Expert's guide to SECURITY CAMERA SETTINGS. WDR, BLC, HLC, and SSA Explained.

one of the most common questions that i get on my security camera videos is how do i make my security cameras look better at night today on the hookup i'm going to teach you everything there is to know about nighttime performance and i'm going to walk you through selecting a camera tweaking settings and i'll even show you some tricks with supplemental lighting that can dramatically improve your security camera's nighttime performance from a blurry mess like this into a crisp clear and very usable image this video is sponsored by ecoflow portable battery power stations stick around at the end of the video to hear more about them in the most basic sense a photograph is made by collecting light and video is just a bunch of photographs played one after another it stands to reason then the more light you can collect the more detail your video can have but at night there isn't very much light so your cameras have to make some compromises in order to produce a usable image in photography there are six factors that influence the image quality in low light three of them are settings that we can tweak later and three of them are just the way that your camera is built so let's start with the built-in stuff the focal length of the lens the resolution of the sensor and the physical size of the sensor consider some area that you want to view with the security camera the job of the lens is to collect light from that specific area and focus it onto your camera's image sensor the focal length of the lens refers to the distance between the back of the lens called the convergence point and the image sensor and you can see that a shorter focal length results in a wider field of view and because the wider field of view is going to collect light from a larger area it's typically going to perform better at night because it's collecting more light most non-zoom security cameras have focal lengths between 2.8 millimeters which would have the largest field of view to around 6.0 millimeters which would be the narrowest here is an example of that using two real link rlc 810as which are identical other than the fact that one has a 2.8 millimeter focal length and the other has a 6.0 millimeter focal length because both cameras have the same sensor size we can easily predict that the 2.8 millimeter focal length will have a wider field of view and better night vision performance than the six millimeter camera but when you consider that security cameras have different sized image sensors things get a little bit more complicated for example the anki c800 and ac800 both have 2.8 millimeter focal lengths but the more budget-friendly c800 has a 1 over 2.5 inch sensor while the more expensive ac 800 has a 1 over 1.8 inch sensor if you're thinking that one over 1.8 inches and one over 2.5 inches are terrible fractions and a confusing way to describe the size of a sensor then you're right but it actually makes the next part a little bit easier to understand in photography standard focal length measurements are made using something called a full frame sensor but you won't find a full frame sensor on a residential security camera so it's useful to use a one inch sensor as a standard since one is the number in the numerator for the rest of the measurements when a security camera lists a focal length of 2.8 millimeters that doesn't necessarily mean that all the light from the lens is going to end up on the sensor and the smaller the sensor the less light it will capture and the less of the scene you'll be able to see so the anki c800s 2.8 millimeter focal length combined with its one over 2.5 inch sensor would have the same field of view as a one inch sensor with a focal length of seven millimeters while the anki ac 800 one over 1.8 inch sensor combined with its 2.8 millimeter focal length results in a field of view that is comparable to a one inch sensor with a five millimeter focal length and as you can see in practice the field of view is significantly wider in the ac 800 than it is in the c800 despite the fact that they both have a listed 2.8 millimeter focal length but field of view isn't the most important reason to have a large sensor the biggest reason is the relationship between the resolution of the sensor and the sensor's physical size consider the dawah 5442 that has a 1 over 1.8 inch 4 megapixel sensor compared to the dawa 5 842 that has a one over 1.8 inch 8 megapixel sensor the two sensors are equal size and quality but one is four megapixels and one is eight in the eight megapixel sensor each individual pixel is half the physical size of the pixels in the 4 megapixel sensor so when they collect light to create an image each pixel can therefore only collect half as much light in the 8 megapixel sensor as it can in the 4 megapixel during the day when light is not the limiting factor for image quality the higher resolution is going to have an unquestionably better image but at night the dawah 542's ability to collect twice as much light per pixel gives it an advantage as a general rule if you're looking to maximize nighttime performance and you want color night vision then your eight megapixel sensors should be no smaller than one over 1.2 inches and your 4 megapixel sensor should be no smaller than one over 1.8 inches and if you're going to use infrared night vision then you should look for an 8 megapixel