Since my image was already dark to begin with, I would think that a faster shutter would make the scene darker. But I guess the higher gain would compensate?
BI Setup EmpireTech IPC-T58IR-ZE-S3 / Dahua 5842T-ZE-S3
- Thread starter BobKat
- Start date
bigredfish
Known around here
Correct
Its all scene dependent of course. But generally this is normal for me for my 4K-T's
Because of the glare from the water I tend to have to keep the Gain and Exp Comp down a bit. In other scenes I'm closer to 50 default on both with 0-2 or 0-3 Exposure
View attachment 192.168.1.110_ch11_20260830102241_20260830102259.mp4
Its all scene dependent of course. But generally this is normal for me for my 4K-T's
Because of the glare from the water I tend to have to keep the Gain and Exp Comp down a bit. In other scenes I'm closer to 50 default on both with 0-2 or 0-3 Exposure
View attachment 192.168.1.110_ch11_20260830102241_20260830102259.mp4
bigredfish
Known around here
Of course that's daytime. At Night you won;t be able to run that fast of a shutter.
Current Night Exposure
View attachment 192.168.1.110_ch11_20260822212222_20260822212249.mp4
Current Night Exposure
View attachment 192.168.1.110_ch11_20260822212222_20260822212249.mp4
That first boat looked so small I'd think the Gators could snatch you outta driver seat 
Good stuff - thanks for the help. Your day & night numbers are working well for me as well.
bigredfish
Known around here
Cool
Be aware I’m not a BI user so there may be other BI specific considerations. Look to @wittaj for that
Btw on 4K cams I run higher bitrate 16384 and prefer h.264.h codec
YMMV
I've setup my cameras following the suggestions I've received for the most part and what I'm seeing is that the 4K cameras shift to night mode way sooner than my Reolink doorbell camera. The screenshot below is from my Blue Iris PC showing the 7 4K cameras in night mode with the Reolink doorbell camera still in day mode. I'd like to extend the day mode of the 4K cameras as much as possible, but haven't yet figured out what to try next.
And here is one of the 4K camera screens for day & night:
Thanks in advance for any help.
And here is one of the 4K camera screens for day & night:
Thanks in advance for any help.
Reolink will favor a bright image over quality of motion at night. As such the shutter will slow down a lot.
Your 4K cameras are set up to prioritize quality over brightness.
The faster the shutter, the more light that is needed. And that is what you are experiencing.
You can slow the shutter speed and that will make it stay in color longer, but then you run the risk of motion being a blur. Once you go higher than 16ms, you run the risk of motion blur. Even then at 16ms, anyone moving with a little bit of pace will blur.
Plus you have 4K cameras on a less than ideal sensor size that was designed for 4MP, so it will take more light to stay in color.
Some of those images look like they will not have enough light to stay in color AND get good quality capture at night of objects in motion.
Your 4K cameras are set up to prioritize quality over brightness.
The faster the shutter, the more light that is needed. And that is what you are experiencing.
You can slow the shutter speed and that will make it stay in color longer, but then you run the risk of motion being a blur. Once you go higher than 16ms, you run the risk of motion blur. Even then at 16ms, anyone moving with a little bit of pace will blur.
Plus you have 4K cameras on a less than ideal sensor size that was designed for 4MP, so it will take more light to stay in color.
Some of those images look like they will not have enough light to stay in color AND get good quality capture at night of objects in motion.
bigredfish
Known around here
^^^^^^
This exactly
Outside of really slow walking humans, I find anything slower than 1/120 (8.33ms) is going to give you some measure of motion blur at night. (Of course distance and size of your target makes a difference)
Remember the night settings I showed were with the camera's white LEDs on Full100%, and those are the 4K-T model with a much bigger sensor than you have
Faster Exposure, higher MP on sensor means a darker image. Thats just the trade off
This exactly
Outside of really slow walking humans, I find anything slower than 1/120 (8.33ms) is going to give you some measure of motion blur at night. (Of course distance and size of your target makes a difference)
Remember the night settings I showed were with the camera's white LEDs on Full100%, and those are the 4K-T model with a much bigger sensor than you have
Faster Exposure, higher MP on sensor means a darker image. Thats just the trade off
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Question regarding use of in-camera AI (IVS as mentioned above) vs. an on-server AI approach. I've read that in some cases (not necessarily specific to these particular cameras) that in-camera AI can sometimes miss an event, and that it's better to have the AI functionality on the server. I am using BI v.6 and it has AI functions included. So I'm wondering if the in-camera AI for this camera is good enough, or is there a better way? Is the included BI AI functionality even capable of doing the same thing as the in-camera AI (such as tripwires or intrusion box), or is it even better? I was able to setup the in-camera AI quite easily and it seems to work fine, but I'm just wondering if it's as solid as something running on the server. I've looked at the BI AI implementation and I can't yet figure out how to do those same functions. Just want to know that I've got a trustworthy solution....
