cr128

Hi guys, I bought a CCTV setup for my home a while ago - didn't go for the cheapest options at all, but I'm still quite disappointed with the results and I'm wondering how I can improve things and if everyone else just puts up with the poor quality. I have 2 Planet ICA-HM312 cameras (2.0 Megapixel, 25M IR range, POE) hooked up to a Planet NVR-420 recorder. First of all, despite these things supposedly being HD resolution the quality is pretty bad - quite pixelated and blurry. But also the frame rate will not stay constant and sometimes judders so there will be a pause in the recording for about half a second or a second. I have got them set to the following at the moment (tried various other settings but these seem to be the best): 1080P - H264 compression EVBR bit rate with quality set to 95 and max bitrate set to 10,000 Max frame rate 10 FPS GOP Control: 10 Yet even with just 2 cameras hooked up to this 4 camera NVR, the frame rate won't stay at 10 FPS solid. Before I upped the GOP control from 1 to 10, both cameras were only getting about 4 FPS. Oh and random annoyance - every now and then the image goes really purple/pink. Doesn't happen to both cameras at the same time and sometimes sorts itself out a few minutes later but other times lasts for days :/ So I've ordered a new Planet NVR which supports recording higher resolutions and supports 8 cameras, along with a new camera that is 5 Megapixels. I'm seriously hoping that this produces some clear images and can easily record at 10 FPS without any juddering or frame rate drops but if not, are there actually any CCTV systems that do? I don't really understand why the quality of these expensive CCTV systems seem to be so bad when you can buy a GoPro camera that films in crystal clear 1080p HD for 99 quid. The video camera on my phone is a million times clearer than this... and yes I know a phone doesn't have to stream it across a network to be recorded instantly etc, but still it seems crazy just how bad a £300 "HD" CCTV camera is. So yeah just wondered what everyone else uses and if anyone actually gets really clear images or if it is a sad fact of life that CCTV is still about 8 years behind all other cameras. Thanks Chris

Do you have a link for where you can buy such a PC (or parts if you built it yourself)? I've never seen any that small. Thin clients yeah, but not actual PCs that can run full blown Windows and CCTV monitoring software.

Yeah the car looks ok because it doesn't have much detail, but if you look at the leaves on the bushes (or someone's face when there's a person in shot) everything is very pixelated and blurry. I agree it looks like compression causing the issue but even if I set everything to highest quality and streaming in MJPEG format it still looks pretty much the same (and I only get 4 FPS). It never looks anywhere near as clear as the video in that example youtube clip I posted. Do you think maybe they put a different lens on it? I don't think you're meant to be able to change the lens on these but I'm sure if you take it apart enough you can... but surely I shouldn't have to do that just to get a decent image? BTW these are 2 megapixel cameras not 1 megapixel. The one I have ordered is 5 megapixel, so will see how that compares when it arrives.

While I was being amazed by the sample footage from other cameras I thought why not take a look at the sample footage for the cameras I'm using... and found that it is way better than what I am getting. This video for example is the same camera but so much more clear than my footage even if I turn all quality settings up to maximum: Maybe mine just need focusing or something... I thought they just had automatic focus but I'll look through the manual. Oh and I've already tried updating to the latest firmware, didn't help (if anything it made the frame rates worse) EDIT: Nope there is no way to focus this camera, it just says 4mm fixed lens with fixed iris. So what am I doing wrong? Here is an example from someone else's footage with this same camera: and here is mine on maximum quality and bitrate (which I can't even record at more than 4 FPS, yet other people seem to be getting better quality footage at 15 FPS) and also note that this screenshot was taken from the camera's web interface, not the NVR. That thumbnail is quite flattering too - when the image is scaled down a lot like that it doesn't look too bad, but if you view my footage in full size and compare to the youtube videos in full size the quality is nowhere near the same. Especially in motion, most things are just blurry and mushy rather than crystal clear like they are on other people's videos. I realise you guys might not be able to tell me how to fix this specific camera, but I'm just concerned that if I buy an even more expensive camera because the demo footage from other people looks amazing, it might still look rubbish for me for some reason :/ Networking speeds and NVR speed don't come in to this as far as I can see, as like I said when I just view the camera footage directly from its own web interface it looks equally terrible.

Thanks for the tips - I'd rather avoid a Windows based system if possible though as that means having a separate PC running all the time (and if someone breaks in they're probably going to steal it, so no CCTV footage). I like the small compact NVRs as I can hide them in the attic and they hopefully won't get found. For these small NVRs do you generally have to get the one that is made by the same brand as your cameras or are there some that support most IP cameras?

Well I did look around a lot and did some research before I bought them - I didn't just go on price. My point about the price was just that if I had gone for real cheap cameras then I couldn't really complain. I've just been looking at the Axis cameras and Arecont cameras, both of which seem to have some really high quality example footage but I'm not sure if thats only from the mega expensive cameras and whether or not they would be suitable for a home setup (I'm sure the cameras themselves would be, but it looks like most of these high end cameras need to be hooked up to a proper workstation or rack server to record on to?)