Poor Quality From Hikvision DS-2CD8253F-EI ??

[PM5K 0]

To me, although not terrible and probably a lot better than an analog camera, the quality I'm seeing out of this Hikvision camera isn't what I was hoping or expecting.

 

I tried out a Geovision 1080P indoor cube camera a while back and it looked terrific.

 

I'm running the Hikvision at 720P although it is capable of 1600x1200 but it doesn't seem like running it at 1600x1200 helps any. I've also tried a few different settings to no avail.

 

Basically a lot of noise in the picture, and a bit muddy looking. I've attached an example for your opinions/suggestions.

 

EDIT: Forgot to mention, I've seen another video from the same camera on Youtube and while it did look a bit muddy, it didn't have anywhere near as much noise. The only thing I can add is that I am running the camera on a 12 volt 2 amp DC power supply. I've had it plugged in in a few different places under different circumstances and it always looked the same.

 

[buellwinkle 0]

That's one of their older models and you know how fast technology evolves. Can you send it back and get one of their new bullets?

[MaxIcon 0]

That looks over-compressed and slightly over-sharpened to me. The over-compression is what causes the muddy look with few details, and the over-sharpening causes the graininess at high contrast areas.

 

It may be limited by age and hardware performance, as BW suggests. The settings that would make the most difference, assuming you have these on this model cam:

 

- Bit rate, frame rate, and i-frame settings: These are the primary knobs for quality (and quality setting if you use variable bit rate). 4096k constant bit rate should be plenty for a 2MP, depending on other settings. Higher frame rates need higher bit rates, and lower i-frame settings need higher bit rate settings to maintain quality. If it looks mediocre at 15 fps, 15 i-frame, and 4096k constant bit rate, you may be looking at hardware/software limitations in the older camera.

 

- Sharpening: leave at default or turn down. This can decrease the level of detail, so it's a trade-off between speckly noise and detail. It's not the main problem in this pic, but over-sharpening can cause a lot of noise in low-light images.

 

It's also worth checking focus, in case it came slightly out of focus from the factory. Best bet there is to print out a Siemens star, hang it about where the license plate is in that image, and tweak the focus for the sharpest image.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Siemens_star.svg (pick one of the higher resolutions to print)

 

I'd definitely expect better from a 2MP cam running on a 1MP setting. The current gen Hiks look much better, though the low-light noise is higher than similar cams.

[PM5K 0]

Those would be quite different from my current settings. I'll tweak it and if it doesn't make a difference I'll post the current settings for suggestions.

 

Also either way it will do 30fps at 720p and that's what I'm looking for in order to capture plates, I need as many frames as I can get, but I can tweak quality based on those two necessary settings.

[PM5K 0]

The main difference I had was the key frame interval was set to 1, I thought that was better, but in retrospect I guess I misinterpreted what I read.

 

So if I'm running at 30FPS would 30 be a good setting, one per second?

 

I didn't look at it very long because I just stopped by work for a few minutes but it looks like the smoothness of moving vehicles was better, but the overall quality didn't change. I also previously had it set to 1024x16 because the camera says it will do 16mpbs max, I could be wrong with that as well, but setting it to 1024x4 definitely dropped the quality a bit.

 

The other two options as far as frame rate and resolution I kept the same.

 

Would a higher iframe get me any smoother video, what might be too much?

[MaxIcon 0]

I-frame is when it sends out a full frame, vs p-frames which just contain the differences between one frame and the next. Sending out all i-frames is the same as MJPEG, which requires a high bit rate.

 

I-frame set for 1 gives a full frame for every frame, and needs a lot higher bit rate than a higher i-frame setting would to maintain quality, since it's sending a lot more data with each frame. This can cause too much compression as the software tries to keep to the bit rate setting.

 

Matching the i-frame and fps setting is always a good starting point. Some people need more i-frames to prevent problems, but it seems to depend on individual settings.

 

Higher bit rates and smaller i-frame settings can give smoother and higher quality video, but put a heavier load on the camera, network, and client, so any weak link in the system can cause problems.

 

This camera may not have a powerful enough CPU to handle the highest load settings, or the firmware may just not be modern enough, depending on the camera's design age.

 

Best bet is to keep trying different settings to see if anything helps. If it's the lens focus or quality, then no software adjustments will improve it, of course!

[buellwinkle 0]

How fast are cars traveling that you need 30fps to get plate capture? Is this NASCAR or Indy Racing? We get cars going up to 40mph with 4fps. I would imagine you get up to 60-80mph with 6-8fps but to capture cars at that speed you need very high shutter speeds. Also, lower any sharpening as that can increase noise at night.

 

Are you using LPR software? We have what appears to be a similar situation to you where you use access control to open a gate but we are using LPR to enhance access control for a similar application to yours where the gate opens automatically on a plate match or notifies law enforcement on their plate list. So far, early stages of testing with a small number of people on the plate list but it's really cool, just drive up to the gate and voila, it magically opens. But what's really cool is during forensics, being able to see on what days/times a suspect has entered to see if we can tie a single crime to multiple crimes.

[PM5K 0]

It's not so much how fast they are traveling, more so that I want to capture as much info as possible for the X amount of seconds they are in front of the system, depending on lighting conditions, height of the vehicle, angle of approach, etc, it might be that a few extra frames that we capture might be the difference between getting a plate or not.

 

This just captures plates based on movement in front of the keypad, it's not tied to LPR software or the kind of access control you have. Sounds cool though.

 

This is just in case anything happens we have a front plate, at least when the person entering has a front plate.

 

So far it does an excellent job of catching plates, but if I can do anything to increase quality I will, without getting a new camera, lol.