MaxIcon

Dynamic analysis puts markers on the live video where it detects motion to help you fine-tune your motion detect parameters. Day/night schedule tells it when to switch between the day profile and the night profile. This allows you to optimize the day image and night image separately. I've never seen smart IR do anything on mine, but it may depend on what version of firmware you have. On my Dahua 4300S, you can see the IR LEDs get dimmer when objects get closer to the camera at night. This is what I'd expect it to do on the Hik.

Is GOV the same as i-frame or GOP? I-frame = 1 would be essentially the same as mjpeg, which is a pretty high bandwidth setting and would account for the terrible image at 640x480 and 1024 kbps. Normally I'd expect better image quality from that setting with a typical i-frame of 30 or 60.

These people make door-cam interface boxes, including some with speakers, designed around specific cube cams. Don't know your budget, and haven't tried these personally, but it's another option. http://eholovision.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=210&Itemid=244 I think Hik makes some door-cams, but I don't know anything about them.

There are 2 issues here: - Long exposure times give very nice images, like the first few posts, but give lots of motion blur. At, say, 1/12 second, a person walking by at night is unrecognizable, but if they stopped for the camera, you'd get a pretty nice image. - Shorter exposure times reduce motion blur, but the low light image quality drops, noise increases, and detail is lost in the darker areas. WDR doesn't help on the Hiks at night, as it increases noise too much. My tests show that 1/30 sec gives decent images of people walking by if they're well lit, but if they're running, or if a car is driving by, you really need 1/60 sec or faster to get rid of the motion blur. At that setting, the Hik 2xxx series give dark, noisy low light images. You either need better illumination, as venturis says, or a better low-light camera. In the old days, 1/2" sensors with fast CS mount lenses gave the best low light images, but the lens alone costs more than most Hik 2xxx series cameras. Lower res helps by letting each sensor element capture more photons. Buellwinkle's tests have shown some cams that are better at low light than others, but in general low light performance in inexpensive MP cams is just not that great. For the discount cam people, the Empire 2MP bullet has pretty impressive WDR that gives better results than Hik or Dahua. There's a thread showing some comparisons here: http://www.cam-it.org/index.php?topic=7176.0

I like the hik 2CDxxxx series for value and performance, and they're popular with lots of people. If IR performance is important, the EXIR cams get good reviews. If you want a dome cam, you'll need to consider 2 axis vs 3 axis, and IR LEDs under the dome (can cause IR reflection problems) vs outside the dome like the EXIR. Likewise, if you might want to change the zoom, you'll want to consider a varifocal lens, as changing M12 lenses can be tricky. If you want audio and alarm contacts, that's another consideration. For fixed lens cams, the DS-2CD2032-I is a good basic compact bullet, the DS-2CD2232-I5 is the EXIR bullet equivalent, and the DS-2CD2332-I is an EXIR dome that people have had good luck with. These are all good to start with, and you can search the forum for posts on them. Other people will have other suggestions. Empire Security has a 2MP camera, the ESC-IPC1-V 2.0, that has very good WDR performance for its price class, which gives it better night images than the Hiks and Dahuas. I don't have one of these either, but posts with WDR images from this cam are pretty impressive.

8192 kbps works out to 88GB/day for CBR continuous recording. Resolution and frame rate don't matter, only the bit rate. One important consideration for MP choices is the increase in linear resolution, not area resolution. Going from 1080p (1920x1080, 2.1MP) to 10MP (3648x2736, 10MP) looks like a 5x resolution increase, but what most people care about is linear resolution, as it's pixels per foot (or whatever) that makes the difference. 10MP gives a 1.9x (horizontal) and 2.5x (vertical) increase in linear resolution, so going from 1080p to 10MP basically gives you a 2x better image when it comes to identifying details, assuming the image quality is just as good at the higher resolution (which it isn't on the E77). 2MP/3MP is the sweet spot in price/performance right now if you don't specifically need the higher resolution.

Gb isn't really important for current IP cams. I like having a GB uplink port to give lots of overhead, but that's not really critical for a small number of cams. If you ran 6 cams at 4096 kbps, that's only 25 kbps total, and is not much load on a 100Mbps switch.

That's from the lens, and is called chromatic aberration, or color fringing. This is common on inexpensive optics, and most low- to mid-range cams have it. It's usually worse with bright light, and often shows at brightly lit high-contrast edges. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromatic_aberration It's caused by different wavelengths having different focal lengths, which is the same thing that causes IR to focus at a different point than white light, requiring IR correction on day/night lenses. Better lenses have less of it, but a good compensated lens can cost more than the entire cam in the case of the Hik 2032.

