IPC-T5442T-ZE Cloaking Device video artifacts H.264 general codec --What could cause this?

grapedaddy

grapedaddy

Getting the hang of it
Aug 26, 2019
29
34
Virginia
Cloaking Device video artifacts H.264 general codec. Note there is only one person in the image and I've always known her to be fully opaque.

I have to use the Dahua firmware to get the Dahua plug-in to work with my cameras in my NX Witness based "WaveVMS"

Device Type IPC-T5442T-ZE
System VersionV2.840.0000000.13.R, Build Date: 2022-01-10
WEB VersionV3.2.1.1174274
ONVIF Version20.12(V3.1.0.1064635)
Algorithm Version1.0.7
Security Baseline VersionV2.1

I see this several times a week. I don't use smart codec and for troubleshooting I have dropped back from H.265 to H.264. It did this in the last firmware version as well.

The only other time I have seen this was in my 5831's back when I was still trying to save smart codec video to my edge storage backup and exporting them to mp4 for viewing independently of my VMS.

It looks like the encoding breaks down. What could cause this?




Driveway_IPC-T5442T-ZE_2022_04_26_4PM_47_14.jpg.jpeg
View attachment Driveway IPC-T5442T-ZE_2022_04_26_4PM_47_14.mp4
ClockingDeviceArtifacts.JPG
 
Is that the exact spot everytime? Could there be a Worm Hole where the Star Trek people reappear?
Your bit rate is nice and high.
Your I-frame is on Dahua Default, Blue Iris recommends matching FPS and i Frame, but it doesn't seem to make much diff on my 5442ZE.....
 
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Is the computer running headless? If so, plug in a monitor and reboot.

Your settings look about right, other than try matching the FPS and iframe.

Everyone always says their system is a gigabit and not overloaded, but is the camera going thru a router or is the VMS cpu pegging out.
 
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I've tried all that in various permutations that would be difficult for me duplicate. I didn't take notes. This has been especially difficult to troubleshoot because it is somewhat rare, I've suspected camera CPU load issues perhaps interfering with encoding the IP streams. These artifacts do not appear in the matching lower resolution sd card storage motion detect videos downloaded to my PC. This camera records high resolution snapshots at 1 second intervals and low resolution motion detection events to the SD card. There are 3 trip line IVS rules and that is about it.
 
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The VMS is running about 12% CPU load as we speak. I rarely reboot it, but I restart the VMS service via a weekly cron job. It's headless Linux box, but I remote into it via an SSH command line interface, so I can reboot it easily. Everything is wired gigabit, but most of the 9 cameras are on the same switch as the VMS. That switch uplinks from my router. I have also suspected packet loss. I am about to match my iFrame to my frame rate so they are both set to 20. Now I watch my video playback for about a week to see how long it takes to surprise me again. If the VMS or network throughput were at fault, I would expect to have this problem on my 4K higher resolution cameras as well, but it could be so. My VMS client is on the laptop I am using to write this.

My restless fears are that I will finally record something useful and the video will be tainted by artifacts that bring the validity of the evidence into question.
 
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I've never heard of using 1 second Hi-Res Jpegs. I used to keep Jpegs enabled on Motion for some of my cams when I was New to this. But because my Condo gets literally thousands of Motion events a day....I was creating a Database overload.
Interesting that you have that setting. Have you tried decreasing that to lower frequency like 3 seconds? or turned it off? and noted if the Cloaking abates?
 
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All that recording to the sd card is a lot of CPU intensive work for the camera and it wears out sd cards. The jpeg snapshots to sd storage are constant 24/7. I was hopeful that would be easier on the cameras than constant video. That's in case they steal my VMS too. The only time I have ever caught a crook on video was on the sd card video when the power to the campus went off, but the POE switch in that building stayed up while half the network switches were down between the VMS and that camera.

After my iFrame adustment is tested for a week, I will cut back on the sd storage load for troubleshooting purposes. I would like to at least solve the mystery even if it ultimately leads to balancing one point of failure against another and choosing which failures I can tolerate for the greater good.
 
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So your not recording the .jpegs to a surveilance drive. Ok. Is any video going to a surveilance drive?
and your laptop VMS is where all the videos get written to? I.e. the surveillance video capture point?
You sound technically proficient.
I'm sure you'll get to the bottom of this.
 
Try VBR instead of CBR and a lower bit rate. Don't change too many things at once though.
 
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Given you are already using H.264 and CBR with no smart codec, the most likely cause is insufficient I\O. You need to look at performance logs to determine if it's Network\Storage related.
Most common cause of insufficient I\O will be insufficient performance of the HDD, less likely but possible Physical network issues or CPU congestion.
Put a memory card in the camera, then when the issue occurs check the memory card. If the issue is on the card then it's a camera issue, otherwise that should prove the camera is okay.
The HDD or system can appear okay, but just takes a spike of some sort (especially with a HDD) to cause that. Any tasks that could create high load? eg: archiving\recycling?
 
Yes. The post directly above describes my problem as a "Digital Glitch." Calling it a "Cloaking Device" issue was just my sense of humor.

"This kind of problem often appears as colorful blocks or dropped frames in the video. The reason for that might be an overused memory card, an error on a hard drive in an NVR or some kind of incompatibility between your camera and the software you use for logging to NVR. It also happens when there is a transfer error while downloading files from the storage."

I'll try the suggestions in the above posts one-at-a-time over the next few weeks. It takes at least a week to test each troubleshooting action.

My cameras record to the sd cards as a backup AND the VMS captures their IP streams. I'm currently testing an iFrame of 20. I think I started out with VBR and dropped to CBR 8192 as overkill, but I'll I'll try that next week. I've already reformatted the surveillance class sd card. It's hard to get to replace., but I could turn off sd writes for a few days to see if that helps. I've yet to discover a way to see the CPU load or the CPU temp on a Dahua camera.

I'm still leaning against thinking it is a VMS issue, because I have 2 higher resolution (HDW5831R-ZE) cameras recording to that VMS without similar glitches. I did use a really fast desktop drive that I already had on hand as my data drive in that server. I didn't spring for a purple surveillance drive at that time, because I only had 9 cameras and I thought I would try it and see. If needed, I'll try a WD purple as my video storage drive in my VMS, but I'll try that last due to hardware changes requiring a license reactivation for my VMS camera licenses. If it comes to it, I have a WD Purple Pro on hand that I had planned to put in a new failover VMS. I build these out of old Dell Optiplex 390's.
 
By the way, I don't think there is anything wrong with the camera. At worst, I think I may be overloading it somehow or otherwise just not optimally configured.
 
I just broke my one-change-at-a-time rule and went ahead and cut back to only 2 IVS tripwires. Depending upon exactly where I parked, sometimes tripwires didn't get tripped and I was trying to make sure at least one of them generated an event to record all cameras at once in high resolution for a while. Since most of my cameras record high resolution motion-detection-only on the VMS, that may have spiked a moderate load on my VMS as well. Only my outdoor cameras record 24/7 low resolution plus high resolution for motion detection and IVS events. . . .so much to be confounded on. The late evening of the 26th, I had also setup remote logging of my outdoor cameras so I could get a longer view of the logs to further troubleshoot this issue .
 
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