IPC-Color4K-T 4K Poor Image Quality

[otanittep]

Full camera description: EmpireTech IPC-Color4K-T 4K Full-Color Ultra Low Light 8MP Smart AI Starlight Turret IP Camera 1/1.2" CMOS,Build-in Warm LED, Built-in Mic,SMD 3.0,PoE and ePoE,IPC-Color4K-T 3.6mm

I bought 3 of cameras a few months ago and have kinda disappointed by the image quality. Essentially, the image quality is worse than my 1080p cam in broad daylight. Just kind of accepted it until I started playing with reviewing footage on my NVR and NVR software. Then I realized that the 720p substream of the same camera actually looks good. It's just the 4k capture that looks terrible. So that led to believe maybe I just a firmware update or there's a setting I need to change or something. So I hope you can help me figure out what I'm doing wrong here.

I initially had this connected an EmpireTech DVR but am now connected directly to Scrypted. The video playback looks the same with either. I'll try to provide all pertinent information. I did recently update the firmware with the latest I could find on the EmpireTech website and it made no difference. Here is what is showing in System: System Version:3.120.0000000.21.RBuild Date:2023-04-18

Screenshots of camera stream settings and a screenshot of playback of both streams. I think it's obvious, but note the jagged lines on the 4k.

Please help! I want to love these cameras. But surely something can't be right here.

 

[wittaj]

If you are talking about the jagged lines on the bricks, that is common with any camera at certain sizes of the image if it is looking at straight thin lines like a brick or fence, but because this sensor is bigger, it means the image is bigger that can still display this.

My 4K/T has a brick wall in the image and it does that. Remember the purpose of these cameras - not to take nice still images, but to get clean captures of a perp, and it does that well.

I can do it with my 2MP cams looking at a wood fence or anything with lots of straight lines if I reduce the size of the image.

Some things you can try:

H264H
12,288 bitrate mainstream
15FPS
15iframe

The 4K image is a much crisper image in my opinion than the 720P. The substream is basically a softer image.

So what are your other settings? Are they on default? Adjusting those can help.

You could drop sharpness down until the jagged lines go away, but keep in mind that softens the image too, so it is a balancing act between the jagged lines you see versus getting a clean capture of a perp.

 

[bigredfish]

Post a full size full res image, post a short video clip. Hard to tell from those compressed images


Also post your image, exposure, and backlight settings
(FYI I run my 3.6mm 4K-T at 16,384Kb/s you may want to bump it up a bit at least 10Kb/s)



Samples (sorry its a little overcast today)


View attachment Home_ch5_20230728090128_20230728090144.mp4

 

[otanittep]

Thanks for the suggestions guys! Witaj, I see what you're saying. If I play the videos and freeze them around the same time and then take a screenshot and really look, you can see that the screenshot of the 4k video (on left) has those jagged lines that seemed to make the picture look worse, but it's actually more detailed. Looking at the blue car across the street, it's much more detailed. And UPS letters are more detailed. So I think I see what you're saying here. The screenshot of the 720p video "looks better" from afar, but if you really look at the detail, it is softer and less crisp. This is very interesting and eye opening. I did attach more settings, though. Backlight is set on HLC because most of the day the sun shining on everything blows everything out. Most things are pretty close to default or auto. I did pull back shutter speed a little though just because from browsing the forums it seems most recommend speeding up shutter some or even more than I have, but I'm slow adjusting as I learn.

Maybe I could also bump up my bitrate per your suggestion bigredfish. Wasn't sure what this camera is capable of before I might start dropping frames and what not.

I tried uploading a full export... both video files (one from homekit export and one from Scrypted export) - they are mp4 - I get an upload error saying they are not videos as expected.

 

[wittaj]

OK, during the day you need to drop those numbers way back. Gamma should be lower and brightness - mine are in the 30s-low 40s for day time.

In terms of getting the most out of the camera, here is my "standard" post that many use as a start for dialing in day and night that helps get the clean captures and help the camera recognize people and cars.

Every field of view is different, but I have found you need contrast to usually be 6-8 higher than the brightness number at night.

