Hik/Swann WDR shots

[MaxIcon 0]

Here are a couple of quick WDR pics on the Swann. The day shots are using the older software, v4.something, and the night shots are after the upgrade to v5.0.0. All shots are reduced by 50%.

 

WDR off, bright afternoon with dark shadows - lots of detail lost in the shadow.

 

WDR on, set at 1, starting to brighten up the shadows a bit.

 

WDR on, set at 46, definitely bringing out the details in the shadows. There's a bug in the WDR settings (or maybe this is by design), where it moves in jumps. Set it at 50, it updates and saves, but if you refresh the page, it changes to 46. As you change it, the actual WDR setting moves in jumps of 6 to 7 units.

 

And WDR on at 100 - now it's pretty washed out in the bright area, and looking good in the shadows.

 

After this, I updated the firmware, which may or may not have affected the WDR settings, but here are night shots.

 

WDR off, no lights on, just the IR, and it's pretty bright on the foreground. Normally, the camera would be mounted higher and wouldn't light up the grass as much, depending on the angle. There's a fair bit of the horizontal line noise the Hik displays in low light. The light on the building to the left is IR from a Vivotek IP8332.

 

WDR on, set at 1 - not a lot of difference between this and WDR off.

 

WDR on, set at 47 (was 46 on the older firmware), getting a lot of noise now.

 

WDR on at 100 - totally washed out and noisy.

 

So, the conclusion for this environment is that WDR is helpful in the day, but not so much at night. You can't set timed profiles on the Hik, so this may take compromising to get good daylight shadows without too much washout at night.

 

I'll try the bright light tests soon, and get some shots from out front, where the lighting's a little more real-world.

Edited May 13, 2013 by Guest

[zikronix 0]

Maxicon, I need to buy you a beer. You are really helping me on how i am configuring these things, since im a total newb when it comes to this.

 

Do you have day shots after the upgrade? didnt the new firmware have smart ir?

[Q2U 0]

Maxicon, I need to buy you a beer. You are really helping me on how i am configuring these things, since im a total newb when it comes to this...

 

I have his address. Send a case of Heinekin to me. I will forward it to him. I swear.

[zikronix 0]

Maxicon, I need to buy you a beer. You are really helping me on how i am configuring these things, since im a total newb when it comes to this...

 

I have his address. Send a case of Heinekin to me. I will forward it to him. I swear.

 

I wouldnt pay to send that crap to any one...I wanted to thank him not insult him lol

[Q2U 0]

Maybe you can tell how long it has been since I drank beer.

[MaxIcon 0]

Hey, the main payback here is to post your own stuff once you get things up and running. My goal is to find the best inexpensive cams without ending up with a box full of junk! Luckily, I enjoy this kind of testing.

 

I'll get some more day shots with the new firmware Wednesday; I'm off that day, and will be home during those deep shadow times.

 

As for the smart IR, I've realized I have no idea how to tell if it's doing anything or not. There's no setting for it, and I haven't been able to come up with a good test for it, but that's a matter of trying stuff to see what works. Not only that, one of the earlier releases listed it as well, so it may have been there already.

 

In general, IR performance is probably the hardest thing to measure overall. The more techniques I try, the more difficult it looks to be to get objective test results. This is where the side by side comparisons come in handy - you don't get a measurement, but at least you can tell which is better or worse.

[flynreelow 0]

Hey, the main payback here is to post your own stuff once you get things up and running. My goal is to find the best inexpensive cams without ending up with a box full of junk! Luckily, I enjoy this kind of testing.

 

I'll get some more day shots with the new firmware Wednesday; I'm off that day, and will be home during those deep shadow times.

 

As for the smart IR, I've realized I have no idea how to tell if it's doing anything or not. There's no setting for it, and I haven't been able to come up with a good test for it, but that's a matter of trying stuff to see what works. Not only that, one of the earlier releases listed it as well, so it may have been there already.

