IPC-T5442T-ZE as an LPR help

[wittaj]

As much as I don't want to put up a bullet, from everyone's advice here, I may have to since it offers superior zoom. i did think about adding one very close to the street near the block wall you can see in the day shots, but that requires running wire under the yard and will require quite a bit of work to get it unnoticeable. We have a lot of foot traffic to and last thing I want is one of these crackheads stealing or breaking it. In any case, I really appreciate your input. Im a little torn between the 5241E-Z12E or 5442E-Z4E. I might need the zoom of the z12

You would be surprised how oblivious people are. My neighbor on a corner lot has a fence running parallel to the public sidewalk so the fence is literally a few feet off of the sidewalk. He has cameras mounted on each corner (4 feet high) to record people going up and down the sidewalk and gets great shots BTW. They have never been touched in over 2 years.

Just ask @Holbs that has had a crazed fan knife his tires and put glue on his keypad despite multiple cameras and did this repeatedly over a course of several months and eventually was able to get a restraining order on her...

So I roughly have installed a 5442 6mm birdhouse camera on lamp post 50' from my front door....with tire slashing incursion discussion

Broke the roof a little, will fix later. Gotta add some green leaves or fake ivy as well. But for now, it is working. 6' height aimed right down the street where it is the only entrance (it's slightly crooked for time being). It's primary purpose is to catch faces as folks walk towards my...

ipcamtalk.com

Paint it to match your surroundings or even attempting to hide it in some way and nobody will even notice.

Here is an example of someone here that hid a camera in a floodlight. This could be your turret a lot closer to the street...

In ground camera placement ideas

Looking for some camera options to install pointing left and right in the spot marked below. We originally wanted to install a fence and mount the cameras on the fence but decided not to build the fence so I have two CAT6 burial runs under the rocks. Would love to see some ideas of what people...

ipcamtalk.com

 

[looney2ns]

In almost all case's a dome should not be used outdoors.
Too many issues with reflections from IR, dirt, rain etc. They will get worse with age.

My 5442 turret is 2-3' from peoples head when they stand at my front door. 99.9% of folks have no clue it's there. I've done nothing to hide it.

 

[samplenhold]

I think your LPRs are pulling plates around 80 ft? Ill be at right around 60ft. Still unsure if the 5442 could pull that off.

Those LPR cams are set to cap at 40-150' for LPR-E and 70-130' for LPR-W.

Mine looks pretty subpar even on day default settings. Strange.

You really are not giving the cams a chance if you are just using the defaults. Those settings are designed to get the cam going and that is it. Everything is middle of the road. It is imperative to work the settings.

Start with the EXPOSURE tab as that will give you the most impact. Change one thing at a time and learn what that change does to your quality.

Anti-flicker, Mode, and Shutter will really hit the blur/ghosting issue but can impact the brightness. The Gain, Iris, and Exposure Comp will brighten a dark exposure but will impart noise.

Remember that for an LPR cam all you are interested in is the plate. Do not fret about anything else on the pic. Who cares if the exposure is too dark or light to get the color. It is the plate you are interested in and that is the job you are asking the cam to perform.

 

[ahlan]

HDW5442TM-AS VBR Issue
I wonder if you are having a similar issue with your 5442-Z4E, mine had this VBR issue even with great light. You could try changing the IFrame and some other parameters recommended in that thread.

5442 6mm fixed bullet Overview
View attachment 84092

5231Z-12 LPR cam at 90-100ft (older version of the 5241 which is better)
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Night
View attachment 84100

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Culdesac Overview- 5442 Bullet 3.6mm fixed
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5231Z-12 LPR 120ft
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@crw030 I was definitely having that VBR issue when I was playing with VBR. But even in CBR it just looks much more over-sharpened and has a ton of noise. Comparing it to my Montavue overviews, theres a huge difference in scene quality.

Also, @bigredfish, your 5442 looks a bit better than mine. Could be due to the different scenes though. Oh well, separate issue. I agree the 5442 dome probably wont cut it. Im not to impressed with this camera to be honest. Night seems pretty great but daytime is laughable compared to my current cams. See pics below. Keep in mind I set the 5442 to temporarily have overview duties to compare to my full time overviews. Both have similar settings in framerate, bitrate, picture settings. My Montavues are 8mp but i have 4mps as well and still feel this picture to be trash compared to those.

 

[wittaj]

Post screenshots of all of your daytime settings and the screen showing bitrate, etc.

It looks like you have a low bitrate. I wonder if you have codec on and screwing with it. What about iframes do they match FPS. Is a backlight option on?