GETTING CAMERA TRIGGERS INTO BI
Go into the camera GUI and set up smart plan with IVS, then go to the IVS screen and draw IVS rules (tripwire or intrusion box) and then select the AI you want it to trigger on (human or vehicle).
Make sure MD and SMD are turned OFF in the camera.
Then in BI, there are a few places you need to set this up in BI (assuming you already set up the IVS rules in the camera GUI):
In Camera configure setting check the box "Get ONVIF triggers".
Most find the camera AI is better than the BI AI.
Since you have cameras with AI and if all you care about is human and vehicle detection, the AI from the cameras may be all you need.
You may find that the camera AI has got so good that doing camera AI and then BI AI is kinda overkill and adds more complexity, time delay, and potential for issues.
Whether you use the camera AI or BI motion and then send to BI AI, there are scenarios in each situation that could cause the BI AI to miss it, in particular if the camera AI was slow to react, by the time BI AI gets a snapshot, the object may be out of view. People still have plenty of BI AI that shows up as nothing detected.
Whether to use camera AI or BI AI is obviously up to you, but of course, the AI in the camera may be more than sufficient for your needs without needing BI AI. Do you need the orange box around every object? Do you want to identify animals or logos? Or is just human or vehicle sufficient.
The camera AI is useful to many people, but BI has way more motion setting granularity than the cameras, and some people need that additional detail, especially if wanting AI for more than a car or person. For folks that want AI and alerts on animals or specifically a UPS truck then they need the additional AI.
There isn't really a best practice because every field of view is different and use case and needs are different.
To many here, BI motion without AI is more than adequate for what they do.
To many here, camera AI is more than adequate for what they do.
To many here, using the BI AI adds additional functionality that the above alone can not do.
It comes down to testing with each field of view and which one gives you the most consistent results.
In my case, the camera AI wins every time. Your field of view and use case may be different.
It is best to try it each way and see which one works the best for you.
Another question - what if the BI AI module poops out - then you miss AI detection on every camera. At least if the AI is being done in the camera, it is still triggering.
Also keep in mind that they BI AI uses a snapshot for identification and the snapshots sent for analysis are resized automatically to 640x640 pixels (the standard default input size for YOLO object detection models) regardless of whether your camera source stream is 1080p or 4K. Because of that, it will struggle the further away objects are from the camera.
While some of that third party stuff is cool like tagging was it a dog or a bear, I don't need all that fancy stuff. If my camera triggers BI to tag an alert for human or vehicle and BI can accomplish what I need by way of a text or email or push or whatever, that is sufficient for my needs. I just want to be alerted if a person or vehicle is on my property and the camera AI does a fine job with that.
However, I do run BI AI on a few cameras so that it knocks out headlight shine so that the alert image includes the vehicle. The camera AI will trigger for a car, but the alert image was always just the headlights. I also run the ANPR AI module to read and log plates.
The true test....I have found the AI of the cameras to work even in a freakin blizzard....imagine how much a camera or BI using only motion detection would be triggering! My non-AI cams in BI were triggering all night. This picture was ran through BI AI (without the IVS or red lines on it) and it failed to recognize a person in the picture, but the camera AI did. This pic says it all and the video had the red box over it even in complete white out on the screen:
See this thread on how using just Dahua AI may be sufficient for your needs (and other cameras with AI would perform similar):
Who uses Dahua AI capable cameras? Reliable AI for triggering events? Pro's/con's?
Since you have cameras with AI and if all you care about is human and vehicle detection, the AI from the cameras may be all you need.
You may find that the camera AI has got so good that doing camera AI and then BI AI is kinda overkill and adds more complexity, time delay, and potential for issues.
Whether you use the camera AI or BI motion and then send to BI AI, there are scenarios in each situation that could cause the BI AI to miss it, in particular if the camera AI was slow to react, by the time BI AI gets a snapshot, the object may be out of view. People still have plenty of BI AI that shows up as nothing detected.
Whether to use camera AI or BI AI is obviously up to you, but of course, the AI in the camera may be more than sufficient for your needs without needing BI AI. Do you need the orange box around every object? Do you want to identify animals or logos? Or is just human or vehicle sufficient.
