Experience with Unifi Protect and UNVR Pro

quest100 said:

If I did not already have cameras I would probably use UI cameras where possible - but only their newer G6 generation that have larger sensors and AI capabilities built in. However their PTZs are either underwhelming (G6 PTZ, no zoom, just two separate lenses) or very expensive (AI PTZ Industrial at $1,300). UI has no equivalents to the Color-X or 12x zooms. The AI LPR looks good and is supposed to work well at night but it only has a 3x zoom.

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Their new G6 line up has me wondering. I see you have a color 4K T camera. I use five of them and set up my own LED soffit lighting for all five and keep the onboard LED's off. The lighting is controlled by smart dimmer switches and they automatically turn on/off with automations in Home assistant. It got me wondering how well a G6 turret would work if I used the same lighting? I know the G6 has a 1/1.8 sensor compared to my 4K t's 1/1.2 but what if I just increased the brightness on my accessory LED soffit lights? With my 4K T's I only have the brightness set at 50% and even less on a few of my others since it's all dependant on each individual scene. Or maybe dim them way down where a G6 would still go into IR mode but still benefit from a tiny bit of accessory lighting.

Keizer said:

Their new G6 line up has me wondering. I see you have a color 4K T camera. I use five of them and set up my own LED soffit lighting for all five and keep the onboard LED's off. The lighting is controlled by smart dimmer switches and they automatically turn on/off with automations in Home assistant. It got me wondering how well a G6 turret would work if I used the same lighting? I know the G6 has a 1/1.8 sensor compared to my 4K t's 1/1.2 but what if I just increased the brightness on my accessory LED soffit lights? With my 4K T's I only have the brightness set at 50% and even less on a few of my others since it's all dependant on each individual scene. Or maybe dim them way down where a G6 would still go into IR mode but still benefit from a tiny bit of accessory lighting.

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The G6 Pro Bullet actually uses a 1/1.2" sensor. However, the lens aperture is F/1.5 to F/2.9. This means the it lets in 1/2.25 to 1/8.41 times as much light. The next question, for which I have no answer, is how good/bad is the sensor noise and image processing. It could be better or worse than the Color-X cameras.

quest100 said:

Trying the AI Ports on my various Dahua Cameras it looks like

1. HD (1080 x 1920) - uses one quarter of an AI Port
2. 2k (1440 x 2560) - uses one third of an AI Port
3. 2k+ (1520 x 2668) - uses one entire AI Port
4. 4K (2160 x 3840) - uses one entire AI Port

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I repaired some of my cameras to the AI Port to double check how many cameras could be paired to a single AI Port. The values are worse than I reported above.

All of the Dahua cameras are running at a H.264H, CBR and 8 Mbps. Differences from above are:

1. HD (1080 x 1920) - uses slightly more than one quarter of an AI Port
2. 2k (1440 x 2560) - uses around one half of an AI Port
3. 2k (2560 x 1440, portrait orientation) - uses one entire AI Port
4. 2k (1440 x 2560) + HD (1080 x 1920) - does not leave room for a third camera
5. 3 x HD (1080 x 1920) - does not leave room for a fourth camera

Not sure what role encoder settings have on AI Port capacity.

quest100 said:

The G6 Pro Bullet actually uses a 1/1.2" sensor. However, the lens aperture is F/1.5 to F/2.9. This means the it lets in 1/2.25 to 1/8.41 times as much light. The next question, for which I have no answer, is how good/bad is the sensor noise and image processing. It could be better or worse than the Color-X cameras.

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I guess I was just wondering how the $199.00 G6 would do against my 4K T cams at night. Maybe with the right amount of light they could do just as well at night. I assume they would stay in full color all night with enough lighting. Be nice to see someone compare the two. I'd probably trade all my 4K T's right now for the G6 Pro Bullets.

MTL4 said:

Says in the specs it should be able to handle a max of one single 4K camera, are you at least able to do this with an AI Port?

