Dahua WizColor 5x59-PRO and SmartLight 5x59-IL new series
- Thread starter steve1225
- Start date
Updated post above with system info. Grid is bizarre, I am running in shutter priority tonight, got to get a grip on the profile situation!!
@Tinman: That looks like the Dahua firmware (logo and Product Documentation) per my earlier post. - I assume you downloaded it and it's the 0827 version.
Did you notice that there was a "web-x-squashfs.bin" file in the download?
I haven't seen that before and did NOT apply (usually it's just the two "IPC" and firmware .bin files ... that I apply in that order) - does anyone (@steve1225 ?) know what it is?
Note that dates below are when I unzipped the download.
Did you notice that there was a "web-x-squashfs.bin" file in the download?
I haven't seen that before and did NOT apply (usually it's just the two "IPC" and firmware .bin files ... that I apply in that order) - does anyone (@steve1225 ?) know what it is?
Note that dates below are when I unzipped the download.
yes there was. When I did the upgrade I selected folder and it did the whole firmware the same time, only rebooted once.
I found using these strings in BI new action set feature work great. These you do NOT have to use the Self adaptive mode as you do with ver4 strings.
user:[email protected]/cgi-bin/configManager.cgi?action=setConfig&VideoInMode[0].ConfigEx=Day&VideoInMode[0].Mode=4
user:[email protected]/cgi-bin/configManager.cgi?action=setConfig&VideoInMode[0].ConfigEx=Night&VideoInMode[0].Mode=4
Thank you, I will add this to my list
I've got new toy fatigue now so leaving the two new ones running overnight, see what the daylight brings, spent about 10 minutes on the S3 and 2 hours on the 54Pro
OK, went back to check something, even though I have shutter at 0-3ms and the scene without motion looks good, I am getting quite poor quality moving objects, ie car, was experimenting with WDR and had it set to 45, now normally I would not even run WDR but tried it and the image looked more detailed and natural, oddly enough! this is not normally ideal for motion so I switched it off and will leave it as is for the rest of the night. Shame, since the picture looked quite a lot better with it turned on, did try a touch of HLC to see how that worked out also. Guess the testing continues.
Just for info, with white LED's on full power it draws around another 4.5watts according to my HP switch, when compared to IR on full power. The LED's are quite bright considering, will be interesting to compare the 4K-T to see how they look. Compared to the 2MP starlight it replaces, the 54Pro looks quite the picture at night, twice the detail at least and no black and white to be seen, I also forget how wide the newer cameras image is! in most cases this is very welcome.
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I can't run my shutter very fast till I add some more lighting or I can't keep it in color mode. I did play using the intrusion and the alarm....it's pretty loud. So, I backed it off to 75% volume. It's going to serve my purpose very well once I get it ironed out.
@CamCrazy: Good info - cool that they are minimal power draw. I found that doing HNL HLC=1 (yes, ONE) improved the image.
@Tinman: Good stuff. I took a screen grab of before/after LED turn-on and made the GIF below as I thought it might be interesting to see how the background is changing as the exposure is dropped - looks like it's going some WDR'ish/shadow-boost to try to keep those visible. Not bad ... plus at that point, the primary focus is on the intruder.
Speaking of which, I don't think you need a faster shutter speed to identify the person in the speckled blue sweats/PJ's! ;-)
@Tinman: Good stuff. I took a screen grab of before/after LED turn-on and made the GIF below as I thought it might be interesting to see how the background is changing as the exposure is dropped - looks like it's going some WDR'ish/shadow-boost to try to keep those visible. Not bad ... plus at that point, the primary focus is on the intruder.
Speaking of which, I don't think you need a faster shutter speed to identify the person in the speckled blue sweats/PJ's! ;-)
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OK, some initial thoughts from the last 16 hours or so testing the 54Pro ZE, before the good stuff goes out of my head!