The camera AI is useful to many people, but BI has way more motion setting granularity than the cameras, and some people need that additional detail, especially if wanting AI for more than a car or person. For folks that want AI and alerts on animals or specifically a UPS truck then they need the additional AI.
There isn't really a best practice because every field of view is different and use case and needs are different.
To many here, BI motion without AI is more than adequate for what they do.
To many here, camera AI is more than adequate for what they do.
To many here, using the BI AI adds additional functionality that the above alone can not do.
It comes down to testing with each field of view and which one gives you the most consistent results.
In my case, the camera AI wins every time. Your field of view and use case may be different.
It is best to try it each way and see which one works the best for you.
Another question - what if the BI AI module poops out - then you miss AI detection on every camera. At least if the AI is being done in the camera, it is still triggering.
Also keep in mind that they BI AI uses a snapshot for identification and the snapshots sent for analysis are resized automatically to 640x640 pixels (the standard default input size for YOLO object detection models) regardless of whether your camera source stream is 1080p or 4K. Because of that, it will struggle the further away objects are from the camera.
While some of that third party stuff is cool like tagging was it a dog or a bear, I don't need all that fancy stuff. If my camera triggers BI to tag an alert for human or vehicle and BI can accomplish what I need by way of a text or email or push or whatever, that is sufficient for my needs. I just want to be alerted if a person or vehicle is on my property and the camera AI does a fine job with that.
However, I do run BI AI on a few cameras so that it knocks out headlight shine so that the alert image includes the vehicle. The camera AI will trigger for a car, but the alert image was always just the headlights. I also run the ANPR AI module to read and log plates.
The true test....I have found the AI of the cameras to work even in a freakin blizzard....imagine how much a camera or BI using only motion detection would be triggering! My non-AI cams in BI were triggering all night. This picture was ran through BI AI (without the IVS or red lines on it) and it failed to recognize a person in the picture, but the camera AI did. This pic says it all and the video had the red box over it even in complete white out on the screen:
See this thread on how using just Dahua AI may be sufficient for your needs (and other cameras with AI would perform similar):
Who uses Dahua AI capable cameras? Reliable AI for triggering events? Pro's/con's?
Is it possible to have both IVS and BI AI enabled, or can that cause problems. As it stands, I think that's what I have. My alerts indicate: "AI, ONVIF, Zone A". I have an intrusion area defined within each camera, and I also have a zone setup in the BI camera settings. So am I correct in assuming that the ONVIF text is related to the IVS info coming from the camera, and the AI text is related to the internal BI AI? So if one or the other didn't cause the alert to trip, might the other one have a chance to catch it?
I don't have the motion sensor enabled on the Trigger page, so I wasn't expecting Zona A text, but I'm thinking that might be in the Alerts page push notification setup. There are a lot of moving parts to this...
Yes it is possible and some will have the IVS trigger, then run it through BI AI before an alert.
That is fine, but now means more moving parts and more failure points.
It can also delay notifications as AI is essentially being done twice - once with the camera, and second with BI AI.
So yes, it sounds like you have all 3 going at once.
That is fine, but now means more moving parts and more failure points.
It can also delay notifications as AI is essentially being done twice - once with the camera, and second with BI AI.
So yes, it sounds like you have all 3 going at once.
I was thinking of it as a redundancy check, where if one failed, the other could work. I did have a case where I only saw ONVIF, and not AI. But since I've not yet seen the opposite case (AI without ONVIF), it leads one to believe the IVS triggers are catching everything. But I need more time to test that theory.