We want the ability to freeze frame capture a clean image from the video at night, and that is only done with a shutter of 1/60 or faster. At night, default/auto may be on 1/12s shutter or worse to make the image bright.

In my opinion, shutter (exposure) and gain are the two most important parameters and then base the others off of it. Shutter is more important than FPS. It is the shutter speed that prevents motion blur, not FPS. 15 FPS is more than enough for surveillance cameras as we are not producing Hollywood movies. Match iframes to FPS. 15FPS is all that is usually needed.

Many people do not realize there is manual shutter that lets you adjust shutter and gain and a shutter priority that only lets you adjust shutter speed but not gain. The higher the gain, the bigger the noise and see-through ghosting start to appear because the noise is amplified. Most people select shutter priority and run a faster shutter than they should because it is likely being done at 100 gain, so it is actually defeating their purpose of a faster shutter.

Go into shutter settings and change to manual shutter and start with custom shutter as ms and change to 0-8.3ms and gain 0-50 (night) and 0-4ms exposure and 0-30 gain (day)for starters. Auto could have a shutter speed of 100ms or more with a gain at 100 and shutter priority could result in gain up at 100 which will contribute to significant ghosting and that blinding white you will get from the infrared or white light.

Now what you will notice immediately at night is that your image gets A LOT darker. That faster the shutter, the more light that is needed. But it is a balance. The nice bright night static image results in Casper blur and ghost during motion LOL. What do we want, a nice static image or a clean image when there is motion introduced to the scene?

In the daytime, if it is still too bright, then drop the 4ms down to 3ms then 2ms, etc. You have to play with it for your field of view.

Then at night, if it is too dark, then start adding ms to the time. Go to 10ms, 12ms, etc. until you find what you feel is acceptable as an image. Then have someone walk around and see if you can get a clean shot. Try not to go above 16.67ms (but certainly not above 30ms) as that tends to be the point where blur starts to occur. Conversely, if it is still bright, then drop down in time to get a faster shutter.

You can also adjust brightness and contrast to improve the image. But try not to go above 70 for anything and try to have contrast be at least 7-10 digits higher than brightness.

You can also add some gain to brighten the image - but the higher the gain, the more ghosting you get. Some cameras can go to 70 or so before it is an issue and some can't go over 50.

But adjusting those two settings will have the biggest impact. The next one is noise reduction. Want to keep that as low as possible. Depending on the amount of light you have, you might be able to get down to 40 or so at night (again camera dependent) and 20-30 during the day, but take it as low as you can before it gets too noisy. Again this one is a balance as well. Too smooth and no noise can result in soft images and contribute to blur.

Do not use backlight features until you have exhausted every other parameter setting. And if you do have to use backlight, take it down as low as possible.

After every setting adjustment, have someone walk around outside and see if you can freeze-frame to get a clean image. If not, keep changing until you do. Clean motion pictures are what we are after, not a clean static image.

 

[bigredfish]

Get rid of Shutter Priority, go manual. Not more than 0-4ms Exposure for daytime.

You can dial DNR back to 30-40 max

Exp Comp 40, it doesnt need any extra exposure, its bright as it is

LIke many Dahua cameras, its over-sharp out of the box, cau back to 40-45 and see if that and the increased bitrate help your jaggies.

I went to a much higher bitrate because of a bad pulse in the image, it helped a lot. Whatever your hardware can handle, but I'd try at least 10,000

 

[otanittep]

Holy crap, I made a couple of those changes and what a difference! Man, I feel dumb now. But then again, I kinda knew I just wasn't doing something right or didn't understand how much these settings could truly influence the quality. And your post is right... I actually saw this post when I was searching about this issue before and skimmed through it and still did not find the manual shutter setting. But I did find it now and adjusted. This is amazing! I'm going to have to learn the scheduling feature so I can setup different modes for night and day per your suggestion and stop trying to force a one size fits all. Thanks!

 

[bigredfish]

HLC is for nighttime to reduce glare like from car headlights.