 

[ahlan]

I had a Z4E bullet out to about ~75 feet and for the most part it was "ok". Sometimes it was hard to distinguish between a "5" and a "S" or a "Q" and an "O" from that distance. At shorter distances you may be "OK' with a 32mm focal length. I think you will still struggle on some vehicles with poor/dirty plates. I'm also not sure how concentrated the IR is on the D5442E-Z4E dome is compared to a bullet like the Z12. That is a @bigredfish question but it could be a concern since you really need a high concentrated beam of IR light for LPR and not really a flood. In the end, the extra resolution the 4MP cams just don't give you any benefit over a 2MP cam for LPR duty. With the zoom limitations of the Z4E vs the Z12 it makes even less sense.

I ended up selling mine here on the forums and "downgrading" to a 5241-Z12. I'm so happy I did that. Having all that zoom makes a massive difference. When I sold the Z4E, I decided I wanted to reduce the angle of capture so I changed the camera location when I installed the Z12 so now I shoot out to about ~115 feet. Here are two shots as examples out to approx ~115'.

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I don't think I have any of the older images of vehicles taken with my Z4E. Don't be concerned about a bullet vs a dome. The Dahua bullets aren't large and 99% of people won't even know there are there. It took my in-laws months to even see mine and that is only after I told them they were on the house so they could go look for them.

Ok good to know. I appreciate you chiming in! I dont think the 5442 is gonna work for me. In every case the z12 has better everything, I just hate the form factor, but i know theres sacrifices with domes.
By the way those shots at 115ft look great! Its weird cause i always notice cameras on houses/building when walking around even before getting into this myself. Maybe thats just me and other people arent like that

 

[wittaj]

There are some of us that notice these things, but the majority of people do not notice. My neighbor's mailbox at the street once went missing on a Saturday night and even though he was out doing yard work and mowing his grass, he did not notice his mailbox was missing. Wasn't until I asked him where his mailbox was that he noticed LOL.

Here is my plate capture from 175 out. My angle is about 40 degrees vertical, 45 degrees horizontal. Camera is 35 feet above street at this location. The Z12E is an incredible unit!

 

[ahlan]

You would be surprised how oblivious people are. My neighbor on a corner lot has a fence running parallel to the public sidewalk so the fence is literally a few feet off of the sidewalk. He has cameras mounted on each corner (4 feet high) to record people going up and down the sidewalk and gets great shots BTW. They have never been touched in over 2 years.

Just ask @Holbs that has had a crazed fan knife his tires and put glue on his keypad despite multiple cameras and did this repeatedly over a course of several months and eventually was able to get a restraining order on her...

View attachment 84113 View attachment 84114

So I roughly have installed a 5442 6mm birdhouse camera on lamp post 50' from my front door....with tire slashing incursion discussion

Broke the roof a little, will fix later. Gotta add some green leaves or fake ivy as well. But for now, it is working. 6' height aimed right down the street where it is the only entrance (it's slightly crooked for time being). It's primary purpose is to catch faces as folks walk towards my...

ipcamtalk.com

Paint it to match your surroundings or even attempting to hide it in some way and nobody will even notice.

Here is an example of someone here that hid a camera in a floodlight. This could be your turret a lot closer to the street...

View attachment 84111

In ground camera placement ideas

Looking for some camera options to install pointing left and right in the spot marked below. We originally wanted to install a fence and mount the cameras on the fence but decided not to build the fence so I have two CAT6 burial runs under the rocks. Would love to see some ideas of what people...

ipcamtalk.com

In almost all case's a dome should not be used outdoors.
Too many issues with reflections from IR, dirt, rain etc. They will get worse with age.

My 5442 turret is 2-3' from peoples head when they stand at my front door. 99.9% of folks have no clue it's there. I've done nothing to hide it.

Most people are oblivious, but those people arent the ones im worried about. Its the ones that know what to look for and notice camera placement, angles, and blindspots. Domes conceal angle easily. I do however like the idea of building something to place them inconspicuously but my house isnt suitable for that.

By the way my domes have been in use for a few years now and they hold up well. Occasionally ill have to wipe the lenses and apply some wax but overall they seem to work well. The ones that are mounted low sometimes get hard water spots due to sprinklers or other water. Ill just use a little cleaner wax to buff the stains out and good as new, but its very rare I have to do that. I will agree with the point that IR reflections can be an issue.

 

[ahlan]

Those LPR cams are set to cap at 40-150' for LPR-E and 70-130' for LPR-W.


You really are not giving the cams a chance if you are just using the defaults. Those settings are designed to get the cam going and that is it. Everything is middle of the road. It is imperative to work the settings.

Start with the EXPOSURE tab as that will give you the most impact. Change one thing at a time and learn what that change does to your quality.

Anti-flicker, Mode, and Shutter will really hit the blur/ghosting issue but can impact the brightness. The Gain, Iris, and Exposure Comp will brighten a dark exposure but will impart noise.

