I've got several cameras from Andy all on classic day/night with IR schedules. I added one recently towards my garage that has a dusk to dawn light that provides enough light the camera stays in color at night, which is fine. However when testing playback quality and facial clarity during the night time hours my face was much blurrier when reviewing footage. Any recommendations on what settings to change that could help?
Help dialing in my T54IR-ZE S3
- Thread starter Defender574
- Start date
In terms of getting the most out of the camera, here is my "standard" post that many use as a start for dialing in day and night that helps get the clean captures and help the camera recognize people and cars.
Start with:
H264
8192 bitrate
CBR
15FPS and iframes if using 3rd party VMS (30 if using NVR is ok)
Every field of view is different, but I have found you need contrast to usually be 6-8 higher than the brightness number at night.
We want the ability to freeze frame capture a clean image from the video at night, and that is only done with a shutter of 1/60 or faster. At night, default/auto may be on 1/12s shutter or worse to make the image bright.
In my opinion, shutter (exposure) and gain are the two most important parameters and then base the others off of it. Shutter is more important than FPS. It is the shutter speed that prevents motion blur, not FPS. 15 FPS is more than enough for surveillance cameras as we are not producing Hollywood movies. Match iframes to FPS. 15FPS is all that is usually needed.
Many people do not realize there is manual shutter that lets you adjust shutter and gain and a shutter priority that only lets you adjust shutter speed but not gain. The higher the gain, the bigger the noise and see-through ghosting start to appear because the noise is amplified. Most people select shutter priority and run a faster shutter than they should because it is likely being done at 100 gain, so it is actually defeating their purpose of a faster shutter.
Go into shutter settings and change to manual shutter and start with custom shutter as ms and change to 0-8.3ms and gain 0-50 (night) and 0-4ms exposure and 0-30 gain (day)for starters. Auto could have a shutter speed of 100ms or more with a gain at 100 and shutter priority could result in gain up at 100 which will contribute to significant ghosting and that blinding white you will get from the infrared or white light.
Now what you will notice immediately at night is that your image gets A LOT darker. That faster the shutter, the more light that is needed. But it is a balance. The nice bright night static image results in Casper blur and ghost during motion LOL. What do we want, a nice static image or a clean image when there is motion introduced to the scene?
In the daytime, if it is still too bright, then drop the 4ms down to 3ms then 2ms, etc. You have to play with it for your field of view.
Then at night, if it is too dark, then start adding ms to the time. Go to 10ms, 12ms, etc. until you find what you feel is acceptable as an image. Then have someone walk around and see if you can get a clean shot. Try not to go above 16.67ms (but certainly not above 30ms) as that tends to be the point where blur starts to occur. Conversely, if it is still bright, then drop down in time to get a faster shutter.
You can also adjust brightness and contrast to improve the image. But try not to go above 70 for anything and try to have contrast be at least 7-10 digits higher than brightness.
You can also add some gain to brighten the image - but the higher the gain, the more ghosting you get. Some cameras can go to 70 or so before it is an issue and some can't go over 50.
But adjusting those two settings will have the biggest impact. The next one is noise reduction. Want to keep that as low as possible. Depending on the amount of light you have, you might be able to get down to 40 or so at night (again camera dependent) and 20-30 during the day, but take it as low as you can before it gets too noisy. Again this one is a balance as well. Too smooth and no noise can result in soft images and contribute to blur.
Do not use backlight features until you have exhausted every other parameter setting. And if you do have to use backlight, take it down as low as possible.
After every setting adjustment, have someone walk around outside and see if you can freeze-frame to get a clean image. If not, keep changing until you do. Clean motion pictures are what we are after, not a clean static image.
Start with:
H264
8192 bitrate
CBR
15FPS and iframes if using 3rd party VMS (30 if using NVR is ok)
Every field of view is different, but I have found you need contrast to usually be 6-8 higher than the brightness number at night.
We want the ability to freeze frame capture a clean image from the video at night, and that is only done with a shutter of 1/60 or faster. At night, default/auto may be on 1/12s shutter or worse to make the image bright.
