Am I expecting too much?

May 22, 2020
4
4
USA
I got asked my a neighbor today to help identify a car that pulled up to their house and was acting suspicious. The car had a sign on one side of the vehicle. I have 3 cameras (all are T5442TM-AS 2.8mm) that observe the area that the vehicle drove through and are about 55ft from where the vehicle was. Disappointingly, none of them were able to come even close to reading what the sign said. It was just a blur. I estimate that the vehicle was moving about 20mph, so not fast by any means.

Am I expecting too much for these cameras to be able to identify, at least roughly, something like this? Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.FL.20251005_122609506.2.jpgFL.20251005_122609506.1.jpg
 
At 55ft with a fixed wide angle 2.8mm lens?
Yes

That said it could be better. What are your settings?

To get in the ballpark try these
Also Under Video
H.264.h, CBR, bitrate 10240, Iframe and FPS numbers should match

settingsDay1.jpg
 
Last edited:
+1 above.

At 55 feet you need the 5442-Z4E if you expect to be able to read that.
Thanks for the sanity check guys.

I actually do have the 5442-Z4E that's been on my project list to setup as a plate camera.

Out of curiosity, if I upgraded the T5442TM-AS to a IPC-T58IR-ZE-S, would the increase in megapixels allow me to see more detail at further distances?
 
Thanks for the sanity check guys.

I actually do have the 5442-Z4E that's been on my project list to setup as a plate camera.

Out of curiosity, if I upgraded the T5442TM-AS to a IPC-T58IR-ZE-S, would the increase in megapixels allow me to see more detail at further distances?

Slighlty but not enough to make that difference up if its 2.8mm
 
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At 55ft with a fixed wide angle 2.8mm lens?
Yes

That said it could be better. What are your settings?

To get in the ballpark try these
Also Under Video
H.264.h, CBR, bitrate 10240, Iframe and FPS numbers should match

View attachment 229277
My interface looks a little different, I'm assuming just software level differences. I don't have 3D/2D NR Level settings however.

Also made the changes in the video settings.
 

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Yes just older Firmware

You shouldn’t need that much NR during the day. Back it down to say 30-35
NR creates motion blur
 
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I got asked my a neighbor today to help identify a car that pulled up to their house and was acting suspicious. The car had a sign on one side of the vehicle. I have 3 cameras (all are T5442TM-AS 2.8mm) that observe the area that the vehicle drove through and are about 55ft from where the vehicle was. Disappointingly, none of them were able to come even close to reading what the sign said. It was just a blur. I estimate that the vehicle was moving about 20mph, so not fast by any means.

Am I expecting too much for these cameras to be able to identify, at least roughly, something like this? Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.View attachment 229273View attachment 229274

HI @brokenarrow351

Yes, too little pixel density at that distance ( wide FOV camera, 2.8mm lens )

See the DORI section of the cliff notes.

For ID purposes you want 80-100 ppf ( many of use like to use 100 ppf to allow for a face not directly looking at the camera )

You can also look at the Dahua OEM specs for the camera and see their DORI numbers, tho imho the OEM's numbers are optimistic
 
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I do, though day/night settings in the exposure tab were the same. I changed the day settings to what you had. What do you have for night?

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.
 
I do, though day/night settings in the exposure tab were the same. I changed the day settings to what you had. What do you have for night?


Sorry went to bed early last night

Night is trickier as each scene is very different with respect to distance and available ambient light.
Generally I run about 0-6 at night on Exposure (in B&W/IR mode, and bump up Gain as needed until I get noise, then back it off.

Here I have a small problem with the tree sucking up some of my IR but thats OK because I don't want white out from IR to wash out faces as they come closer to the camera. This is always a tradeoff on IR mode.

View attachment 192.168.1.110_ch2_20251006002327_20251006002342.mp4


Here you see the OverExpsoure feature on the newer GUI cams kick in to reduce the glare/whiteout of faces along with a little bit of Backlight HDR.
It takes some tweeking and a few glasses of bourbon to get things dialed in at night

View attachment Home_ch2_20240923204827_20240923204909.mp4