camera with a sensor no smaller than one over 1.8 inches or a four megapixel camera with sensors that are no smaller than one over 2.5 inches and remember in both cases the shorter the focal length and the wider the field of view the better your night vision performance will be so let's say you've already bought your cameras what can you do to increase their nighttime performance in photography the term for getting the correct amount of light for the perfect image is called the exposure and it's a careful dance between three different settings iso which is called gain in security cameras shutter speed which is also called exposure time and aperture which in most cameras is a fixed value but in some cameras specifically verifocal zoom cameras you do have an adjustable iris gain essentially refers to how sensitive each pixel is to the light the higher the gain the lower the threshold becomes between a pixel that registers as light detected versus one that registers as no light detected the problem with raising the gain is that things like electrical interference and poor optics can cause pixels to register as on when they should have registered as off and the result is what we call digital noise and it looks like speckling throughout the image most cameras have a post-processing setting called digital noise reduction or 3d noise reduction that tries to remove those errors in post-processing but it can result in a blurry or distorted image because the processor is just guessing what that pixel should have been based on the pixels around it for best image quality the goal should be to keep gain as low as possible while still maintaining other settings the second important setting is the shutter speed or more accurately the exposure time since security cameras don't actually have shutters this setting determines the amount of time that each pixel collects light for each frame in your video if you're planning on shooting 30 frames per second then the theoretical maximum exposure time would be 1 over 30 meaning each pixel could collect light for exactly 1 30 of a second to create a frame and then repeat that process 30 times per second the problem is that fast moving objects can cover a very large distance in 1 30th of a second meaning the light reflected off of them is going to shift across multiple pixels during that exposure time and the result on your image is a blurry subject if you want to have crisp images of fast moving objects you need to decrease the exposure time obviously less exposure time means that the sensor will have less light to collect and will therefore result in a darker image the exposure time will ultimately be the most important factor for determining smearing and blurring of moving objects so if you need to raise the gain to maintain your short exposure time it's probably going to be worth it the last setting that you probably won't have access to unless you're using a varifocal zoom camera is auto iris the iris is a mechanical opening that can open or close to change the amount of light getting into the sensor as i mentioned most security cameras have a fixed iris which is fine because the only reason to not use a wide open aperture in a security camera is if you're having issues with focus or depth of field which are not really common problems in security cameras so instead of changing your aperture it's usually better to lower the exposure time or the gain enough explaining though let's jump into some actual settings i've got chapter markers for all the major brands so feel free to skip ahead but i'm going to start out with dawa oem cameras so if your cameras are sold by amcrest lorex or honeywell you'll probably have similar options to these since those cameras are ultimately made by dawa if you go into settings and you click on conditions the very first thing that you should do is go to profile management and select day slash night which is going to give you two different sets of settings based on the amount of available light after that go back to conditions and you'll see a drop down to select which profile you're editing so choose day or night and the first menu that comes up will be the picture it's important to understand that the picture settings are sort of like photoshop all these settings are doing post-processing of your image and not actually changing the image that you're capturing so while you might want to slightly tweak the brightness or the contrast for your preference for the most part you should keep all these settings at 50 at least until you've adjusted the rest of the settings exposure is the next menu and it's the most important one the first option is for anti-flicker which is based on your country's electrical grid your options are 60 hertz 50 hertz and outdoor and i would recommend that everybody picks outdoor since choosing 50 or 60 hertz is going to limit your options later for modes you've got four different options if you choose auto you're giving full control to the camera to adjust the shutter speed and gain to get the right amount of light if you choose gain priority you can set a maximum gain and once your camera reaches that maximum it will adjust the shutter speed to whatever it needs to be to produce the correctly exposed image if you choose shutter priority it's the opposite where you can either lock the shutter duration to one set value or set a range for a maximum shadow duration and a minimum