If anything, use a small bit if WDR for daytime. Use it sparingly. no more than 20

 

[otanittep]

I feel like I tried that already and for some reason, once I got down to like 45 it made no difference. In other words, I could adjust the slider and the picture would adjust until I hit that and then it did nothing between 44 and 1. Maybe it was like 25 or something, I can't remember, but will try that again.

 

[bigredfish]

It will screw with your image and at higher levels create motion blur. Try 20 and watch it live and see if it isnt adjusting. It wont stay perfectly the same in bright sun vs overcast no matter what dont try and force it to.

 

[bigredfish]

And lastly, dont try and adjust the image to the substream. It will always be less quality than the main stream. Let it do what it wants to do and focus on the main stream.

 

[otanittep]

Ah, ok... it does seem to be adjusting now. I think I remembered wrong. What is happening is, at 45 it looks good. Soon as I tick it down to 44, there's a drastic reduction in saturation that makes it very "pale" if that makes any sense. Maybe I need to up the saturation?

 

[bigredfish]

You could, but If you dont need it all the better.

You could try SSA as well. Its similar to WDR

 

[bigredfish]

My bad, yeah the WDR on the 4K-T is a washout at lower settings. 20 is about right for 5442s but you're right 45 or so on 4K-T

Try SSA

 

[otanittep]

Ah, ok.. cool. Thanks for that!

I tried SSA before and I forget what the issue was... the sun is on the other side now so I'm not able to test specifically for the situation that eventually landed me with HLC on. Pretty much everything looks good at this time of day. lol But SSA does actually look the best at this very moment. I will try working on this some more between 10am-3pm tomorrow when the sun is blowing out practically the entire thing.

 

[otanittep]

I was just thinking, too, if I really want the best image quality, I may just need to bite the bullet and have 3 scheduled scenes. One for when the sun is beating down on everything, one for when the sun is behind the trees but still daylight, and one for night.

I guess there's just no "automatic" modes with these things, huh? lol With great power comes great responsibility? lol

 

[wittaj]

Keep in mind that what looks great as a static image might be total crap with motion.

Best is to avoid any backlight, but if used, use it as low as you can go. Remember the goal is to get clean captures of a perp, not nice static pictures.

Personally I will accept a static image that might be a little darker in the shaded area but give me a clean freeze frame of a person in motion instead of a cranked up backlight that barely shows an area even shaded but then the motion in it is a blur.

And yes that is the benefit of the new GUI is the ability to have more than two profiles, so you can set up a two hour profile for that period of time that the sun just absolutely messes with the image and maybe turn backlight on then, and not on the rest.

Automatic/default settings are going to produce great static images, but then motion will be a blur. Sadly too many people run their cameras on default/auto settings and then miss the clean capture of the perp.

I can make a cheap 4k camera look as "bright" as my 4K/T camera. The difference is the cheap 4K is running a 1/3 shutter and gain maxed out, so while the static image is nice, motion is a complete blur.

With the 4K/T and the larger sensor, we can run much faster shutters, which at night allows us to get the clean capture.

 

[otanittep]

I kinda learned some of that with the first camera I bought... pictures looked good, but the first time I needed to capture a picture of a moving vehicle (even at 10mph) it was almost unusable. That's what led me to researching and eventually moving up to these EmpireTechs/Dahuas. But I'm realizing you have to kinda know what you're doing or you'll still end up with crappy results. lol These things capture better images of vehicles speeding by at 30 mph than the old Eufy I had did at 10mph. Crazy! But see I still have a lot of learning and tuning to do. With what you guys have told me/helped me with already today, I see an even bigger improvement in picture quality.

 

[otanittep]

Just wanted to update that I did create separate profiles for day and night recording and applied a schedule and, following the advice in this thread, I'm much happier with the results. Before, I was never able to get good results without using backlighting. And then it worked ok in some situations, but not others (time of day, motion frequency, etc.). After adjusting the settings and using the scheduling feature (instead of trying to use a one size fits all day and night setup), these are delivering the results I was expecting. Very happy with these. Thanks!