My experience is that increasing bit rate helps to a certain point, then stops having any effect except bigger file sizes and higher network loads. This point will be different depending on your cam, resolution, frame rate, the level of detail in the scene, and the amount of motion. Don't test bit rate on a scene with little or no motion, as it may look good even at pretty low bit rates. Motion and detail are critical to bit rate setting tests. Hik has a PDF of recommended bit rates for different resolutions, quality, and frame rates that's a pretty good general guideline: ftp://hikfirmware:Hikvision123@ftp.hikvisionusa.com/Technical%20Bulletin/2014/IP%20Camera%20Recommended%20Bitrate%20v2.0_20140219.pdf For instance, they recommend these settings for the popular 2CD2xxx cams: 1080p, 15 fps, best quality: 3584 kbps 704x480, 15 fps, best quality: 1024 kbps I run my 2MP and 3MP cams at 10 fps, 4096 kbps, and can't see any difference going to higher bit rates.

When choosing a video card, you'll want to pay more attention to 2D performance than 3D performance. Gamer cards use a lot of power (and sometimes add fan noise) and don't add much to the performance of 2D apps like NVRs. Many benchmarks show the aggregate performance (2D and 3D), so it's not always easy to separate out the two without running the benchmarks yourself. My tests of older high-performance gamer cards showed that the higher benchmark scores are almost completely due to 3D performance. The recent 3rd/4th gen i5/i7 CPUs, with HD4000 graphics and above on the chip, give pretty durn good 2D performance, often just as good as a $100 or more gamer card. They just don't have the 3D performance.

For bandwidth, you set the bit rate on the camera, and there are trade-offs between bit rate, resolution, frame rate, files size, and image quality. I run mine at 4096 kbps, 2MP or 3MP, 10 fps, and they look good. I could probably drop it to 2048 kbps without losing image quality. Higher frame rates and higher resolution require higher bit rates to maintain image quality. Higher bit rates give larger files sizes, too. Hikvision has a file on their web site that shows recommended bit rates at different settings: ftp://ftp.hikvisionusa.com user name: hikfirmware Password Hikvision123 (note the H is capitol ) Look in /technical bulletin/2014/IP Camera Recommended Bitrate v2.0_20140219.pdf For POE, power comes over the network cable, so that's all you need for the first 4. For the 5th, you'll need either a POE injector (lets you use a network cable, just like the POE switch) or a 12Vdc, 1A (if the camera is 10W or less) supply with a 2.1 x 5.5mm connector (connects to the power plug on the camera, 1.5M cable on the one below, so you may need an extension). Here are examples: http://www.amazon.com/Power-Adapter-Supply-1000ma-Quality/dp/B005JRGOCM/ref=pd_sim_e_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=14HX36R9Z9M0TH74AMQC http://www.amazon.com/TP-LINK-TL-PoE150S-Gigabit-Injector-compliant/dp/B001PS9E5I/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1402087943&sr=1-1 Hikvision also has free NVR software. I haven't used it, but others here have. If you only use Hiks, it should work fine. For your earlier question about a PS recommendation, the main thing is to buy good quality. Since the system will be running 24x7 and you never want it to go down, it's important to buy all good quality components.

That Hik 2032 is a great camera for the money, and is very popular. It's hard to go wrong with it when you're starting, though you'll find many more cams you want as you go along. There are similar cams that are cheaper, but you get a lot of support on the web with the Hik because it's popular. There are many posts about it here and on other forums. It doesn't have the greatest night images, but they're not bad, and you have to pay a good bit more to get good night vision in 2MP and 3MP cams. The PC should be OK, depending on how many cameras, what resolution and frame rate, and what software. Your CPU benchmarks at 3209. It should run Xprotect Go with no problem, and will run Blue Iris if you don't run too many MP cams at a high frame rate. I run Blue Iris on an i5-3570k with 4GB, which benches at 7174, and it handles 9 cams, 15MP total, at 10 fps. Many folks who are buying PCs now for Blue Iris and lots of cams are buying i7 3rd and 4th gen CPUs. I also have an old i3-540 that benches at 2686, and it runs Blue Iris with 6 cams, 9MP, 10 fps, but not much more. Other people run Xprotect Go on a similar PC with more cams with no problem. You don't need a huge power supply, though it doesn't hurt. My i3-540 and i5-3570k both draw 90W at 60% cpu utilization. One has a 200Wps, one has a 350Wps, and both have been running for quite a while with no problems. You didn't mention a video card, but just in case, you also don't need an external video card if your motherboard has on-board video, as most NVR software doesn't require 3D capability. Both of my boxes run the on-CPU video. You can use either 12Vdc power or POE. If you go with the POE switch (recommended), that's all you need, as the camera will get the power over the network cable. It's a good idea to tape up the 12Vdc connector so it doesn't get water and bugs in it if it's going to be outside, but I have several that aren't protected and have run fine for a long time. Sounds like a good start. If you go with Blue Iris and add more cameras, you may need more CPU power, but it will depend on your settings.