In my opinion, shutter (exposure) and gain are the two most important parameters and then base the others off of it. Shutter is more important than FPS. It is the shutter speed that prevents motion blur, not FPS. 15 FPS is more than enough for surveillance cameras as we are not producing Hollywood movies. Match iframes to FPS. 15FPS is all that is usually needed.
Many people do not realize there is manual shutter that lets you adjust shutter and gain and a shutter priority that only lets you adjust shutter speed but not gain. The higher the gain, the bigger the noise and see-through ghosting start to appear because the noise is amplified. Most people select shutter priority and run a faster shutter than they should because it is likely being done at 100 gain, so it is actually defeating their purpose of a faster shutter.
Go into shutter settings and change to manual shutter and start with custom shutter as ms and change to 0-8.3ms and gain 0-50 (night) and 0-4ms exposure and 0-30 gain (day)for starters. Auto could have a shutter speed of 100ms or more with a gain at 100 and shutter priority could result in gain up at 100 which will contribute to significant ghosting and that blinding white you will get from the infrared or white light.
Now what you will notice immediately at night is that your image gets A LOT darker. That faster the shutter, the more light that is needed. But it is a balance. The nice bright night static image results in Casper blur and ghost during motion LOL. What do we want, a nice static image or a clean image when there is motion introduced to the scene?
In the daytime, if it is still too bright, then drop the 4ms down to 3ms then 2ms, etc. You have to play with it for your field of view.
Then at night, if it is too dark, then start adding ms to the time. Go to 10ms, 12ms, etc. until you find what you feel is acceptable as an image. Then have someone walk around and see if you can get a clean shot. Try not to go above 16.67ms (but certainly not above 30ms) as that tends to be the point where blur starts to occur. Conversely, if it is still bright, then drop down in time to get a faster shutter.
You can also adjust brightness and contrast to improve the image. But try not to go above 70 for anything and try to have contrast be at least 7-10 digits higher than brightness.
You can also add some gain to brighten the image - but the higher the gain, the more ghosting you get. Some cameras can go to 70 or so before it is an issue and some can't go over 50.
But adjusting those two settings will have the biggest impact. The next one is noise reduction. Want to keep that as low as possible. Depending on the amount of light you have, you might be able to get down to 40 or so at night (again camera dependent) and 20-30 during the day, but take it as low as you can before it gets too noisy. Again this one is a balance as well. Too smooth and no noise can result in soft images and contribute to blur.
Do not use backlight features until you have exhausted every other parameter setting. And if you do have to use backlight, take it down as low as possible.
After every setting adjustment, have someone walk around outside and see if you can freeze-frame to get a clean image. If not, keep changing until you do. Clean motion pictures are what we are after, not a clean static image.
Post a video sample so we can help diagnose.
Note: as mentioned many times over the years, it takes a metric shit ton of light to run in color at night and get a quality image.
There are two approaches:
1- add a LOT of white light and get a quality moving image using the 5442 or 4K-T/X
2- buy one of the newer “wonder cams”
(54PRO, 4MT (3 series TIOC PV PRO)
which produce a “brighter” static image but because of shitty sensors, ultimately fail miserably in the Quallity department with digital noise and motion blur on moving targets.*
*Again with enough light almost anything is possible, the 4M-T can be made usable with enough added light and within its focus area
IPCAMTALK Technical term.
FYI: 1 Metric Shit Ton (MST) is equal to 1.102311 US Shit Tons (USST, aka Shit Ton or ST).
With respect to light: 1 USST = (for 5000Kelvin) 16,000 Lumens at 100 feet.
doczenith1
n3wb
If storage space is not a concern and image quality is prioritized is there any reason not to use H.264H 16384 bitrate? Is there a point of diminishing returns i.e. above xxxxx bitate doesn't scale quality vs storage space?