shatter duration and last you've got manual which is what i usually use for my night profile on this setting i select a custom range in the drop down for the shutter this sets an allowable range which is anywhere from 0 milliseconds or an infinitely fast shutter speed to 33.3 milliseconds which is 1 30th of a second at night to be able to accurately capture moving objects i want to shoot for a shadow duration of 1 over 500 which is 2 milliseconds but depending on how much available light there is and the size of your image sensor you might need to gradually increase that exposure time to get the image that you want but 2 milliseconds is a good starting point for dawa cameras i found 75 to be a good starting point for the maximum gain and again if you need more light in your image you can gradually increase your number from 75 but it will come with a trade-off of more digital noise using these settings means that no matter what happens my camera will never go outside those bounds because i know that if it does it's going to result in a poor nighttime image to be honest for daytime profile though it doesn't really matter what you choose because there's plenty of light available for your camera to work in auto but you are welcome to specify a manual range for gain or exposure if that's what you're into under your gain and shutter settings you've got something called exposure comp and if that's set to 50 you're telling the camera that you want it to adjust the shutter and gain to make the image perfectly exposed if you lower the exposure comp below 50 you're telling the camera to adjust the shutter and gain to make the image slightly underexposed and if you raise it above 50 it will result in an image that is overexposed in general though you probably shouldn't touch this slider below that you've got smart ir which i keep off for reasons that i'll talk about later auto iris which as i said you can keep off unless you're having focus issues and the last is 3d noise reduction which i would love to be able to turn off but in practice it is very necessary and the video quality is going to go way down without it the next menu is backlight where you've got a bunch of options like backlight compensation or blc highlight compensation or hlc wide dynamic range or wdr and selective scene adaptation or ssa if you select off then your camera is going to use the average exposure of the entire image combined with your exposure comp setting from the previous menu to choose the right shutter and gain settings if you choose backlight compensation you're telling your camera to make sure that there aren't any parts of the image that are completely black and it will adjust the gain and shutter until all the areas of the image collect at least some light with blc you can choose default which will make sure the entire image is exposed or you can choose customize where you can put a bounding box around areas that you want to make sure get exposed just remember that blc is a method to avoid underexposed areas so turning it on might result in some areas becoming overexposed and will result in higher gain levels and longer shutter speeds if you choose highlight compensation you're telling the camera to do the opposite of backlight compensation so where blc makes sure that no parts of the image are completely black hlc makes sure that no parts of the image are completely white hlc is particularly useful if you want to capture license plates at night or if you notice that people's faces are getting completely blown out by infrared light as they get closer to the camera hlc does give you a slider which is going to tell the camera how aggressively to modify shutter speed and gain in order to avoid over exposing parts of the image next is wide dynamic range and it's basically a mix of blc and hlc why dynamic range works by actually taking two images for each frame the first image is underexposed which is going to capture all those blown out areas and the second image is overexposed which is going to capture all the dark areas the two images are then composited together in the camera software where it chooses the best image for each part of the scene some of the downsides of wdr include fuzzy boundaries between light and dark areas of the image blur around fast moving objects and loss of some details in large flat areas like grass and walls these downsides really only exist in true wdr where two separate images are composited and not in software wdr in dawa cameras you'll notice a huge difference between setting wdr to 44 and below where the camera is going to use software wdr versus 45 and above where it's going to use actual exposure stacking and image compositing the last option selective scene adaptation is a proprietary option only available in dawa cameras and from what i understand it uses software to analyze the entire image and then it applies either hlc blc or wdr to that image based on the current conditions if you have no idea which option is right for you then ssa might be a good place to start the last setting to change in your dawah camera's condition settings is the illuminator which i prefer to keep on manual mode at 100 at all times which is why i chose to keep smart ir off in the exposure menu in general a camera will always be faster to adjust the shutter and gain settings than it is to adjust the brightness of its infrared lights so i prefer to keep as much light in