B54PRO-Z4E first impression

[bigredfish]

60 Hz 1/120 exposure, (to eliminate rolling shutter) NR=1

Garbage

 

[duplo]

Here a short video from the Z4E.

At the moment the firmware has too many problems.
Cant use any manual settings, it will only worse the image.

This is auto mode H265.
H265 because H264 seems to be buggy at the moment.

To me it looks like H265 tends less to having this issue, which cannot be fixed with any faster shutter settings.

 

[Chokolinho]

Here a short video from the Z4E.

At the moment the firmware has too many problems.
Cant use any manual settings, it will only worse the image.

This is auto mode H265.
H265 because H264 seems to be buggy at the moment.

To me it looks like H265 tends less to having this issue, which cannot be fixed with any faster shutter settings.

View attachment 232908

I'd like to see the recording at night.

 

[duplo]

without be able to set the shutter/gain manual it makes no sense to post any night captures.
you can set anything you want, its just numbers. at the moment they are not the real numbers, caused by faulty software shit.

it looks the same as bigredfish showed, blurry faces

 

[Chokolinho]

without be able to set the shutter/gain manual it makes no sense to post any night captures.
you can set anything you want, its just numbers. at the moment they are not the real numbers, caused by faulty software shit.

it looks the same as bigredfish showed, blurry faces

What I was getting at was that it's going to look bad at night.

 

[S4nDr0]

Does anyone know if there's some special screw or whatever which can aid me in better positioning the camera - mine is mounted ona PFA121 junction box (which doesn't really matter, as there's no positioning control on it) and I want it to look mostly straight (a bit to the left) but also a bit down. I mounted it so that the movement of the mechanism is sideways, that way I can sway it to the side a bit, however this restricts almost any downard movement. If I had it mounted so that it can be pointed down, then it wouldn't move to the left/right. What is the solution in this case except for offseting the mounting itself which would make it look a bit crooked as it would not be level? I know the picture can be level as camera is rotating, but visually it won't be aestethic when you look at the camera

I only found 1 screw on top of the camera (not the one holding the visor) that does not seem to do much except for tightening/loosening the mechanism - still can't get it really tight with it, but it also does not allow for 4d movement, just 2d.

 

[steve1225]

60 Hz 1/120 exposure, (to eliminate rolling shutter) NR=1

Garbage

View attachment 232665

To be fair - you should show here how image / video with the same exposure / shutter looks from 5442...

A big problem with WizColor / AI-ISP cameras is that because they can "paint" a beautiful bright color static image at 1/100s to 1/250s at night in low light, we think the same applies to moving objects.

This is not true. In such conditions, the sensor sees more noise than the image. Simply turn off noise reduction completely (NR on/off switch) to see what the camera sensor actually sees.


The AI makes up for a lot here... Much more than in the 5442. In the 5442, the image in such conditions (on full auto mode) would be dark, noisy, have ghosting, and be blurry.

In full manual mode, something could be improved on the 5442 - but at 1/120s in color mode it will be far from ideal.

I tried many times to catch European very visible car plates / car details in color mode using 5442-Z4E / 7442-Z4 on low speed streets. Very low success ratio. In IR mode with my full WDR trick works very well.


The problem is that in those new cameras, some of the settings perform poorly - we have little control over some of the AI NR. Plus there is wrong exposure time / gain auto mechanism..

Let's hope Dahua refines this issue. It looks like they received magic box (AI-ISP) from SOC vendor and they don't have big control over it.

ps. those 5x59-PRO cams starts to show in normal Dahua worldwide distribution.. this should speed up fixing them by Dahua...


Bigger situation picture about new Dahua cameras:
Problem is that Chinese CCTV sensors lacks any development in last 4 years.. There are newer western Sony Starvis 2 CCTV sensors, but nor Dahua nor HIK are using them (due political situation & price difference)..

CCTV sensors are very low cost solutions - so no one invest heavily here.. the same story is in SOC space - HIK / Dahua are using cheap SOC's which are mobile knock-off from 3-5 years ago...

For me the only proper solution is switching to high resolution Quad Bayer image sensors, used heavily in mobiles & sport cameras / drones.. All sensor development is going there, every 1-2 years there is a big progress there...

They allow to do 8K video at day & 4K at night (with higher sensitivity).. which have big use in CCTV space (double vertical/horizontal resolution for a day doubles DORI)..

And should be NEW BIG revolution in CCTV space..

 

[bigredfish]

Yes, I didnt expect the 1/120 in 60hz to be any good, same as in the 5442.

I was just trying every possible combination and showing that due to the override of the AI-ISP you simply don’t have full manual control of the image.

 

[duplo]

We will see how it performs without AI ISP.

AI ISP will override the shutter and gain, up to 100, will give us shit moving objects. No one ever need this.

Its so buggy that even at day it will use too much of anything.