One thing I'm seeing is that after making changes to a camera, I get a long period of the GetEvents failure in my camera settings with the error code 8000ffff:
And when this is happening, I get these messages in the log every 3 seconds:
1 9/5/2026 12:44:05.874 PM L-Front Events: subscription 8000ffff (missing SubscriptionReference)
1 9/5/2026 12:44:08.895 PM L-Front Events: subscription 8000ffff (missing SubscriptionReference)
1 9/5/2026 12:44:11.944 PM L-Front Events: subscription 8000ffff (missing SubscriptionReference)
1 9/5/2026 12:44:14.950 PM L-Front Events: subscription 8000ffff (missing SubscriptionReference)
1 9/5/2026 12:44:17.973 PM L-Front Events: subscription 8000ffff (missing SubscriptionReference)
1 9/5/2026 12:44:20.900 PM L-Front Events: subscription 8000ffff (missing SubscriptionReference)
1 9/5/2026 12:44:24.033 PM L-Front Events: subscription 8000ffff (missing SubscriptionReference)
1 9/5/2026 12:44:27.083 PM L-Front Events: subscription 8000ffff (missing SubscriptionReference)
1 9/5/2026 12:44:30.108 PM L-Front Events: subscription 8000ffff (missing SubscriptionReference)
1 9/5/2026 12:44:33.123 PM L-Front Events: subscription 8000ffff (missing SubscriptionReference)
1 9/5/2026 12:44:36.164 PM L-Front Events: subscription 8000ffff (missing SubscriptionReference)
1 9/5/2026 12:44:39.194 PM L-Front Events: subscription 8000ffff (missing SubscriptionReference)
1 9/5/2026 12:44:42.226 PM L-Front Events: subscription 8000ffff (missing SubscriptionReference)
1 9/5/2026 12:44:45.277 PM L-Front Events: subscription 8000ffff (missing SubscriptionReference)
1 9/5/2026 12:44:48.295 PM L-Front Events: subscription 8000ffff (missing SubscriptionReference)
1 9/5/2026 12:44:51.311 PM L-Front Events: subscription 8000ffff (missing SubscriptionReference)
1 9/5/2026 12:44:54.344 PM L-Front Events: subscription 8000ffff (missing SubscriptionReference)
1 9/5/2026 12:44:57.302 PM L-Front Events: subscription 8000ffff (missing SubscriptionReference)
1 9/5/2026 12:45:00.444 PM L-Front Events: subscription 8000ffff (missing SubscriptionReference)
This happens to others of the same camera type as well. There have been occasions where this lasts 5 or more minutes.
Has anyone else experienced this?
Yeah that error is "normal" as it is a handshake issue between the camera and BI.
Sometimes turning off "ONVIF auth" will stop it, but as long as it stops after a few minutes it isn't a big deal. It is if it never stops that it could be an issue.
Sometimes turning off "ONVIF auth" will stop it, but as long as it stops after a few minutes it isn't a big deal. It is if it never stops that it could be an issue.
I would add one caution to this. While the subscription 8000ffff (missing SubscriptionReference) errors may be temporary and eventually stop on their own, don't assume they're necessarily innocuous while they're occurring.
I've done quite a bit of testing and logging of these errors on my system. During one of these bursts, the affected camera is not delivering ONVIF trigger events to Blue Iris. So if you're relying on the camera's IVS/ONVIF events to trigger BI, there is a window in which an event can be missed -- potentially including an alert you care about.
I've also found an alternative method to clear the condition. Try toggling Camera settings > Video > Configure > Get trigger events off and back on forces BI to re-establish the ONVIF event subscription and, in my experience, clears the burst. I've actually automated that recovery on my system because I've occasionally had these bursts persist for a considerable time.
Interestingly, BI has had some ONVIF-related changes recently. From the V6 changelog:
I've been monitoring (logging) these errors automatically since well before those releases, and their frequency has dropped substantially on my system. I also made a camera/clone configuration change during that period, so I can't say that the BI changes are responsible, but the timing is interesting.
I've done quite a bit of testing and logging of these errors on my system. During one of these bursts, the affected camera is not delivering ONVIF trigger events to Blue Iris. So if you're relying on the camera's IVS/ONVIF events to trigger BI, there is a window in which an event can be missed -- potentially including an alert you care about.
I've also found an alternative method to clear the condition. Try toggling Camera settings > Video > Configure > Get trigger events off and back on forces BI to re-establish the ONVIF event subscription and, in my experience, clears the burst. I've actually automated that recovery on my system because I've occasionally had these bursts persist for a considerable time.
Interestingly, BI has had some ONVIF-related changes recently. From the V6 changelog:
In 6.0.9.1 (July 10), Ken added ONVIF event sharing for multiple cameras using the same
IP:port, specifically noting that opening separate event subscriptions can leave cameras in error conditions when the device has a limited number of subscriptions.
6.0.9.11 (July 28) also fixed an ONVIF event issue involving uninitialized dates.
I've been monitoring (logging) these errors automatically since well before those releases, and their frequency has dropped substantially on my system. I also made a camera/clone configuration change during that period, so I can't say that the BI changes are responsible, but the timing is interesting.
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Thanks for the info. I was wondering if perhaps there was something wrong with my system, but it's good to get confirmation that others are seeing this issue. I did encounter a missed alert after changing some settings and the camera being in this error state quite some time after the change, which is what caused me to look into it. I am presently running BI version 6.1.1.1.