the scene as possible before you click away don't forget to press save and hopefully your double oem camera is now set up perfectly for your camera's placement and usage next let's talk about hikvision oem cameras which include cameras from popular brands like enkei alarm.com and nelly security in the configuration menu go to image and the first collapsible menu is image adjustment and just like the dawa cameras all these settings are doing post-processing of your image and they don't actually change the image that you're capturing so while you can change them to make the image look the way that you want it to it won't change the underlying image the camera is capturing and i recommend just leaving them at 50 at least until all the rest of your settings are adjusted next is the exposure settings and unlike the dawa cameras these don't show a range even though that's what they actually are in these settings you specify the maximum exposure time and the maximum gain i like to set my maximum exposure to 1 500th of a second and my maximum gain to 75. for days night switch i use auto most of the time when the sensitivity is set to six which is almost as sensitive as it gets meaning it's going to turn on its ir mode earlier in the day i also keep my light brightness on manual and i set it to 100 so that the scene always has as much light as possible and the exposure gets controlled by the gain and the exposure time under backlight settings you've got options for backlight compensation or blc wide dynamic range or wdr and highlight compensation or hlc and they do the exact same thing that they do in dawa cameras so i'll quickly go over that in case people skip that section if you choose backlight compensation you're telling your camera to make sure that there aren't any parts of the image that are completely black and it's going to adjust the gain and exposure time until all the areas of the image have at least some light with blc you can choose auto which is going to make sure that your entire image is exposed or you can select a region or customize zone box around the areas that you want to make sure you get properly exposed if you choose highlight compensation you're telling the camera to do the opposite of backlight compensation so where blc makes sure that there are no parts of the image that are completely black hlc is going to make sure that there are no parts of the image that are completely white unlike the dawa cameras you can actually turn hlc and blc on at the same time which is very similar to turning on wdr but with the added benefit of being able to select a custom area for blc the next option is wide dynamic range which as i said it basically is a mix of blc and hlc wide dynamic range works by taking two images for each frame and the first image is going to be underexposed which will capture all the blown out areas while the second image is going to be overexposed which is going to capture all the dark areas the two images are then composited together in the camera software where it chooses the best image for each part of the scene just like the dawah camera hikvision cameras use software-based wdr for levels below 40 and actual image compositing and exposure stacking for levels 41 and above also just a side note you're going to need to make sure you have an exposure time of 1 30th of a second or less in order to use wdr with hikvision style cameras last let's talk about real-life cameras and their image options or lack thereof as i've mentioned many many many times in my videos real link cameras provide amazing daytime image quality for their price point and they often perform better than cameras that are five times their cost but for all the reasons that i mentioned in this video their nighttime performance especially their eight megapixel cameras has been plagued by smearing and blurring of moving objects this is mostly due to the small one over 2.5 inch sensor that they paired with their 4k resolution but it's also because real link uses image post processing to make the best looking image based on the available conditions but from a strictly surveillance standpoint the best looking image isn't always the most useful when it comes to moving objects and to that end realink also has the least amount of adjustability for their image quality on real link cameras with the latest firmware the place to adjust image settings is in settings display and then clicking on advanced the first set of options are for brightness contrast saturation and sharpness and just like the dawa and hikvision cameras these are post-processing settings meaning they just modify the image that's already been captured and they won't help you fix a blurry image or collect any more light the only way to do that is down where it says brightness and shadows where you get two different sliders for each mode color day mode black and white and color night mode unfortunately after quite a bit of testing both for black and white mode and color night mode i wasn't able to make significant improvements on blurring or fast moving objects and i only managed to introduce more digital noise so as much as it pains me to say i think that your best bet on real link cameras is to leave all these settings on auto the only setting that you might want to change is the day and night setting which should be set to auto if you want to use infrared night vision or color if you want to use color