 

[bigredfish]

Test FW 11/27
They added the ability to turn Off AI-ISP

Daytime- fine. Still not up to par with the 5442 S3

Nighttime- Better, but still a ways to go to equal the 5442 S3


View attachment 192.168.1.110_ch5_20251128203713_20251128203802.mp4

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View attachment 192.168.1.110_ch5_20251128210805_20251128210836.mp4

View attachment 192.168.1.110_ch5_20251128054954_20251128055004.mp4
View attachment 192.168.1.110_ch5_20251128182901_20251128182912.mp4
View attachment 192.168.1.110_ch5_20251128091949_20251128091957.mp4
View attachment 192.168.1.110_ch5_20251128010235_20251128010250.mp4

 

[bigredfish]

Daytime snaps. Acceptable

 

[tmxv4128]

I just finished swapping the B54IR-Z4E-S3 with the B54PRO-Z4E (again!), after having loaded the 11-27-25 firmware. First impression during the daytime is that the B54PRO-Z4E is much improved, especially in how it is handling noise. I have 3D NR set for 26 and 2D NR at 25. Shutter is 0-2 and gain is 42. Sharpness is at 12. The encoding is H.264.H, and the bit rate is 16384. The depth of field and tonal range easily surpass the B54IR-Z4E-S3 during the daytime, but the real test will be tonight, weather permitting. For comparison, here are a couple screen shots around the same time. First pic is from the B54IR-Z4E-S3 (yesterday) and the second is from the B54PRO-Z4E (today).

 

[bigredfish]

Some of that may just be how its dialed in, and what the target is...
From my setup they're much closer than before, and the 54PRO is acceptable, but the 5442 still wins

54PRO



5442 Z4 S3

 

[tmxv4128]

I tried out the new firmware for the first time tonight, and it is a HUGE improvement. Something I noticed is that the IR is not as strong on the B54PRO-Z4E as it is on the B54IR-Z4E-S3, so to compensate, I opened the Iris to 100 (50 is the default) and set the shutter at 0-8.33ms (had been 0-4 and 0-6 on the B54IR-Z4E-S3). Gone is the digital hash that was present in the previous firmware, and being able to regain control of manual settings made a world of difference. Thanks Andy! This firmware is definitely moving in the right direction, after a few stumbles.

 

[tmxv4128]

Here it is with Smart Illumination turned on.

 

[alekk]

[Duplicate posting over here as may be of interest]

For those interested, here's the "version numbers" that change when you push to the latest firmware from @EMPIRETECANDY - changes in BOLD.

I applied the (smaller - 123MByte) "IPC" file first and then the (746MByte) firmware.bin second. The camera rebooted each time. After that (per comment from Andy) I did a Maintenance Center->Maintenance->Default->Default (NOT Factory Default) which resets most everything except "network, user management, and so on" ... and then reconfigured the camera. LOL a "good test" of your setup procedure! ;-)

As others have mentioned, there is a new option under Camera->Exposure->AI-ISP which you can toggle on/off ... which I think is the "magic" button to disable some of the "wizardy"

I haven't looked "enough" to say if it's better/worse ... just letting folks know the upgrade was easy to apply and appears to be working fine.

BTW, kinda interesting that the "System Version" for Andy's firmware is ".5.T" dated 2025-11-27 ... whereas the Dahua firmware (which I have NOT tested) is "4.R" dated 2025-11-11.

2025_10_28 Firmware
ONVIF Version: 25.06(V3.1.0.2298085)
System Version: V3.146.0000000.0.R, Build Date: 2025-10-28
Web Version: V5.01.0.2340775
Algorithm Version: V5.10.20.1
Security Baseline Version: V2.4
H5Player Version: V3.01.1
Cloud Service Version: 2327855

Face Detection: R1482440.0_V3.005.0000000.0.R
People Counting: R1486745.0_V3.006.0000036.0.R
Video Metadata: R1489959.0_V2.010.0000000.7.R
Heat Map: R1486745.0_V3.006.0000036.0.R
IVS: R1515312.0_V2.010.0000000.0.R
AcuPick (Motor Vehicle): 1007001000004
AcuPick (Human Body): 1005001001004


2025_11_27 Firmware
ONVIF Version: 25.06(V3.1.0.2298085)
System Version: V3.146.0000000.5.T, Build Date: 2025-11-27
Web Version: V5.0001.0.251126.2360417.2361663
Algorithm Version: V5.11.10.0
Security Baseline Version: V2.4
H5Player Version: V3.01.1
Cloud Service Version: 2348018

Face Detection: R1482440.0_V3.005.0000000.0.R
People Counting: R1486745.0_V3.006.0000036.0.R
Video Metadata: R1519389.0_V2.010.0000000.12.R
Heat Map: R1486745.0_V3.006.0000036.0.R
IVS: R1515312.0_V2.010.0000000.0.R
Smart Object Detection: R1515332.0_V1.005.0000000.0.R [NEW]
AcuPick (Motor Vehicle): 1007001000004
AcuPick (Human Body): 1005001001004

 

[bigredfish]

Here it is with Smart Illumination turned on.

Thanks @tmxv4128 for your efforts.

Before I go into detail about what I'm seeing between your and my testing, can you tell me:

• distance to sign on fence?
• distance to end of pavement?
• close in distance where you pass the camera?
• Assume you had AI-ISP disabled?
• Sharpness and DNR settings?

Thanks

 

[EMPIRETECANDY]

The firmware is the beta version, i think we will need go on 2-3 versions to upgrade, so i will watch all feedback carefully and make a report list to the engineers. Thanks guys keep testing, Appreciated!!

 

[steve1225]

Smart Object Detection: R1515332.0_V1.005.0000000.0.R [NEW]

this was mentioned on Dahua internal 5x59-PRO presentations, that it will be released in Q4 2024...
question what this is exactly doing?

 

[Flintstone61]

Perhaps if the engineers had grainy clips of Bikini girls by the pool, they'd have it wrapped by Tuesday.