera.

 

[Philip Gonzales]

Turn off your 3D noise reduction and see if it goes away. Dahua, IMHO, plays too much with NR, among other things, to give a good static image at the expense of moving targets. They're a lot better than they used to be, but as an example the 5231 gives a smoother, less noisy, static image than my Hik Darkfighter when mounted side by side. First impression is that the Dahua kicks ass until you check moving faces and realize the Hik wins there when locked at the same exposure speed. A Darkfighter is easily 2-3 times the money of the 5231R-Z even when buying in China though. Turn down the 3DNR on the Dahua and nothing changes until there's a huge jump into horrible. They may have fixed this but it was an issue when I got my 5231R-Z. Older Dahuas used to look like cartoons at night at a certain light level but they had little to no noise. No noise sells more cams to consumers at the low end though than better forensic detail because they look at their feed and see "smooth".

5231R-Z is a good choice for the driveway cam as well.

I just thought of something. I re-encoded the video when I exported it. I wonder if that could have caused ghosting? I guess I could try exporting again with re-ecncoding but ehhh I'm feeling kind of lazy lol.

 

[looney2ns]

I just thought of something. I re-encoded the video when I exported it. I wonder if that could have caused ghosting? I guess I could try exporting again with re-ecncoding but ehhh I'm feeling kind of lazy lol.

If you don't see it on your monitor attached directly to the NVR from the unmolested file, I wouldn't be concerned.

 

[Kawboy12R]

The waves aren't really bad but I expect they're there in the original video. Those cams are known for this. Minor problem, really, and even the effects of the high NR on moving targets aren't that bad. They're really good cams for the money.