night vision some real in cameras come with both infrared leds and white leds to provide supplemental light but the more light you have the better your nighttime image will be so let's talk about more supplemental lighting you probably know that you can buy a floodlight with a motion sensor and in addition to providing more light for a better security camera color image they also help deter criminal activity which tends to take place in non-well-lit areas the only issue with that is that your neighbors might not want to have an extremely bright light coming on throughout the night and the extra light is only as effective as the motion sensor that activates it but did you know that infrared flood lights exist typical security cameras come with less than one watt of infrared leds which is better than nothing but ultimately it isn't that much light but you can buy ir illuminators in different sizes like these 12 and 21 watt units from ten deluxe and if you already have a camera running over power over ethernet you can get a 12 volt poe power splitter and a 12 volt barrel jack splitter to run your camera and your flood lights on the same poe connection you do need to be aware though that your pue switch or nvr needs to be able to support that extra wattage if your ports say 802.3 af or just poe then they can only support 15.4 watts which is equivalent to the 12 watt unit plus your camera or if your ports say 802.380 or poe plus then they can support 25 watts and you can power the big flood light plus your camera from a single port also be aware that your switch likely has a total poe budget in watts so just make sure to not go over that number either the question then becomes whether an infrared flood light is worth the extra fifty dollars in parts so here's some footage of a running subject from the dawa cameras first with only the built-in infrared leds and then here's that same scene with the 12 watt unit and here's what it looks like with the 21 watt infrared flood next here are those anki cameras again with only the built-in led here's what they look like using the 12 watt ir flood light and then we'll step it up to the 21 watt unit last here are the real link cameras with only their built-in leds compared to adding the 12 watt unit and then finally here are the rear link cameras with the infrared 21 watt flood light if you've gone through this video and you've tried out every setting and supplemental lighting and you still can't get the night performance that you want or need then it might be time to consider a new camera i do have links down in the description for all the cameras that i showed in this video so if you saw something you liked i'd appreciate it if you could use those links since as an amazon affiliate i do earn a small commission on those sales at no cost to you also as i mentioned earlier this video was sponsored by ecoflow portable power stations ecoflow sent out their new delta mini power station and a 220 watt bifacial solar panel for me to test ecoflow makes two classes of power stations the smaller river lineup and then the larger delta series the delta mini is positioned as the smallest in the delta series meaning it's still portable weighing in at under 25 pounds but it also has double the maximum ac output of the largest river series power station at up to 1400 watts this means that even large appliances like microwaves induction cooktops and coffee makers can be powered off the delta mini for a comfortable car camping experience or you can take the delta mini to a job site and even run your most power hungry tools like your table saw miter saw or circular saw without any problems the delta mini has a total battery capacity of 882 watt hours and can accept up to 300 watts of solar in my testing the ecoflow 220 watt bifacial solar panel reported between 150 and 180 watts of charging power in the ecoflow app which gave me an estimated charging time of around four hours to go from zero percent charge all the way up to eighty percent the app also lets you monitor the individual power consumption set up auto off timers for the ac inverter as well as limit the minimum and maximum battery charge states to keep your power station's batteries healthy for as long as possible the delta mini is easy to set up easy to use and comes with all the necessary cords for charging via solar dc or ac power make sure you check out the delta mini using the links down in the description to support this channel i'd also like to take a second to thank all of my awesome patrons over at patreon for your continued support on my channel and if you're interested in supporting my channel please check out the links down in the description if you enjoyed this video please hit that thumbs up button and consider subscribing and as always thanks for watching the hookup

Channel: The Hook Up

Views: 71,983

Keywords: Security Camera Night Vision, hookup, the hookup, security camera night vision too dark, security camera night vision not working, security camera night vision grainy, security camera night vision light, IR Flood Lights, Security Camera Settings, Wide Dynamic Range Explained, BLC Explained, What is BLC, What is HLC, What is WDR, What is SSA, Best Security Camera, Best Night Time Security Camera, security camera best night vision, Security Camera Blurry

Id: BVg81haX2c0

Length: 22min 34sec (1354 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 21 2022