PoE Cameras Not Detected by NVR

And to prepare you for the next step.

The thing that makes these cameras so good is that you can dial them in to your field of view to get the optimal picture. The consumer cams your installers typically put in are plug-n-play cameras on default/auto settings that produces a nice bright static image, but the camera is then incapable of producing clean video at night.

But even with how great these cameras are, all cameras will suffer at night on default settings.

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.

But first, run H264, smart codec off, CBR, and 8192 bitrate to start. This should make it more crisp.

I think you should also take off manual IR - your camera is low so you are getting a lot of IR bounce off the ground that is degrading the picture.

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 0-30 (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.

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 image results in Casper during motion LOL. What do we want, a nice static image or a clean image when there is motion introduced to the scene?

So 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.

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.
 
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THEY'RE ALIVEEE!!! Thank you SO much for your help! I have both cams added to my NVR and also got in my workout for today running up and down the stairs a million times to connect/disconnect/adjust everything hahaha.

I'm going to first figure out how to view this when I'm not on my home network since I will want to see footage while away on vacation or at work. I think I saw there was an app.

I will absolutely try to play with all those settings soon though. My day has been mostly camera tinkering and not so much work LOL so I probably should finish an assignment or two before diving into it.

Again, thanks everyone for all your help. If you want to drop a note on your preferred method of accessing your NVR footage, please feel free.
 
Hmm, question about the video playback: should I have more than just a play/pause and stop button? Do I have an old version that can be updated somehow? Whenever I click on the green part to navigate to a particular time, it seems like it snaps to something that can be very far from the exact time I want to view. For example, I want to view 6:30PM but when I click in the middle of the green bar, it'll snap to 7PM towards the right side instead.

Edit: so I'm seeing many more controls when I hook up a monitor to my NVR and try to view playback footage on there. The limited functionality in the screenshot below is when viewed on my desktop via Chrome. Any method to obtain the same functionality on my desktop?

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NVR needs a monitor I have a 32 inch Samsung, then HDMI splitter to a 65inch Samsung Qled TV.
When you make it look good on the big screen, it will look GREAT on anything smaller.

I address the cams with the Config Tool to do cam adjustments from there. Most adjustments are made there.
Use IE10 not Edge as some adjustments made in other browsers will not "STICK"! All that work, then a save
and that smile across your face turns upside down as one says "WTF where did it go?".
 
NVR needs a monitor I have a 32 inch Samsung, then HDMI splitter to a 65inch Samsung Qled TV.
When you make it look good on the big screen, it will look GREAT on anything smaller.

I address the cams with the Config Tool to do cam adjustments from there. Most adjustments are made there.
Use IE10 not Edge as some adjustments made in other browsers will not "STICK"! All that work, then a save
and that smile across your face turns upside down as one says "WTF where did it go?".

Thanks for the info! What do people do to view their footage when their NVR is just shoved into a closet? I guess you could run a really long HDMI to it. I currently have my NVR by my feet under my desk and pulled out an old monitor from storage, but the monitor is just on the floor lol so I guess I'll have to set my NVR up somewhere else that I can put a little desk or something. Thankfully the app can let me view video when I'm not on the home network!
 
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With the Dahua NVR recordings can be viewed live and searched using Smart PSS that is installed on your Windows desktop. Thus any computer connected to your LAN should be able to access the NVR. i.e. each must have it own copy of Smart PSS installed. It is permission based so that the admin only has access to all settings or limited by user. i.e. NVR must be connected to your router along with your PC.

Camera settings can be altered by using Smart PSS by clicking on the blue 'e' in settings > cameras. I find that using the same simple password on all cameras plus the NVR removes a lot of frustration. Keep it simple unless you have the need for extra security. Some use say four lower case "t" plus four "5" or some other combination that is easy to remember and key in.
 
Agree with using SmartPSS to view live, download footage. But make ALL of your setting changes on the camera GUI itself.
 
Regarding "IP address range of your home network (using the IPv4 settings)", how might I determine this range?

In regards to the range.
In terms of IPV4, the range/network is determined by the subnet mask/CIDR.
By default, most private network address are a CIDR of /24 (subnet mask 255.255.255.0, most consumer grade devices and Windows uses this format).
Each number between the dots is referred to as an octet (octet.octet.octet.octet).
Each octet of the subnet mask can have a value of 0 thru 255.
The octets of the subnet mask relate directly to the same octet in the IP address.
255 in the subnet mask means the same octet of the IP address has to match all others of that local network.
0 in the subnet mask is a wildcard that can be anything between 1 and 254 on the IP address.

So on a network 192.168.1.0 and a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0, the first 3 octets (192.168.1.) on each device have to match EXACTLY for them to be able to talk to each other.

If your NVR is 192.168.2.1 (subnet mask 255.255.255.0) and your camera is 192.168.1.5, your camera will not be able to talk to your NVR.
Your camera will have to be 192.168.2.(2-254)... using .1 on the camera would cause a conflict since it's assigned to the NVR.

This is a very high-level explanation.
There is a lot more to networking, but this explanation should be sufficient for most basic NVR set-ups.
 
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Thank you @Alaska Country and @bigredfish for the help there. I just downloaded and installed SmartPSS and was playing around with it. I was wondering a few things:

Note that my main goal is to be able to A) be working on my desktop with PSS minimized and then get notified someone is walking up to my door, and then B) be able to go into the Search/Playback and easily find that target footage. Any info on the steps to do that is greatly appreciated!

1. Under Device Config, I have my NVR selected and the Storage > Schedule open. Right now it's highlighted to have Regular and Motion Detection both recording. Is this redundant? Further to goal (B), I initially had both Reg and MD highlighted because I figured I'd have all footage saved as a backup, and then all the Motion Detection footage so that I could just see all the MD events one after the other instead of having to do the Smart Search and selecting all the little squares to search.

2. Further to (1), when I was trying to only search Human or only search Vehicles using Smart Search, I got zero hits. However, when I searched just regular Motion Detection, it found many events. I had walked out and in to at least give it 1 Human event to find, but searching just Human did not result in a hit.

3. Regarding goal (A), should I be doing something with the "Intelligent Analyse" settings to get alarms set up?

4. My friends have consumer grade cams like Ring, Nest, etc., and it seems like the software/interface is easy for them to just have the camera detect a person is approaching, get a notification on their phone, and then pop open their phone to see the clip and then see the live footage. Is there an easy path to emulate this using Smart PSS on desktop and EasyViewer Pro on my phone?

Thanks again for everyone's help!

Thanks @Zook for the knowledge on IP address ranges! This has been quite the learning experience.
 
Thanks @Zook for the knowledge on IP address ranges! This has been quite the learning experience.

No worries!
I don't know how to answer all of your follow-up questions, so I'll provide a direct link to the user guide for your NVR that will maybe help answer some of your questions.
I find it explains most things good enough that it clicks for me if I don't fully know what I'm doing.


Here is the product page that I found that from (under the downloads section). :)
 
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