Its time i fix my terrible image quality once and for all Dahua 5442T

[mattyp]

IN short, I need help on how and where to fix my image. Serious help as i have been down this road before.
Given this image below, what are the setting I should be using on the Camera software side, AND then how do i add it to Synology without it changing them? Because it does seem to change them when i add it.

Long story is many years ago i bought a Dahua 5442TZE (IPC-HDW5442T-ZE) after going down a rabbit hole and finding you guys. This cam was highly recommended. I have it hooked into Synology Surveillance station and it records fine. Always has. However the image is garbage the way i have it set up, and actually it ALWAYS has been garbage. Long ago i looked at recommended settings in here got some but they did not help. Got lazy. Never worked on it. Well i finally needed to pull an incident earlier and realized it does nothing for us. In fact, I am also now looking to getting an indoor camera because of this and do not want to make the same mistake.

I am not blaming the camera, I assume it is my settings either between Synology or between the actual camera. Or maybe its because there is often extreme shadows in my image. So i just reset things back to default and tried again. I even deleted it completely out of Synology and re-added it there as well. This is my current image.
Look at how pixelated it is. I have tried various frame rates, .264, .265, and messed with RTSP settings which i know little to nothing abbout. Basically I am at my wits end so coming back in here to hopefully fix the image before i try another camera and relegate this to another area. At this point i also do not care about storage on my NAS,, i will just delete after "x" days.

 

[mattyp]

Oh, and i used ChatGPT to try and get me the "recommended settings" yeah, nah i am certain it made things worse! hahah

 

[wittaj]

Sounds like a factory reset is first in order because who knows what else you changed that could be contributing.

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
15 iframes

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.

 

[bigredfish]

^^^^
Good starting advice there


What are the current settings on the camera. Show us those.
The pixelization would be the first problem and maybe biggest clue to the bad image
Are you running h.264H if not do it. NOT h.265
Are you running "General" codec? (Not AI or Smart Codec)
Are you running ROI? If so, disable it
Are you running AT LEAST 8192 bitrate ? (10240 even better)
CBR (Not VBR)
You will need to run WDR or SSA Backlight to correct for the dark areas. This comes with its own set of issues as it tends to wash out colors a bit and can create some motion blur, but during daylight its easily managed

 

[mattyp]

^^^^
Good starting advice there


What are the current settings on the camera. Show us those.
The pixelization would be the first problem and maybe biggest clue to the bad image
Are you running h.264H if not do it. NOT h.265
Are you running "General" codec? (Not AI or Smart Codec)
Are you running ROI? If so, disable it
Are you running AT LEAST 8192 bitrate ? (10240 even better)
CBR (Not VBR)
You will need to run WDR or SSA Backlight to correct for the dark areas. This comes with its own set of issues as it tends to wash out colors a bit and can create some motion blur, but during daylight its easily managed

Alright guys lets do it. BRB, i am on it!

 

[mattyp]

Wait, so i spotted a possible issue and question:
should i be creating a schedule's with different settings for day and night under "profile management"? Even if I am this screen is very confusing:

I now learned i must set profile FIRST, then each one is different.
But what do i do on this profile managment screen
-General
-Full Time: selection is only "always enable" day or night, but where do i save a "day" and "night"?
-schedule: looks obvious
-Day/Night: Just a radio button here.




Meanwhile:

 

[bigredfish]

I use schedule. Set day and night. They stay put. Easy to adjust time 3-4 times per year as needed

 

[bigredfish]

And yes day and night settings are quite different .

Don’t use WDR at night. Just daytime to help light the dark areas. Do this last.

 

[mattyp]

And yes day and night settings are quite different .

Don’t use WDR at night. Just daytime to help light the dark areas. Do this last.

Wow thanks guys!!! SO right off the top it always escaped me that you must FIRST select EACH of the 3 profiles and save those independently. I can bet this was where things were screwed up last time, i changed the settings based on the recommendations in here, but in a different profile!!!

I can state that at least on the IP Cam address, it already looks better image wise, BUT sun is just setting. I will play around when it is dark out. Once I dial it in on the camera I will post again to get the feed correctly recorded. I am already so much happier and hopeful.

 

[bigredfish]

To be clear, using "Schedule" you will have TWO profiles. Day and Night
Each must be set separately

 

[mattyp]

ok so "day 1" after "zero day" profile setup already hit a snag. I set the cam to auto switch from day to night, using the profile Day/Night profile management setting so i specifically did NOT have to adjust schedule throughout the year, (which is what is it supposed to do) and it did not switch. Switching to scheduling and testing it if will actually autoswitch that way.