Remember that for an LPR cam all you are interested in is the plate. Do not fret about anything else on the pic. Who cares if the exposure is too dark or light to get the color. It is the plate you are interested in and that is the job you are asking the cam to perform.

Sorry i should clarify, I meant just playing around with day shots in default as an overview camera netted subpar picture. I was doing LPR duties with the settings in my original post ( as you mentioned shutter speed and gain settings) but I have since zoomed it back out and ran default to see how general picture quality is. Its pretty bad in my opinion compared to my normal overview cams. See the comparison below

 

[ahlan]

Post screenshots of all of your daytime settings and the screen showing bitrate, etc.

It looks like you have a low bitrate. I wonder if you have codec on and screwing with it. What about iframes do they match FPS. Is a backlight option on?

So this is kind of a separate issue from my LPR stuff. I was just playing around to get an idea of general video quality. I have the camera zoomed out, focused, with default settings. Im not pulling LPR duty with this. Encoding settings are below, everything else is default.

 

[wittaj]

Yeah, I know this is separate from the LPR, so for kicks change to H265 and match the iframes to the FPS so they should both be 30. And bump the bitrate to 20480 and let's see what happens.

 

[ahlan]

Yeah, I know this is separate from the LPR, so for kicks change to H265 and match the iframes to the FPS so they should both be 30. And bump the bitrate to 20480 and let's see what happens.

i changed it to h265 but im still limited to 8192kb/s bitrate. Appears to be the same picture quality

 

[wittaj]

Most people are oblivious, but those people arent the ones im worried about. Its the ones that know what to look for and notice camera placement, angles, and blindspots. Domes conceal angle easily. I do however like the idea of building something to place them inconspicuously but my house isnt suitable for that.

By the way my domes have been in use for a few years now and they hold up well. Occasionally ill have to wipe the lenses and apply some wax but overall they seem to work well. The ones that are mounted low sometimes get hard water spots due to sprinklers or other water. Ill just use a little cleaner wax to buff the stains out and good as new, but its very rare I have to do that. I will agree with the point that IR reflections can be an issue.

Well since this one cam is for LPR, they really cannot avoid it unless they lawn job you and nobody can tell exactly the area it is covering, just a general idea.

We have seen enough video posted here and elsewhere that the run of the mill door checker or thief isn't looking for cameras so you are probably ok if they are visible. The ones that are looking are the ones you want to notice so that they skip your house!

 

[bigredfish]

Here's a 5442 VF bullet at our entrance. I dont see anything wrong with the image (though since they took the big oak tree down I need to back off the WDR).
I think you need to spend some time with figuring out the settings.
The Montavue looks soft, and the 5442 is over sharp out of the box. Dial sharpness back to 40 or so



View attachment HOA Entr_ch4_20210305133716_20210305133738.mp4

 

[wittaj]

i changed it to h265 but im still limited to 8192kb/s bitrate. Appears to be the same picture quality

Bummer. Must be a limitation in the turret version or you need to hit the customized or maybe an older firmware?

 

[sebastiantombs]

Is there a "customized" selection in the bit rate selector? I have both a bullet and turret and both have "customized" and will go up to 20480 using it.

 

[ahlan]

Here's a 5442 VF bullet at our entrance. I dont see anything wrong with the image (though since they took the big oak tree down I need to back off the WDR).
I think you need to spend some time with figuring out the settings.
The Montavue looks soft, and the 5442 is over sharp out of the box. Dial sharpness back to 40 or so


View attachment 84146 View attachment 84147 View attachment 84148 View attachment 84149 View attachment 84150

Bummer. Must be a limitation in the turret version.

Is there a "customized" selection in the bit rate selector? I have both a bullet and turret and both have "customized" and will go up to 20480 using it.

@bigredfish thats what it was! I put sharpness down to 28 and its a huge improvement. This was oversharp out of the box. The montavues are softer but in a good way.
@wittaj @sebastiantombs you are right! if I hit customized, I can change it to 20480 bitrate and woooah. The image is real nice now. Maybe Ill try LPR duty with this again lmao

 

[wittaj]

Still looks soft/out of focus. I just noticed you have some wood trim or something across the top. That could be jacking with the focus and maybe even IR bounce at night. Are those IR's on the bottom of the turret or the top?

Can you have someone stand out in the center of the image and you hit autofocus and see if that makes it a little more crisp.

 

[samplenhold]

Again, if you keep it on default settings, don't complain. That cam is a great cam but like anything, you need to work the settings. Saying you are not impressed with a cam on default settings is silly. Spend some time dialing it in.

 

[looney2ns]

Fyi: Montavue is rebranded Dahuas.