The biggest complaint about any tracking PTZ is that if an object stops, so does the tracking. You cannot change this timing.
You can usually get it to not loose tracking so quickly if you change the target ratio a bit or turn PFA off, and I think this thing learns LOL. If the target ratio is too large, it will miss faster moving objects and lose tracking faster when an object stops.
My 49225 when I first got it would immediately lose track if someone stopped. Now it will hold at least 10 seconds if someone stops.
I do think they learn though as my Dahua PTZ seems to linger on for 10 seconds or so. Part of that can be by not having it zoom in so tight that you don't give it much to work with. Mine zooms in tight enough that I can see the whole body, so when they stop for their dog doing its business, there is usually a tapping foot or something that keeps it tracking.
Once the tracking stops it will either return to the preset it started at or with a VMS system you could tell it to go somewhere else. It is why many of us use spotter cams to help get it looking the right way if an object stops and starts again.
With Autotrack PTZs once the motion stops, there is nothing for it to "track" and then it is sitting at a field of view with no Smart IVS rules telling it what to do, so it reverts back.
That is why a robust system is set up with spotter cams and multiple presets so that it can start to pick it up again.
Here is a great thread by
@bigredfish that shows how spotter cams can be used to get the object, whether the camera lost track of them or they stopped and it lost track.
At least they had a good chuckle over it....
ipcamtalk.com
Further, you really should not have the entire FoV as the intrusion box. It gives the PTZ too many things to potentially catch onto.
Without knowing how long you have had this camera, the different seasons can impact tracking, especially if you have the entire FoV as an intrusion box. Leaves now will catch IR and light differently and can impact the tracking.
Do not run default/auto settings.
It is a matter of getting the brightness/contrast and target ratio settings correct, and these can change during different seasons for some FoVs.
I always knew that you shouldn't chase a bright picture - it looks nice and people migrate towards a brighter TV for example, but upon closer examination, most images need to be toned down in order to get all the details. You will be surprised how much changing a parameter like gamma could impact tracking. For example, if you have a pesky tree or something in the middle of the view during an autotrack, just by changing some image parameters you can get autotrack to pass it. Making the image a little darker at night actually helped with tracking someone across the street, which was opposite of what I thought you would think to do. So add some contrast to your image and see if it improves.
I have a yard lamp post that more times than not autotrack would get stuck on it as someone was walking and the autotrack would only go so far. Because my image has soo much contrast (bright white concrete a third, blacktop road a third, grass a third), knocking down the gamma made the lamp post not be so "trackable" lol, and along with that I turned of PFA and that gave it just enough time to retrack the person walking past the lamp post. The camera may still autotrack the lamp post when a small kid goes by, but an adult it was autotracking past the lamp post.
Ideally for an intrusion box or tripwires, you should have the initial field of view be such that the camera doesn't have to initially pan too much up/down or left/right to get the object in the center of the screen to start tracking. The closer the object is to the center of the image, the better the chance that it will track correctly. An entire Field of View intrusion box can cause it to latch on to the wrong item.
The reason it starts looking upward or left or right is usually because the intrusion box is too big so the camera identifies the object before it is in the center of the field of view and then sometimes something else matches the "algorithm signature" of the initial object and then starts trying to track something that isn't there. Adjusting the field of view and the locations of the IVS rules to be closer to the center can fix that.
Autotracking PTZs are great, but they have limitations like everything else. Installed in a wrong location or with fields of view that do not give it a chance will be problematic.
