ds-2cd2542fwd MiniDome Competition Snooker table install

[richisup]

I have to admit this Minidome works well for this application considering it's designed for the security industry.



Setup:




Key things from here are a: the gain and b: the DNR as too high and everything is streaky

 

[hiky]

Very nice, will the mini dome not run at a higher resolution ??

 

[richisup]

Yes it will however at a cost of fps - this was a tough decision but the extra 5 fps was worth it

Here is a test running at its highest resolution and default image settings (ignore the initial i frame breakup)... oh and this is a much higher bit-rate which I had to reduce to obtain reasonable storage management:

 

[gmaster1]

60Hz gets you to 30fps btw. Also, and personal preference, I usually get rid of that default smoothing feature. When you went under 1/150sec was the ball tracking not ideal? 60 I can imagine not being good, but was 120 also unusable?

 

[richisup]

Using the 60Hz made the lights round the side of the room cycle in and out, I guess they are LED so unfortunately stuck with 50hz. Interestingly the 1/100 time tracks ok, I simply went with the fastest exposure possible with the given light, I think tomorrow I will run a check without the SVC at 1/100

Shame about the LED lights though - here you can see the issue:

 

[gmaster1]

I do have that issue from time to time in my garage which is lit by LED. The headlights in my car are LED based and freak out as well depending on what speeds the cameras hit during the day. The faster the shutter speed (very sunny day), the more flicker occurs.

 

[nayr]

you should see the led tail lights on my LPR camera running at 1/500 or 1/1000 at night, looks like police strobes heh.. there is a newer caddy in the neighborhood that has a high speed nightrider effect.

 

[richisup]

Awesome

 

[hiky]

AS a personal preference i like the higher resolution, better view around the table and just a cleaner image, just a shame about the ghosting on the balls, maybe lowering gain and DNR would help, as for saving storage space, can you not set up events ??

 

[richisup]

I will have another shot at setting the higher resolution as i agree with you there. I have set up a schedule for recording hours but event recording I have avoided as concerned I may miss bits

Oh I have turned off svc and set 1/100 exposure time which is an improvement thanks

 

[nayr]

have you thought about rotating it 90 degrees and running it in cooridor mode?

 

[richisup]

That would be cool but the target audience is YouTube / Facebook etc

 

[gmaster1]

You can stream from BI to twitch or YouTube if there's a contest or tournament etc. Have some fun with it!

 

[richisup]

I did not know that thanks.. - Ok i had a strange issue with the playback stuttering after changing the resolution so I defaulted everything and the issue went away. Now @hicky what do you think to this setting? its all default except for the saturation, gain and dnr levels down

20fps max res vbr

 

[hiky]

On the clip the saturation looks like it still needs to drop some more and the fps need to go up

It just looks too colorful, it might help loose that glow the red balls show on there top edges

The resolution is better but playback just lacks that fluidity running at 20fps

Trouble with putting the results here on the forum is that we are not the intended audience so therefore are not sure what is expected ?? it might be you have to compromise due to technical limitations

Youtube will also re encode your outputs in different ways on different days, sometimes youtube makes a good job other times its re encoding is poor

obviously the best you want is max res max fps with lowered saturation and dns but that might be too much for the bandwidth you are using to upload and or stream with

Just wandering if the white balance settings will help, there are some pre configured presets but also manual adjustment is possible

 

[richisup]

Thank you I appreciate your input

 

[Q™]

Why not center the camera above the table at the table mid-point?

 

[nayr]

it likely has a lamp/lighting centered over the table.

 

[Kawboy12R]

I don't mind the landscape mode used over corridor mode. It doesn't focus as much on the table but watching the players at the sides of the table is also nice. I'd also echo the preference for higher FPS and a bit lower saturation.

 

[richisup]

I'd love to be able to try other locations for this job but unfortunately this is where the owner wants it. If I was able to have my say then I would have mounted something along the lines of a go-pro at a lower angle which is what was used here:



Here is another angle of the venue where the Hikvision is mounted from ahem an "analogue" camera:



Initially this was going to be an Axis camera which has the ability to stream direct to youtube as requested so cat5 was installed ready, then the owner decided it would be better to have the footage saved then uploaded after the event (sigh). So the Minidome at this point made sense.

There is one thing however - being this camera is not really designed for fps but more for the snapshot quality I have run into a bandwidth issue with the SD card as you can see from the playback line below



The playback had missing bits and was very glitchy

It took a while to pin point the issue but it seems the only way to get a smooth recording to the sd card is to reduce the bit rate down to 4096 on both cameras (one above the pool table as well). It was a little strange as the first few days were fine but the problem is now consistent even with another mini dome here on my desk - Note: recording to a smb share works fine on all resolutions and at the highest bit-rate, just not on the sd cards.

So great camera, great results - do watch out when using for high fps applications recording straight to sd.