I am in the process of upgrading my 5-year-old Hikvision camera network, which has had a Hikvision 7604NI-K1 NVR (with dedicated monitor) as its hub. The planned network will consist of 3 new G2 Colorvu cameras (two 8MP & one 4MP), plus retaining 2 of the previous 4MP 2142-FWD cameras and a 2MP wirelss doorbell. To cope with the big increase in required bandwidth and allow for future expansion, the NVR will also be replaced by a new 8 channel M-series NVR.
The process of relocating the old cameras and mounting the 2 new ones that I have already purchased (the final camera and NVR will have to wait until January) has been interrupted by a combination of bad weather and having to mount xmas lights instead! So for the last few days over the xmas hols, I have only had one 8MP Colorvu up and running outdoors (using PoE to NVR), plus the existing wireless doorbell. So I thought it might be interesting to experiment with settings, since the one Colorvu camera has virtually the entire incoming bandwidth of the NVR to itself.
I have been perplexed by the outcome. I have not been able to test the boundaries of the video settings beyond my initial starting point, because of repeated image freezing. Indeed, to ensure absolutely skip-free recording, I have actually had to reduce settings below what I thought was a reasonable starting point.
My initial (main stream) settings were:
Resolution: Max (3840x2160)
Bitrate type: Variable
Video quality: Higher
Frame Rate: 20 (I frame 40)
Max bitrate: 8192
Video Encoding H265 (H265+ OFF)
SVC: OFF
Both NVR and camera are running the latest firmware. WDR & DNR are both off during daytime and both on at 30 after dark (however, I can detect no significant correlation between the video freezing issue and whether it is day or night).
At the initial settings above, the glitches are relatively minor, but nonetheless I can't know they won't occur at the most inopportune moment. Plus it's not as though the scene is particularly tricky. It is a view from my garage down the driveway to the street about 30m distant (hence the need for some backlight management at night). Reducing the max bitrate to 6144 and quality to medium does provide a consistently stable image, but I wasn’t expecting to have to do that. The problem gets worse at higher bitrate settings. Increasing bitrate to 10240 (at medium) results in regular short freezes and skipped recording. Indeed, even passing pedestrians sometimes freeze for a second, despite those moving images comprising only a small fraction of the total pixels in an otherwise usually static scene.
I know Colorvu cameras are bitrate-hungry, but I though I’d comfortably be able to operate just one of them to its maximum image capability. Might it be that the actual bitrate is instantaneously spiking way above what I can actually see live on the NVR interface? Perhaps reducing the max bitrate also helps constrain those spikes to a manageable level? If so, what is a reasonable expectation for this camera’s settings? Although I am going to upgrade the NVR soon anyway, I’d still like to understand what is going on here.
Moreover, I’ve also experimented with settings using the web interface on my PC (thus allowing me to switch back-and-forth bewteen NVR video and camera video (using virtual host). The direct camera output video performance is noticeably poorer than when viewing the NVR output (at the above settings). To get a smooth image via virtual host I have to reduce the main stream bitrate to below 4096. I had assumed that if anything the image would improve by cutting out the NVR “middleman”, but evidently not. Then again I’m not sure how the virtual host signal is handled. I’d appreciate any insight from expert users that might explain this observation.
The process of relocating the old cameras and mounting the 2 new ones that I have already purchased (the final camera and NVR will have to wait until January) has been interrupted by a combination of bad weather and having to mount xmas lights instead! So for the last few days over the xmas hols, I have only had one 8MP Colorvu up and running outdoors (using PoE to NVR), plus the existing wireless doorbell. So I thought it might be interesting to experiment with settings, since the one Colorvu camera has virtually the entire incoming bandwidth of the NVR to itself.
I have been perplexed by the outcome. I have not been able to test the boundaries of the video settings beyond my initial starting point, because of repeated image freezing. Indeed, to ensure absolutely skip-free recording, I have actually had to reduce settings below what I thought was a reasonable starting point.
My initial (main stream) settings were:
Resolution: Max (3840x2160)
Bitrate type: Variable
Video quality: Higher
Frame Rate: 20 (I frame 40)
Max bitrate: 8192
Video Encoding H265 (H265+ OFF)
SVC: OFF
Both NVR and camera are running the latest firmware. WDR & DNR are both off during daytime and both on at 30 after dark (however, I can detect no significant correlation between the video freezing issue and whether it is day or night).
At the initial settings above, the glitches are relatively minor, but nonetheless I can't know they won't occur at the most inopportune moment. Plus it's not as though the scene is particularly tricky. It is a view from my garage down the driveway to the street about 30m distant (hence the need for some backlight management at night). Reducing the max bitrate to 6144 and quality to medium does provide a consistently stable image, but I wasn’t expecting to have to do that. The problem gets worse at higher bitrate settings. Increasing bitrate to 10240 (at medium) results in regular short freezes and skipped recording. Indeed, even passing pedestrians sometimes freeze for a second, despite those moving images comprising only a small fraction of the total pixels in an otherwise usually static scene.
I know Colorvu cameras are bitrate-hungry, but I though I’d comfortably be able to operate just one of them to its maximum image capability. Might it be that the actual bitrate is instantaneously spiking way above what I can actually see live on the NVR interface? Perhaps reducing the max bitrate also helps constrain those spikes to a manageable level? If so, what is a reasonable expectation for this camera’s settings? Although I am going to upgrade the NVR soon anyway, I’d still like to understand what is going on here.
Moreover, I’ve also experimented with settings using the web interface on my PC (thus allowing me to switch back-and-forth bewteen NVR video and camera video (using virtual host). The direct camera output video performance is noticeably poorer than when viewing the NVR output (at the above settings). To get a smooth image via virtual host I have to reduce the main stream bitrate to below 4096. I had assumed that if anything the image would improve by cutting out the NVR “middleman”, but evidently not. Then again I’m not sure how the virtual host signal is handled. I’d appreciate any insight from expert users that might explain this observation.