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One AI Port pairs quite well with one 4k (3840 x 2160) camera. No room for anything more.

flynreelow said:

Which non unifi cams do you run. Do you have the ai port or key? What issues with those cams have you noticed with Protect, and using Empire/ dahua cams?

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I will give my experience since I just set up a UNVR Pro. My comments are in no way a knock against MTL4. He has been very helpful with me and my questions. I have only had a couple days worth of using the UNVR Pro and the protect software. I am honestly very disappointed with their 3rd party camera support. I knew going into it that it supported recording and nothing else. First off here's my experience viewing on my PC connected to protect with a browser. I have a total of 13 cams I bought from Andy. Some 4K T's, IPC-T54IR-ZEB-S3's, a couple PTZ cams etc. Protect found the cams right away and I was able to easily adopt them. That's as far as the ease of operation went for me. Right out of the gate the camera thumbnails in protect are distorted. The IPC-T54IR-ZEB-S3's are displayed correctly but the 4K T's are all slightly squished. My T180 cam is comical the way the thumbnail is displayed, although it does display correctly when expanded. In comparison, in UI3 all the thumbnails look exactly like the exploded view of each camera except smaller. So this may seem trivial to some but it really bugs me. When I click on a camera thumbnail to expand it, then click back to the thumbnails, some of them quickly reload, change shape slightly and then stabalize. The whole user experience is super clunky. I'd bet money that it would be pretty smooth though using their own cameras.

Secondly, is my issues with the device list in protect. Half my cameras don't display the thumbnail view of the camera.......just a spinning wheel like it's trying to find the camera view. So unless you name the camera you don't know which one it is. Another annoying quirk. When I go to play back of a camera and scroll through the timeline, the camera image slightly shrinks down then expands back to normal when the scrolling stops. This doesn't happen with my IPC-T54IR-ZEB-S3's. It just feels like everything is half baked at this point in the software for 3rd party cams. When I go from the device list back to the dashboard, the camera list repopulates instead of just being there already. It just seems like normal navigating is slightly sluggish throughout.

Ok, the Android phone app. Right out of the gate my T-180 cam isn't displayed correctly and I have found no way to fix that. When scrolling through timelines with my 4K T cams the thumbnail drops down slightly then bounces back up after the scrolling stops. Again, my IPC-T54IR-ZEB-S3's work fine. The phone app has pretty much the same quirks as viewing on my PC monitor. Thumbnails repopulating as you scroll through them etc.

This is all I have found so far. Before trying out protect I was feeling like my Blue Iris setup was kind of a cobbled together NVR. The fact is my Blue Iris setup works excellent in comparison and is smooth as butter to use. UI3 is snappy and instant with every mouse click. I can hear a car driving by and can have UI3 up on my desktop with one of my cameras on screen fast enough to see the car drive by. Scrolling through camera footage on Blue Iris is smooth and the camera view just holds still and doesn't do quirky stuff. UI3 on my Android phone is exactly the same......perfect really. I agree with others that Blue Iris has alot of settings and setup can be a pain, but once it is set up it's rock solid. Or at least mine is. In my opinion, Blue Iris may have way too many options and settings, but protect doesn't have enough. Protect needs more customization. It's like you are held captive and forced to just settle for what they give you.

These are just my opinions and I'm sure some of these things wouldn't bother other people like they do me. I know that this 3rd party camera support is in it's infancy so maybe things will get ironed out. I'm not sure if Unifi will ever give us full 3rd party camera support with motion, AI etc. It seems like it would be a bad idea for them to do so since they sell their own cameras. They actually say that 3rd party camera support is so you can slowly migrate over to using their cameras. I like the fact that Blue Iris doesn't care what camera you use. Andy always has new cool cameras that get better every year and I like knowing I have full support of those cameras with BI.

I was actually ready to abandon Blue Iris but I now have a new appreciation for how well it works once it's set up. I may revisit protect again down the road.