 

In general, IR performance is probably the hardest thing to measure overall. The more techniques I try, the more difficult it looks to be to get objective test results. This is where the side by side comparisons come in handy - you don't get a measurement, but at least you can tell which is better or worse.

 

 

Max,

 

Thanks for the WDR pics. Lots of noise in some of those night pics. Im also curious to see how well WDR works on license plates. Would you happen to have a sample video or pictures of nighttime viewing of license plates with any without WDR.

 

Thanks

[Q2U 0]

Max,

 

Thanks for the WDR pics. Lots of noise in some of those night pics. Im also curious to see how well WDR works on license plates. Would you happen to have a sample video or pictures of nighttime viewing of license plates with any without WDR...

 

I can see him now, trusty tripod in hand, setting up at in the middle of the 105 / 110 freeway interchange...for us!

 

[shockwave199 0]

My observation, albeit with a dahua 2mp mini dome, is that it's actually better to adjust brightness/contrast a slight bit for this. Assuming both settings default at 50, I up the brightness to 53 and bring down the contrast to 48. This small tweak makes the night image brighter and during the day, it has little consequence to the brights and contrast, but makes shadow areas brighter. Of course, I'd prefer to make an even more custom setting for night and day, which I will be doing via scheduling time periods in the camera for that. The only drawback to scheduling time periods is that sunrise and sunset times change slightly throughout the year, and then of course throw in DST. But as you've shown on these Hiks, WDR can be hit or miss and one size doesn't fit all times of day either. Toss up, but I think I'll probably prefer a balance of brightness/contrast for day & night as opposed to an auto setting to try and wrangle it all in for the best.

[MaxIcon 0]

Yeah, I've had good luck opening up the shadows with contrast and brightness on my non-WDR cams, like my older Vivoteks. It takes some testing to get a good balance, but works pretty well.

 

I had high hopes for WDR on these new generation cams, though. It's a shame these settings don't work better across the whole range. Maybe as the software matures this will improve.

 

Another option that would help would be more cameras taking command-line settings to change parameters.

 

Some higher end cams, like my Arecont AV5100 series, allow you to set a variety of parameters from the command line, and some NVRs, like Blue Iris, take advantage of this. Blue Iris now has sunrise/sunset calculations based on your latitude and longitude, so it could be able to change camera profiles based on this if the cameras would take the commands.

 

More to add to the wishlist...

[flynreelow 0]

My observation, albeit with a dahua 2mp mini dome, is that it's actually better to adjust brightness/contrast a slight bit for this. Assuming both settings default at 50, I up the brightness to 53 and bring down the contrast to 48. This small tweak makes the night image brighter and during the day, it has little consequence to the brights and contrast, but makes shadow areas brighter. Of course, I'd prefer to make an even more custom setting for night and day, which I will be doing via scheduling time periods in the camera for that. The only drawback to scheduling time periods is that sunrise and sunset times change slightly throughout the year, and then of course throw in DST. But as you've shown on these Hiks, WDR can be hit or miss and one size doesn't fit all times of day either. Toss up, but I think I'll probably prefer a balance of brightness/contrast for day & night as opposed to an auto setting to try and wrangle it all in for the best.

 

 

This makes a lot of sense.

 

Can you set brightness and contrast of each individual camera for different times for day and night? Is this through the swann or HIK software?

[MaxIcon 0]

The Hik software doesn't have profiles, and I don't think you can send command-line parameters to it to allow changing the settings at different times. You pretty much have to find a compromise between the best day and night settings.

[flynreelow 0]

The Hik software doesn't have profiles, and I don't think you can send command-line parameters to it to allow changing the settings at different times. You pretty much have to find a compromise between the best day and night settings.

How good is this cam reading a license plate in a driveway at night. (with IRs)

[MaxIcon 0]

I did a series of synthetic benchmarks on the Dahua WDR settings a little while back, and while they're interesting, they don't really reflect real-world performance.

