Worlds First Review - Dahua IPC-HFW8442-Z4-D47-LI - Dual Sensor Micro PTZ Bullet

Wildcat_1

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All, I noticed there were some artifact issues in the video I uploaded yesterday so I've re-encoded and uploaded again, link has been updated in Post 4 HERE
 

Wildcat_1

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Video 2 - Day Walk Around + Face Recognition + AI Live

All, as I mentioned earlier, I’ve captured and edited another video for you. This time the focus is on daytime performance of this camera with the addition of Video Metadata & Face Recognition testing. All details are in the video, lenses kept in sync from configuration perspective as noted. Timestamps as always, included in the description for your convenience. Uploaded again in 4MP (YouTube is still processing that stream so either wait or stream in 1080p and check back in later for the 4MP as it really is crisp. NOTE: AI Live caps are from a windows laptop capture so jerkiness there is from the fact it’s OOOOOOOOLLLLLLLDDDDDDDD.​
Take a look at the results. I’m really liking the Hyper DOF this can pull off and the way the camera handles manual focus. The Face Recognition in camera is superb as you’ll see. I set a recognition percentage of 90% (minimum) and it captures me with 97 & 99% accuracy. Nice to see the camera calls me by name ;)
By the way did I tell you, THIS CAMERA’S IMAGE IS NICE & SHARP !
Pasting here and in POST #4 for easy reference those joining the party late.​

 

rsoxhater

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Great review! This would be an interesting setup for an LPR and general overview camera all in one, as I typically use two separate cameras for that. Was there a weight on it, or did I miss it?
 

rsoxhater

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Post #6 - Summary of Findings - Pro's, Con's, Bug's, Recommendations

** WARNING: LONG POST INCOMING **

After spending about 2-3 weeks with this camera I wanted to now provide the pro’s, con’s, bug’s and a summary based on my experience. Lets jump in. Lot of info below broken into categories by section with notes for easier viewing, didn't want to leave anything uncovered.

NOTE: First I want to address something that might confuse people. While this is classed as a dual sensor PTZ (which in a way is accurate), it should not be confused with a traditional full blown PTZ as those of course can rotate a full 360, can be called to a specific location via PTZ activation and have presets set for specific FOV’s. This camera combines 1 sensor with PTZ (Pan, Tilt, Zoom) capabilities and 1 sensor with TZ (Tilt, Zoom) capabilities and therefore is probably easier to understand when referenced as a dual sensor varifocal bullet cam BUT with the advantage of Pan Tilt Zoom (sensor 1) and Tilt Zoom (sensor 2). No presets or PTZ activation here. Hope that clears it up.

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Pro’s

  • Hyper DOF (Depth of Field)
    • This actually works as intended and is VERY GOOD, not a gimmick
    • You can set a manual focus with crazy DOF and it will remain between profiles making it exceptionally useful when dialing in an FOV
    • Allows a separation of the target from the background generally seen on high end DSLR’s, Cine Cams etc and certainly a first (thats implemented well) on CCTV which lends itself to both human, face, and plate detection scenarios
  • Face Recognition In Cam
    • To see how this works in camera and can keep up (thanks to the SOC and whopping 32GB ram) is incredible, great accuracy, quick results
    • Easy to setup, easy to use and recognition is spot on
  • Sharpness
    • As I showed in my videos, these lenses are super sharp and perform well in day & night
    • This is not merely over processing as seen on some cameras but is truly optically sharp throughout the range
    • Assists in target acquisition, recognition and the results make it easy to forget this is only 4MP, not 4K
  • Night Performance
    • With the aperture of the sensors, overall light handling capabilities + the sharpness of the lenses, capturing usable images at night (human or ANPR) works very well, just remember to dial in
    • Due to this camera’s ability to hunt and use light, you find you can drop exposure/shutter to lower levels, preserve motion (without blur) + capture plates and vehicle identification with little noise
    • These sensors are a step up from the 7442’s (and they are no slouch either) and show this through their performance when operated in the same environment
  • Light Options
    • There are options for every lighting scenario you can think of, Full White Light, Soft White Light, IR, Blend
    • IR on lens 1 is SUPER bright as in you see it a mile off :) so if looking for a discrete install this is hard to hide at night
    • You have more than enough IR to use for most situations even out to around 120’ of usable light and can augment with the other on camera light options too should it be needed
  • Overall Image Quality
    • I discussed sharpness above but in addition, colors are well saturated, skin tones kept true and quality of the image is very high
    • Noise levels are super low (day or night) and any noise that does appear is easy to mitigate by reducing gamma slightly
    • Allows for you to adjust noise reduction lower than you might normally and still get a usable image without too much ‘crawl’
    • Chromatic aberration is kept to a minimum regardless of range
  • New Menu System
    • The embedded 3.0 menu system in the 2021 Ultra Line is a fantastic upgrade
    • Menu’s are snappier (except for bugs, see below), feel cleaner, more well laid out
    • Tabbed approach and being able to flick between open tabs (akin to Web GUI on 5xxx NVR’s running v4 FW) is a really nice touch
    • A HUGE win for the menu is the addition of the time of day by month scheduling which is absolutely phenomenal. The ability of adding the extra profile types (including custom) is a great benefit and combined with the day/month approach makes it easier than ever to set for Sunrise/Sunset adjustments through the year proactively while keeping the benefit of granular configuration by profile
  • Power of the SOC + RAM
    • I said up front that this camera should be no slouch and it did not disappoint
    • The camera responds super quick to its duties. As you saw in my daytime ANPR video, even when multiple cars come into FOV at the same time, the camera is able to process multiple vehicles and plates with ease
    • The power this camera has enables the huge amount of streams it can support. In short you shouldn’t run out of stream options. To recap here are the number of supported streams all of which can run at 30fps and up to 17.6K bitrate per stream:
      • Sensor 1 - 1 x 4MP Stream + 2 x full HD streams
      • Sensor 2 - 1 x 4MP stream + 1 x full HD stream