Generally, frame rate and resolution don't matter on most IP cams when it comes to file size. What matters is the bit rate. For constant bit rate (CBR), it's easy to calculate. Using 4096 kbps as an example: 4096 kb/second (bits) / 8 = 512 kB/second (bytes) 512 kB/second * 60 = 31 MB/minute 31 MB/minute * 60 = 1.8 GB/hour And so on. Use the same math for whatever your bit rate is set for. Variable bit rate (VBR) is harder to calculate, and depends on how the firmware implements it, how much complexity and motion is in the scene, and how well lit the scene is. Best bet there is to record 24 hours or more and calcluate an average recording size. If the resolution and frame rate are too high for the bit rate setting, this can affect quality and require adjustments in one or more of the 3.

Assuming your resolution is really what it claims (720p or 1080p), this looks like the bit rate is too low. Your image is being compressed too much by the firmware. Check your bit rate settings, and make sure you're on stream 1. 4096 kbps should have no problem, and even 2048 kbps should look better than this.

That's good looking night video. What's your maximum exposure time set for, and do you get motion blur when cars drive by? It must be a fairly long exposure, like 1/12 second, or else your neighborhood is pretty well lit at night.

You don't need an NVR card for IP cams. They're on your network, and all you need is a network connection, camera power, and software that supports the cams you want to use. There's a huge variety of software out there, from free to very expensive. Many no-name cams aren't supported very well, even if they're ONVIF, so it's good to do a little homework first. Two popular starter packages are Xprotect Go, which is free, supports 8 cams, doesn't require a high power CPU, and will record up to 5 days, and Blue Iris, which is $40-50, supports as many cams as your PC will handle but needs a fairly powerful CPU, and records as long as your hard disk will support. You can download both and test them out.

On my Dell 3524 POE switch, the port disable setting is called "Admin Status: Up/Down", and is on the port configuration page, not the POE page. It took me a while to figure this out.

Getting both general coverage and 24 hour LPR on the same camera is a challenge. You're better off having a dedicated cam for each.

For your application, a fixed lens cam may need re-focusing, which can also be tricky on Hiks. You'd be looking at people just a few feet away from the cam, if it's mounted right above the doorbell. That might be too close for the factory focus, though you'd get a nice clear shot of them as they approached the doorway.

There are low profile/remote sensor cams available, but these won't fit in your budget. Still, good for ideas. Axis P1204 remote sensor cam http://www.axis.com/products/cam_p1204/ Mobotix S15D remote sensor cam http://www.mobotix.com/other/Products/Cameras/FlexMount-S15/S15D-FlexMount-Core Interface plates for door cams, using the Axis M1014 cube cam: http://eholovision.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=210&Itemid=244 http://www.axis.com/products/cam_m1014/

As BW pointed out in another post, the link above is to 5.1.0 firmware, so it doesn't help those who want newer firmware without the language issues. It's odd that Hik has 5.1.0 on the web firmware page, while the ftp pages have newer versions. Somebody's not keeping up the web pages.

I believe these cams are rated IP66, which is the following: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_Code 1st digit: 6 - Dust tight - No ingress of dust; complete protection against contact (dust tight) 2nd digit: 6 - Powerful water jets - Water projected in powerful jets (12.5 mm nozzle) against the enclosure from any direction shall have no harmful effects. Test duration: at least 3 minutes. Water volume: 100 litres per minute. Pressure: 100 kPa at distance of 3 m In theory, you'd need IP67 or above for this: 2nd digit: 7 - Immersion up to 1 m - Ingress of water in harmful quantity shall not be possible when the enclosure is immersed in water under defined conditions of pressure and time (up to 1 m of submersion). Test duration: 30 minutes. Immersion at depth of at most 1 m measured at bottom of device, and at least 15 cm measured at top of device You could probably seal the weak points to turn it into IP67.

The report back from another user is that this download doesn't work. The file is definitely too small, but I don't have a Chinese hik to test it on.

To find your public IP address, go here: http://www.howtofindmyipaddress.com/

Does your NAS go to sleep? I've seen video missed because the destination hard drive was in standby, and it took some time for it to spin up and start recording. I'm not sure how much buffer the camera has; it may be enough for a snapshot, but not enough for video. Setting pre-event recording to the maximum may help as well, though your pre-event and maximum duration choices aren't very long. This won't help if the delay is at the recording device end.