 

I just happened to take a bunch of driveway clips last night, using the Dahua 3300 and the Hik 1080p, and most of these will be video posts, due to the dynamic nature of the lighting and the cameras' responses. It'll take a little time to get them uploaded, and I'll probably do that over the weekend.

 

Boiled down, IR is not your friend when it comes to reading licenses, due to the high IR reflectivity of licenses in an environment with large lighting swings. In addition, these cams don't really respond very quickly to dramatic lighting changes (my Vivotek IP8332s are much more responsive), and this complicates things.

 

Far and away the best performance on reading plates at night came with the cameras in color mode with the IR filter in. If these cameras had better WDR, it might be different, but you need a more expensive camera for that.

 

In addition, you'll get the best results with a dedicated license plate cam, as the people who do serious LPR have found.

Edited May 16, 2013 by Guest

[zikronix 0]

In addition, you'll get the best results with a dedicated license plate cam, as the people who do serious LPR have found.

 

Ive set up a many LPR reader on our police cars here in Arizona. They constantly BLOW MY MIND, not only in the quality, but how fast it deciphers the plate and processes it for a hit!

[buellwinkle 0]

Boiled down, IR is not your friend when it comes to reading licenses, due to the high IR reflectivity of licenses in an environment with large lighting swings.

 

Talking to a bunch of LPR vendors at ISC I found the holy grail of LPR and it's contrary to what you and I thought. First, if you use a camera for LPR, it's not good for anything else, has to be dedicated to the task. You need several things for it to work;

 

1. a good long lens that only captures the front of the car and nothing else. I'm going to using a 5-50mm Fujinon megapixel lens, about $85 at B&H to capture plates about 30' away. You can't use a typical varifocal lens that comes with the camera like on bullets or domes, for example 3-12mm is not gong to cut it unless you are very close to the car and then the problem becomes #2, which is viewing angle.

 

2. the viewing angle has to be as close to perpendicular to the plate as possible. Clearly it can't be perfect as you will likely have the camera off to the side, but this is the second reason for the longer focal length lens, so you can have the camera far away enough to get a better angle.

 

3. Here's where it gets weird. You need a good $1,300 IR illuminator, yeah, I know, contrary to what you may thought. What happens to you now is you take an overall shot and the license plate is a very small portion of that image so the exposure works on getting most of the image right and that blows out the shiny bits like the license plate. By putting more light on the area than you think there should be, it will make the entire scene bright and the license plate won't get overblown. Actually you will get awesomely clear plates, I've seen it first hand and you would be amazed. We are looking at getting the Raytec RM100 with a 30 degree lens or maybe the Axis equivalent.

 

4. you need a camera with great low light sensitivity so you can take faster shots. While 1/30 exposure works well for home security, cars moving say 25-35 mph will need a faster exposure and you need a good low light camera together with the bright illuminator. We are getting an Axis Q1604 box camera for this purpose combined with the huge lens and a large outdoor enclosure (not the Q1604-E as the larger lens won't fit in that enclosure).

 

5. resolution is not all that important. The reason is you don't want the wide shot with everything in the image, so 720P is more than enough.

 

6. optional LPR software. What it typically does is keep images of the plate capture along with a list of text license plates so for example, you can search by license plate number. You can also create an event based on a license plate match. This gets very expensive quickly. Not uncommon to spend $800-2,500 per camera license but it's not for homeowners, more a specialized thing for police and communities.

[mobbarley 0]

The Q1604 looks great for LPR during the day, Im quite sure you'll get good results at night with the right IR.

 

Shown here with a fujinon 12.5-50mm lens. Sun is bright and almost directly above (i think) so shadows are harsh. Car is moving approx 50 kph hence the slight skew due to rolling shutter.

 

All settings were automatic but for a day/night installation i'd definately take note of the max exposure time parameter in plain config.

[MaxIcon 0]

As an aside, there's an industry in private LPR databases developing. Essentially, people drive around and capture license data along with GPS and street data, Google Street View style, and put it into private databases of license numbers and locations. Access is sold to those who want or need it - repo firms, private investigators, stalkers, whoever. The government won't supply this info to private citizens, but the current laws allow for independent collection of such data for private use. Fascinating example of technology's unintended consequences!