That’s what I use . Though honestly on the 4MP I don’t see any difference above 10,240
Techie007L
Getting the hang of it
The main differences between H.264 Main and H.264 High profiles would be adding an 8x8 transform (improves coding efficiency of low detail areas like the sky), weighted quantization scaling, separate CB and CR QP control, and better B-frame utilization. These techniques are not aimed at improving quality, but lowering bitrate (which will inadvertently improve quality slightly if using CBR at a low bitrate). The only reasons to use the Main or Baseline profiles would be to improve compatibility or lower computational complexity (encoding and decoding). For example, an iPhone 5 can't play H.264 High profile encoded video streams. Realistically though, your compatibility is largely on Blue Iris until you export a direct-to-disk video file.
Yes, there is a point of diminishing returns, and for an average 2K camera feed, 16,384 kbps is well into that territory. At 4K resolution, it's not so excessive. If everything is moving in your scene (lots of blowing trees/leaves, moving water, a screenful of moving traffic) you will need significantly more bitrate to maintain quality than if the scene is largely static except for the occasional subject (the average camera feed is usually somewhere between these two extremes). Personally, I always use H.265 VBR with a quality between 3-5 (depending on camera/scene), and an I-frame interval of 150-255. If you care about coding efficiency/recording storage time while maintaining video quality, you will get the best results with that—expect your storage efficiency to at least double over your current settings with no visible loss of image quality. But if space isn't of any concern to you, there's nothing wrong with your current settings.
Wow, your experiences are WAY DIFFERENT than most here.
Most cameras suck at H265 and experiences here show that H264 and CBR will beat H265 and especially at VBR.
We have asked many times and you never post, but now we need to see your 4M-TL images at night with an object in motion.
Can you please prove us wrong.....
Personally, I always use H.265 VBR with a quality between 3-5 (depending on camera/scene), and an I-frame interval of 150-255. If you care about coding efficiency/recording storage time while maintaining video quality, you will get the best results with that
Video samples please.
Those are dramatically different than what has been learned here for the past 12 years over countless installers and experts, unless image quality doesnt matter
Either you're redefining all of the previous years of knowledge from the 180,000 members here, or you're wrong
The TL : DR version is H265 is not a consistent codec standard and every manufacturer does it different, which can be problematic with some VMS systems. H264 tends to be the consistent codec. Plus H265 uses more camera processor resources, which can then be problematic with other options on the camera.
Now for the long version:
SmartCodec (+ variants) can create lots of problems with playback / search - many have seen it jumps and skips over time, plus it is proprietary to the manufacturer and can be problematic with other VMS systems.
Most of us have found H265 in these cameras suck.
H265 in theory provides more storage as it compresses differently, but part of that compression means it "macro blocks" (technically coding tree units) big areas of the image that it thinks isn't moving. That can be problematic for digital zooming with H265.
However, it also takes more processing power of the already small CPU in the camera and that can be problematic if someone is maxing out the camera in other areas like FPS and then it stutters.
The cheaper the camera, the more it will struggle with the processing requirements of H265.
Further some cameras can handle H265 better than others, even if the camera "claims" to support it, it may actually do a very poor job with it.
In theory it is supposed to need 30% less storage than H264, but most of us have found it isn't that much. My savings were less than few minutes per day. And to my eye and others that I showed clips to and just said do you like video 1 or video 2 better, everyone thought the H264 provided a better image.
The left image is H264, so all the blocks are the same size corresponding to the resolution of the camera. H265 takes areas that it doesn't think has motion and makes them into bigger blocks and in doing so lessens the resolution in those larger blocks yet increases the camera CPU demand to develop these larger blocks. For some cameras that then becomes problematic to do other functions as the little processor is now maxed out.
In theory H265 is supposed to need half the bitrate because of the macroblocking. But if there is a lot of motion in the image, then it becomes a pixelated mess. The only way to get around that is a higher bitrate. But if you need to run the same bitrate for H265 as you do H264, then the storage savings is essentially zero.
In my testing I have one camera that sees a parked car in front of my house. H265 sees that the car isn't moving, so it macroblocks the whole car and surrounding area. Then the car owner walked up to the car and got in and the motion is missed because of the macroblock being so large. Or if it catches it, because the bitrate is low, it is a pixelated mess during the critical capture point and by the time H265 adjusts to there is now motion, the ideal capture is missed.