Con’s & Bugs (All Bugs Reported to Dahua & Andy)

  • POE vs AC Power
  • Bug 1 - Camera sometimes resets to previous settings
    • This is definitely a FW issue that needs to be resolved. Reported this back to Andy & Dahua
  • Bug 2 - Focus & Zoom Menu Settings
    • These can sometimes disappear from the menu and require a browser restart to re-activate. Definitely appears to be activex/webplugin related. Reported back to Dahua
  • Bug 3 - Menu System Becomes Unresponsive
    • I’ve noted that on a few occasions the web menu locks up completely. Many times a simple browser restart will assist, pointing again to code base
  • Bug 4 - Auto Focus Sometimes Doesn’t ‘Adjust’
    • Every so often I noted that when not using Hyper DOF and Manual focus that Auto Focus did not adjust, this looks to be a hold over from previous setting i.e if you used manual first then auto focus that it doesn’t save the change (even though the web GUI acknowledge a save). This may be tied to bug 1 above
  • Bug 5 - PTZ Functionality Not Recognized by Current NVR FW
    • Currently on a 5216 you cannot Pan and Tilt the lenses on this unit as its not recognized as a ‘true PTZ’ therefore camera web GUI has to be used to compose your FOV


Neutral / Other Thoughts

  • Future Consideration - Constant Aperture on Both Sensors
    • Would be great to have constant aperture the same (f1.2 in this case) on both sensors of a dual sensor unit BUT understand that the secondary lens is a smaller unit in smaller housing so is remarkable what they are able to pull off. Either way, matching aperture on both sensors in the future would allow for more consistent image matching across an FOV. Don’t get me wrong, the f1.2 & f1.6 work very well (take a look at the videos) BUT either way, nice to have.
  • PTZ Term Can be Confusing For Some
    • While its sold as a PTZ and realistically is (for 1 lens) it cannot be used to move the focal length or position of the lens through a overwatch, spotter arrangement using PTZ activation + presets. The 2nd lens as I mentioned only features Tilt & Zoom therefore this would be great to see the limitation of each sensor called out clearer and maybe a new term is needed to avoid confusion.
  • Light Controls
    • White light works very well but is conical in shape and does have a drop off. In Auto mode this adjusts quickly and ensures that the subject is not washed out. In comparison to 250w LED’s it lights the subject quite evenly even when set to full
    • Full IR adjustment available on sensor 1 but sensor 2 is just a brightness slider only, no option for near vs far which can limit (depending on installation) the effectiveness of the IR on sensor 2. Same for white & soft light. Not a deal breaker but something to bear in mind
  • Cost
    • I place this in neutral because for some this will be an expensive unit but you have to balance the cost of this unit (still unknown but should have it soon) with the fact you are getting 2 very capable sensors in an ultra line camera (Face Recognition. ANPR) within 1 unit. Therefore my guess is that this camera will not see change from $1000 but when you compare 2 x 7442-Z4’s around $500 a piece that is to be expected
  • ANPR
    • I've added this to the Neutral (instead of con’s) only because it impacts multiple cameras not just this one, there are options to mitigate as I mention below and due to impact I’ve ensured the visibility of the issue is high with Dahua and Andy and I believe a fix is currently being investigated.