The LED and IR still images at night are pretty insane, this has been noted already, no doubt about it, also the LED's are quite bright, this is nice. Last night I focused mainly on colour with LED's on, why wouldn't you! - I tried to keep 3D NR below 50, did try it at 30 but ended pushing it up some more, 2D below 25, bit rate 10000-12000+, 20-25fps and matching iframe, h264h, sharpness below 50, closer to 25-30 in fact. This camera is mounted 20 feet up, looking down at around 45 degrees onto driveway, path and some road, cars pass through the scene so excellent for motion testing. Zoom is on 1617 or about 75%, I may pull this back a bit tonight, see how that helps. I will be comparing to 5442 original and 2MP starlight from here on, later in this week/next, I will be able to compare to 4K-T also. Also note there is no ambient light at all!
Obvious thing, I see cars in colour at night, this is a first for me so big bonus, the static images are quite nice indeed, bright and in colour, we like. Maybe slightly less natural looking than 5442 original series. Freezing motion on this beast in colour at night is a bit like trying to catch a fly with your bare hands, bit of a struggle, keep in mind I am pushing this thing hard, target is 20 feet from the camera. I tried mostly everything last night, in fairness I can ID the vehicle type and also the colour, this is good, but there is ghosting, tearing, smearing and artifacts, that is bad for me anyway. Tonight I will to some more testing in colour but also focus on IR to see how that works out. I will also try knocking the fps back to 15 to see if this helps with processing. Interestingly, I also tried HDR at one point, this actually looked quite good when pushed high, more natural detail somehow, but motion this seemed to struggle, more testing for that also tonight! few hours burned yesterday for the cause!! Probably the takeaway right now is that this camera requires quite a lot of light at night to function well for freezing motion in colour.
I also need to play more with 'smooth motion' particularly at night, initially I find clear to be better, this I guess shouldn't surprise anyone, but need to confirm more how smooth performs on improving or degrading night colour motion! Also, I think during the day at least we might forget how well the 2MP starlight performs, they might be old but damn good sensor still, detail on the 5442 series still wins and night images are another story in favour of the 5442! but the 2MP starlight is a nice natural looking image.
During daylight this morning in low light, ghosting was still an issue in colour, even with shutter 0-2ms, once the light brightened up things looked more like the 5442, freeze motion was better, running at 0-1ms (yes!!) I would say the sharpness on freeze frame matches the 5442, but the 5442 would only need 0-4ms to do this. If I push shutter to 0-3ms you can immediately see motion blur, slight but it is there, it needs to be either 0-1ms or maybe 0-2ms depending on your tolerance for blur and also light levels at your locations, it is dull and overcast here, 33115 lux according to my weather station. Well, there is more testing to come during today, then when darkness comes I will be back to the freeze motion challenge, IR should be better with this, I did briefly run IR last night, looked pretty good although I suspect still some of the hang ups mentioned above re the colour and freeze motion. Yes, I am obsessed with freezing motion, it is critical and hence why I keep bashing on about it
The LED and IR still images at night are pretty insane, this has been noted already, no doubt about it, also the LED's are quite bright, this is nice. Last night I focused mainly on colour with LED's on, why wouldn't you! - I tried to keep 3D NR below 50, did try it at 30 but ended pushing it up some more, 2D below 25, bit rate 10000-12000+, 20-25fps and matching iframe, h264h, sharpness below 50, closer to 25-30 in fact. This camera is mounted 20 feet up, looking down at around 45 degrees onto driveway, path and some road, cars pass through the scene so excellent for motion testing. Zoom is on 1617 or about 75%, I may pull this back a bit tonight, see how that helps. I will be comparing to 5442 original and 2MP starlight from here on, later in this week/next, I will be able to compare to 4K-T also. Also note there is no ambient light at all!