In my case, the car is clear and defined in H264, but is blurry and soft edges in H265.
Digital zooming is never really good and not something we recommend, but you stand a better chance of some digital zoom with H264 rather than a large macroblocked H265. I can digital zoom on my overview camera and kinda make out the address number of the house across the street with H264, but not a chance with H265 as it macroblocked his whole house.
H265 is one of those theory things that sounds good, but reality use is much different.
Some people have a field of view or goals that allow H265 to be sufficient for their needs.
Third party VMS systems do better with H264. That is the tried and true standard. H264H is ok as well.
As always, YMMV.
Now for the long version:
SmartCodec (+ variants) can create lots of problems with playback / search - many have seen it jumps and skips over time, plus it is proprietary to the manufacturer and can be problematic with other VMS systems.
Most of us have found H265 in these cameras suck.
H265 in theory provides more storage as it compresses differently, but part of that compression means it "macro blocks" (technically coding tree units) big areas of the image that it thinks isn't moving. That can be problematic for digital zooming with H265.
However, it also takes more processing power of the already small CPU in the camera and that can be problematic if someone is maxing out the camera in other areas like FPS and then it stutters.
The cheaper the camera, the more it will struggle with the processing requirements of H265.
Further some cameras can handle H265 better than others, even if the camera "claims" to support it, it may actually do a very poor job with it.
In theory it is supposed to need 30% less storage than H264, but most of us have found it isn't that much. My savings were less than few minutes per day. And to my eye and others that I showed clips to and just said do you like video 1 or video 2 better, everyone thought the H264 provided a better image.
The left image is H264, so all the blocks are the same size corresponding to the resolution of the camera. H265 takes areas that it doesn't think has motion and makes them into bigger blocks and in doing so lessens the resolution in those larger blocks yet increases the camera CPU demand to develop these larger blocks. For some cameras that then becomes problematic to do other functions as the little processor is now maxed out.
In theory H265 is supposed to need half the bitrate because of the macroblocking. But if there is a lot of motion in the image, then it becomes a pixelated mess. The only way to get around that is a higher bitrate. But if you need to run the same bitrate for H265 as you do H264, then the storage savings is essentially zero.
In my testing I have one camera that sees a parked car in front of my house. H265 sees that the car isn't moving, so it macroblocks the whole car and surrounding area. Then the car owner walked up to the car and got in and the motion is missed because of the macroblock being so large. Or if it catches it, because the bitrate is low, it is a pixelated mess during the critical capture point and by the time H265 adjusts to there is now motion, the ideal capture is missed.
In my case, the car is clear and defined in H264, but is blurry and soft edges in H265.
Digital zooming is never really good and not something we recommend, but you stand a better chance of some digital zoom with H264 rather than a large macroblocked H265. I can digital zoom on my overview camera and kinda make out the address number of the house across the street with H264, but not a chance with H265 as it macroblocked his whole house.
H265 is one of those theory things that sounds good, but reality use is much different.
Some people have a field of view or goals that allow H265 to be sufficient for their needs.
Third party VMS systems do better with H264. That is the tried and true standard. H264H is ok as well.
As always, YMMV.
Most of my Dahua cameras wont allow an Iframe rate over 150....? VBR
What models allows 255 and at what bitrate?
What models allows 255 and at what bitrate?
Here, I'll help you out
Go Full Screen
My settings - h.264.h CBR
View attachment 192.168.1.110_ch11_20260402083950_20260402084015.mp4
View attachment 192.168.1.110_ch11_20260406104955_20260406105022.mp4
Your settings - h.265 VBR 3
Macro blocking quite evident
View attachment 192.168.1.110_ch11_20260409104524_20260409104602.mp4
Last edited:
Arjun
IPCT Contributor
I experimented a bit and found that when the camera faced the white light, it reflected off the top and sides of my head and body, making my face appear too dark at night. Although switching to IR eliminated color, the camera’s ability to project light horizontally toward me resulted in much better facial recognition.