T54IR ZE night time grain

misfiresam

misfiresam

n3wb
Mar 6, 2025
25
13
new york
Hi friends, I have a little set up here with some overviews and choke point cameras and an ANPR (ptz on the way also). So far so good but I’m concerned about the performance of my driveway 5442 though, Ive been playing around with the settings for some time now and I just cant get it to not be grainy, although I have enough ambient light and the IR is running too. Here are my settings and a video of what I mean, anything not in the screenshot will
be default settings so keep that in mind. Does anyone know what I’m doing wrong and how to tweak it properly? much appreciated
 

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Keep in mind dialing it in with bright reflective snow will result in it having an issue when there isn't snow, so I wouldn't be too concerned.

I would crank the gain up to 50
 
So many factors and missing pieces its hard to say.. Though I've seen worse
What model 5442 exactly?

Why does the video look so much darker than that camera on the multiview from the NVR?

As @wittaj recommended, I'd bump Gain up to 50 for starters

Also instead of 1/120 try a custom range of 0-8.33 (same in theory but the range will allow it to change with condition better. I always use Exposure range at night

You're running 8192 bitrate but VBR.
Change this to 10240 and CBR
What codec are you using? You should use General codec and h.264.h

With the other cameras also shining IR in that area, it should be much brighter and cleaner, something isnt adding up.
Are you certain the IR is on for that camera and that its not trying to be in color?
Is the overexposure set for Illumination? If so, try turning it off. The snow could be forcing over-exposure and it cuts light substantially when activated.

Is the Day/Night Switch set to Auto? Try forcing it to B&W if so

Do you have and Backlight on? No SSA or WDR bullshit? (don't run any backlight at night)
Does it have Iris manual control? If so bump it to at least 50 if not 60
Does it have Exposure compensation?

Here's samples of 5442 settings I run at night
1.jpg

2.jpg
 
bigredfish said:
So many factors and missing pieces its hard to say.. Though I've seen worse
What model 5442 exactly?

Why does the video look so much darker than that camera on the multiview from the NVR?

As @wittaj recommended, I'd bump Gain up to 50 for starters

Also instead of 1/120 try a custom range of 0-8.33 (same in theory but the range will allow it to change with condition better. I always use Exposure range at night

You're running 8192 bitrate but VBR.
Change this to 10240 and CBR
What codec are you using? You should use General codec and h.264.h

With the other cameras also shining IR in that area, it should be much brighter and cleaner, something isnt adding up.
Are you certain the IR is on for that camera and that its not trying to be in color?
Is the overexposure set for Illumination? If so, try turning it off. The snow could be forcing over-exposure and it cuts light substantially when activated.

Is the Day/Night Switch set to Auto? Try forcing it to B&W if so

Do you have and Backlight on? No SSA or WDR bullshit? (don't run any backlight at night)
Does it have Iris manual control? If so bump it to at least 50 if not 60
Does it have Exposure compensation?

Here's samples of 5442 settings I run at night
View attachment 238751

View attachment 238752
Click to expand...
I am actually running everything on CBR. Not sure why this bullshit decided to be on VBR on its own, the backlight settings are off, and the camera is IR only, interesting enough. The reason why I bumped down the gain was because I was seeing some ghosting and wasn’t sure how to deal with that since I thought I was getting enough light in, I did a mistake and got the turret version. I should’ve just went with the bullets like I have on my other project, seems like that had better IR blast
 
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The bullets generally have 4 LEDs vs 2 so yeah they put out more. I too prefer them.
I have one turret at the front door simply because of appearance. But it gets extra light from a motion porch light
 
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