Obvious thing, I see cars in colour at night, this is a first for me so big bonus, the static images are quite nice indeed, bright and in colour, we like. Maybe slightly less natural looking than 5442 original series. Freezing motion on this beast in colour at night is a bit like trying to catch a fly with your bare hands, bit of a struggle, keep in mind I am pushing this thing hard, target is 20 feet from the camera. I tried mostly everything last night, in fairness I can ID the vehicle type and also the colour, this is good, but there is ghosting, tearing, smearing and artifacts, that is bad for me anyway. Tonight I will to some more testing in colour but also focus on IR to see how that works out. I will also try knocking the fps back to 15 to see if this helps with processing. Interestingly, I also tried HDR at one point, this actually looked quite good when pushed high, more natural detail somehow, but motion this seemed to struggle, more testing for that also tonight! few hours burned yesterday for the cause!! Probably the takeaway right now is that this camera requires quite a lot of light at night to function well for freezing motion in colour.
I also need to play more with 'smooth motion' particularly at night, initially I find clear to be better, this I guess shouldn't surprise anyone, but need to confirm more how smooth performs on improving or degrading night colour motion! Also, I think during the day at least we might forget how well the 2MP starlight performs, they might be old but damn good sensor still, detail on the 5442 series still wins and night images are another story in favour of the 5442! but the 2MP starlight is a nice natural looking image.
During daylight this morning in low light, ghosting was still an issue in colour, even with shutter 0-2ms, once the light brightened up things looked more like the 5442, freeze motion was better, running at 0-1ms (yes!!) I would say the sharpness on freeze frame matches the 5442, but the 5442 would only need 0-4ms to do this. If I push shutter to 0-3ms you can immediately see motion blur, slight but it is there, it needs to be either 0-1ms or maybe 0-2ms depending on your tolerance for blur and also light levels at your locations, it is dull and overcast here, 33115 lux according to my weather station. Well, there is more testing to come during today, then when darkness comes I will be back to the freeze motion challenge, IR should be better with this, I did briefly run IR last night, looked pretty good although I suspect still some of the hang ups mentioned above re the colour and freeze motion. Yes, I am obsessed with freezing motion, it is critical and hence why I keep bashing on about it
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Purely based on what I have seen so far at night in colour, get your shutter down to below 0-3ms or 0-4ms if you can, or roughly 1/333 to 1/250, depending on light levels, the scene above could probably get away with slightly slower potentially.
bigredfish
Known around here
Yes, I am obsessed with freezing motion, it is critical and hence why I keep bashing on about it
As you should be.
We know any cheap camera can be made to look bright and colorful at night in static shots without motion, or a blurry mess with motion
I have tried zooming out to approximately 30% zoom and it really makes no difference to freezing the action, I am not sure if this is a fixed f1.6 aperture at all zoom lengths, have to assume it is. The sun has come out and that helps a bit but seriously I am struggling like mad to get stop motion from this 54Pro ZE now, will try adjusting manual gain upwards in the next few hours, then switch it back to shutter priority and try that, at the moment it cannot get anywhere near my 5442 bullet and that is also zoomed in.
bigredfish
Known around here
Unless Shutter Prio works differently on it vs the 5432 I just never found the benefit other than to brighten the scene with the resulting noise. Maybe with the over aggressive NR on the 54PRO that will be different
It is definitely NOT fixed aperture. I originally had mine zoomed in at 1650 for my "desired" image, then since my "target" is 1920x1080HD, I had it resize to that output.
However, when I zoomed out to 550 and use the native resolution of 2688x1520 (and in then in my post-processing crop to 1920x1080), I got a noticeably brighter image at night of the same scene. Ditto with the 5442-S3 BTW - I suspect very similar lens. If you want to test this, use settings that underexpose, so the camera is at it's limits.
Obviously this causes a loss of detail, but at least for me, the increased light gathering was worth that tradeoff.
It would be nice if Dahua published a aperture versus focal length/zoom setting ... I don't know if it is "continuous" or stepped.
I may see if I can "test" this with my 2nd camera since if I point it toward a surface evenly and fix the shutter/gain, I should be able to see the change in exposure level as aperture changes with zoom.
Assuming you are running the 0731 firmware, you have the "full range" for gain ... so have you tried playing much with that? The noise gets really bad of course at high levels, but that's another obvious tradeoff.
Sorry about the HNL=1 typo (guess I had Hawaii airport code on my mind) and yes, I meant HLC=1.