 

So, for a dedicated LPR system, Buellwinkle's recommendations are good if you have the cash and can mount the cameras and illuminators appropriately. IR gives the benefit of predictable illumination, and coupling that with a small field of view, you can set the camera for good exposures, as he mentions.

 

For those wanting to use their home cameras, it's a set of trade-offs, as always. Using IR causes exposure problems, while not using it gives better images, but if someone turns off their lights before getting into range, the lack of illumination prevents good images. This is especially problematic with fixed lens cameras like the Swann/Hik, where the lens can't be changed easily.

 

Dedicated cams with long or varifocal lenses will solve part of this, but can cause problems with the Wife Approval Factor, if they don't like bigger cams hanging on the front of the house.

 

This is why there's a market for dedicated LPR systems, which can be fairly expensive by home security standards, but are reasonable for corporate/commercial apps.

[dvarapala 0]

buellwinkle's post is spot-on. What he describes is essentially the setup I'm using to capture license plates, although I also have an IR-pass filter on the lens to filter out visible light (e.g. from headlights). Even under non-optimal conditions (my camera is WAY off to the side of the street) I can still capture legible plates most of the time.

[buellwinkle 0]

Maxicon, just the software prices alone blow this out of most home users and most home users do not need LPR but the low budget approach would be to get a box camera with decent low light capability, say an ACTi E21, 1MP, WDR, fairly cheap with the fixed 4.2mm lens that you toss and replace with a nice dc iris Fujinon 12mm-50mm CS mount lens and put it in an outdoor enclosure. May cost about $350. Since the plate is your priority, setting the AE reference value pretty low (an ACTi adjustment), you can capture the hotspots like the plate better. The Axton illuminator should do well, get one with a narrow angle lens, maybe 20-30 degrees. Set the max auto exposure to 1/60th and I think you'll do well.

 

There's some open source and cheaper LPR software out there, just not the high accuracy rates commercial software promises.

[MaxIcon 0]

Yeah, this is really a specialized area, and the reason I tested it is because people always ask about it. I don't care that much about it myself, except that it's one of the useful things to provide the authorities if you had something happen. You don't really need LPR software for this, just a good image stored long enough to be useful.

 

Most home cam owners' problem will be the choke point, I believe. If someone pulls into my driveway, I can catch the license with a dedicated inexpensive cam most of the time, but if they park at the curb, there's no way. Those of us on suburban streets don't have a good way of catching the plates on cars going up and down the street, since it's usually impractical to put a pair of cams out on the street. Then there's the problem of obscured plates, if the bad guys are thinking ahead.

 

Still, interesting stuff to play with.

[Q2U 0]

...Those of us on suburban streets don't have a good way of catching the plates on cars going up and down the street, since it's usually impractical to put a pair of cams out on the street...

 

Don't have a good way...until next year when the Dahua DroneMax-o-Matic is released...

 

"...With a list price of $299.00 the Dahua DroneMax-o-Matic™ 5MP is a sure way to patrol those hard to scout places in your neighborhood! Got a cheerleader neighbor in an outdoor shower? Bad guys parking in hard to view street locations? Has Junior been smoking weed at the corner park? That's all no problemo when you deploy the Dahua DroneMax-o-Matic 5MP! Hover in near silence for hours! Capture a live neighborhood video while catching a ballgame in the comfort of your living room! Use the DroneMax-o-Matic's PatrolMode™ to schedule timed visits to all the best places on your block!..."

[shockwave199 0]

Then there's the problem of obscured plates, if the bad guys are thinking ahead

They're even further ahead than that- the car is usually stolen.

[MaxIcon 0]

Heh! This is true.

 

So, we need a trank dart mounted on the video drone with autonomous bad-guy recognition software. Just don't forget your "I'm a local" RFID transponder when you go for a walk.