      The ANPR function performs extremely well and doesn’t miss a capture even in dense vehicle environments BUT unfortunately the current implementation of the underlying database does not support US license plates correctly (doesn’t understand the format of all plates). Due to this, while a clear plate is captured, letters and numbers identifiable and the camera truly acknowledging a plate was processed, the database cannot match all of the formats so can show an Unknown Plate. Pass this through another source (AI NVR, 3rd Party Processor, Plate Recognizer Plugin for BI etc) or just review the plate capture and you get hits on every occasion.

      UPDATE: I’ve contacted Andy & Dahua on this and they are looking into correcting this. I’ve asked that the code pertaining to the ITC traffic range for in-camera DB be utilized in a fix for this camera as those traffic cams have a specific US database. More to come


Summary
Overall in my testing I’ve found this to be an exceptionally versatile (with the exception of it’s size for some) and certainly powerful camera. The ability for a business (small, medium, large, enterprise) or homeowner (where it can be accommodated) to have 1 camera with 2 sensors monitoring an FOV wide and tele + processing multiple Face Recognition & ANPR targets in realtime is phenomenal.​
Taking ANPR (through on camera AI vs 3rd party) for a second,. When framing your shot and FOV to enable ANPR on AI cams you need to ensure the camera identifies the target as a vehicle first then with that it will actively look to process the ANPR via AI (as I detailed in my What About AI section HERE). This is sometimes hard to do with 1 camera based on install, angle, distance to target AND need for long focal length to ensure large shot of plate. Add the complexity of usually having to increase shutter speed at night to ensure crisp plate capture and this can ruin a single sensor camera’s ability to detect a vehicle in the first place therefore not categorizing as AI and leading to unprocessed events. This camera removes that hurdle with its dual sensors. You are able to have 1 sensor left wide, detecting vehicle + plate and 1 sensor full tele with close up of the plate itself.​
While there are some quirks and a few bugs that I’ve listed above that do need to be ironed out by Dahua, we also have to remember that this camera is so new, it came straight from exiting a development teams hands and still does not have a price yet. I have no doubt that these issues will be fixed, in fact there is now new FW however this is the Chinese language version so I’ll be waiting for the English language to be uploaded so I can test.​
For the intended audience of medium, large, enterprise businesses with applications in parking garages, entrances, access enforcement, intersections, highways, Face Recognition or ANPR situations that can scale to accommodate lots of targets, this camera is ideal. For the homeowner, if you can accommodate the size then this can work and serve as a very capable camera just realize that although targets will have a harder time to hide from the cameras processing ability and image quality that its also harder to hide the unit itself :)
What is most interesting to me however is that this shows how dual sensors are starting to be implemented with improvements in AI and optics and with more on the horizon I don’t doubt that this will become a staple in the Dahua & Hik portfolios. As these increase in product ranges so the size of the footprint will reduce and based on volume so will the price.​
If these sensors in the 2021 Ultra Line are anything to go by, the future looks very bright from a sensor offering even for those single sensor units employing this tech. Therefore this camera represents a look at the future today and with the image quality, low noise and speed of processing AI on camera, in my opinion this is something to get excited about​
Thanks to @EMPIRETECANDY for providing this unit for review. Hope you’ve enjoyed it and please let me know with any questions​


WC
This is great information, thank you! Have you tried plate recognition with OpenALPR? I have used 7442's extensively and they are outstanding with OpenALPR, so if you are saying the sensors are better on this, I'm excited to give it a try. High power POE would make this a killer option for ease of use as opposed to having to pull additional wire through a mast. The two sensors would save an additional camera install for me, since I normally use a 7442 for plates, and then either an axis 360 or regular bullet for general purpose surveillance.
 
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Wildcat_1

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@rsoxhater long time, hope all is well ! Yes this thing rocks ANPR so when I pass streams through OALPR you will find it has even more of an edge over the 7442, at least I have in my testing with 7442 (regular) + 7442-Z4. The sharpness of the lenses on this really help as does the DOF once you dial in the manual focus. HTH and as always reach out of if you need any assistance
 

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Is there a price on this yet I missed somewhere...or at least a guess?
 

rsoxhater

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Yes as I mentioned above this is an average of $200 less than other resellers and in some cases $500 less so a very good price Andy has these at should you be in the market for a true ANPR traffic cam
Yes, for that price, only a bit more than the 7442-Z4's its definitely interesting. The 7442's are on point in nearly all condition on the 15 or so I have installed, so if you are saying these are better, I'm excited.
 

Wildcat_1

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That was my mistake, I thought this was the ITC thread I am reviewing :) I will remove the post above @rsoxhater. My understanding of the 8442 is that it would be over $1k. However if you want true ANPR cheaper + a cam with embedded plate algorithms checkout my ITC traffic cam / ANPR review HERE as that IS $580 - $600 :). Does an excellent job on ANPR
 
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