However, when I zoomed out to 550 and use the native resolution of 2688x1520 (and in then in my post-processing crop to 1920x1080), I got a noticeably brighter image at night of the same scene. Ditto with the 5442-S3 BTW - I suspect very similar lens. If you want to test this, use settings that underexpose, so the camera is at it's limits.
Obviously this causes a loss of detail, but at least for me, the increased light gathering was worth that tradeoff.
It would be nice if Dahua published a aperture versus focal length/zoom setting ... I don't know if it is "continuous" or stepped.
I may see if I can "test" this with my 2nd camera since if I point it toward a surface evenly and fix the shutter/gain, I should be able to see the change in exposure level as aperture changes with zoom.
Assuming you are running the 0731 firmware, you have the "full range" for gain ... so have you tried playing much with that? The noise gets really bad of course at high levels, but that's another obvious tradeoff.
Sorry about the HNL=1 typo (guess I had Hawaii airport code on my mind) and yes, I meant HLC=1.
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My current system info is as follows:
System Version
V3.146.0000000.1.R, Build Date: 2025-07-31
Web Version
V5.01.0.2293542
Algorithm Version
V5.06.14.0
Security Baseline Version
V2.4
H5Player Version
V3.01.1
Gain control looks like this:
Honestly, I have tried a lot today, only way I can get this thing to match a 5442 bullet which is actually further away! is to set shutter to 0-1ms, no joke. Anything else is sub par for freezing motion, the 5442 bullet is sitting further away and producing cleaner images with better stop motion set at 0-4ms
System Version
V3.146.0000000.1.R, Build Date: 2025-07-31
Web Version
V5.01.0.2293542
Algorithm Version
V5.06.14.0
Security Baseline Version
V2.4
H5Player Version
V3.01.1
Gain control looks like this:
Honestly, I have tried a lot today, only way I can get this thing to match a 5442 bullet which is actually further away! is to set shutter to 0-1ms, no joke. Anything else is sub par for freezing motion, the 5442 bullet is sitting further away and producing cleaner images with better stop motion set at 0-4ms
Historically I would go full manual, but, I have found on this 54Pro and also my 5442 bullet that shutter priority can work in favour, without degrading the image. The light is starting to drop here now and I can see the freeze frame starting to slip on the 54Pro, the 5442 still holding up OK. It is annoying because in the real world we need to stop motion. As soon as light is less than perfect you begin to get ghosting and artifact 'trails' as well. The 5442 and new S3 ticking over no drama at higher shutter speed, on the 54Pro there isn't much left unless I go to 0-0.1 which is touch dark! although I did run it at 0-0.5 for a while earlier and that was fine.
Not sure what to say at this point, bit frustrating and similar results to others. Feels to me like it is trying too hard on the processing front, that is above my pay grade! and hopefully something the boffins at Dahua can adjust and resolve in firmware. My take it that if freezing motion in the daylight is a struggle then night time will be tough to master, although I will try it some more later both in colour and IR.
Current day settings if anyone interested, dropping the gamma might have just made quite a difference to stop motion! Smooth stream I keep switching to test, feel like clear is winning for now, smooth might work better at night, find out later.... Anyone has any hot tips for eliminating the ghosting, I am all ears! even wondering if I should disable IVS for testing?!?
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OMG...
Smooth Stream set to 100 don't work like this... like opposite..
This is ratio switch - between smooth (value 0) and clear (value 100)... default 50 is in the middle (half of both)...
Smooth (value 0) is giving more bandwidth for each frame (delta frames with small changes) in stream at a cost of bandwidth for I-frame (full image redrawn, every 1-2 seconds).
Clear (value 100 you setup) is giving more bandwidth for I-Frame (full image redrawn every 1-2 seconds) at a cost of all normal frames (delta frames with small changes)...
this setting is for pulsing problem.. so losing sharpness (especially on big textures like grass/asphalt or moving small object like greenery) in I-frame cycle (every 1-2 seconds)...
Values like 25 to 75 are OK depending on what sub problem you have.. Values at the ends creates more problems than solves..