Firmware Latest HikVision Firmware for M-Series NVRs (with 5.0 GUI) - V5.01.060_240110

[JB1970]

Yep… event playback on iPhone Hik-Connect is choppy now… the old events before NVR update are still smooth…

I did shutdown/re-power the NVR after update, and I am running latest Hik-Connect v6.1.30 on iPhone...

Ugggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Same - unusable clips. I get sucked in by 'updates' every time. Will I ever learn? (spoiler alert - nope). Fear not - Hikvision will be along with an update sometime this year...

 

[JB1970]

@Dan @Kyle. Based on the playback issues I'd probably recommend that no-one upgrades until a fixed version is released.

Note that the juddering playback does not only affect event clip playback in Hik-Connect. It affects playback of all footage via Hik-Connect app where the footage has been recorded after the update. Historical event clips and historical regular recordings aren't affected.

 

[sportster]

FWIW.... Online help web pages have always been very poor (IMHO).... with this new release: pretty much non-existent

My scenario ----> Chrome browser --- click on Help icon in upper right corner
then click View Online Help...... actual help is next to non-existent. (We won't comment on the Chinese lang that first pops up.)

 

[rorton]

I think we should get danger money from hikvision for being testers. Grrr lol

 

[JB1970]

I think we should get danger money from hikvision for being testers. Grrr lol

We are all beta testers here whether we want to be or not. One of us spots an update and we all dive in to install it - like lemmings going over a cliff!

 

[sportster]

Seems I need to retract my earlier comment re: non-existent online help pages.

I have no idea what changed, but on a subsequent login to my M Series NVR...... online help pages now magically appear, in English. No Chinese lang this time. Beats the hell outta me why online help pages are now present. My apologies for the false alarm.

 

[JB1970]

Seems I need to retract my earlier comment re: non-existent online help pages.

I have no idea what changed, but on a subsequent login to my M Series NVR...... online help pages now magically appear, in English. No Chinese lang this time. Beats the hell outta me why online help pages are now present. My apologies for the false alarm.

It's your browser cache. Deleting browsing history will have sorted it. The 'Help' link remained in the new web UI, but the resource that it pointed to will have moved or changed name between the old and new. You get some funky page loads sometimes after firmware updates when styles, fonts and resources move/change.

 

[johnfitzy]

The disarming configuration looks to be interesting (possibly). If you disarm in Hik-Connect a camera group, it enables the disarm in that menu. It looks as though it might be configurable so that when you disarm it just mutes the notification but I'd have to read up on the function.

I took a look at this but can't make any sense of it... couldn't find any information in the user manual. I'm not saying it's not working, just can't figure out what is supposed to happen.

"Allow Disarming" has a note "Disarming is allowed for the channel. Enabling this function does not mean the channel is in disarming status."... so, I tried setting just channel 1 to "Allow Disarming" off... but then I can still Arm or Disarm that channel from Hik-connect like any other channel... I'm missing something here.

 

[johnfitzy]

I have no idea what changed, but on a subsequent login to my M Series NVR...... online help pages now magically appear, in English. No Chinese lang this time. Beats the hell outta me why online help pages are now present. My apologies for the false alarm.

And now the opposite, the online help pages were working for me correctly before, but now magically appear in Chinese! Oh wait, the next login, now back to English... I did not clear browser cache in the interim so that's not it... not a big deal but something is not right!

 

[JB1970]

I probably should make a separate post, but this new GUI is so poorly designed, buggy and ill thought out, it's possible I'll have to move away from Hikvision.

At first glance, it's been modernised and the overall look is up to date but the positives end there:

1. The Hik-Connect playback is unusable. Obviously it's a bug and will have to be corrected but this should've been found before release.
2. Inverted use of mouse scroll wheel when using frame by frame in playback. A bug? Hikvision will probably say it's an intended change; are we really going to have to remember which direction to scroll dependant on which firmware the system we're using is on.
3. Menu layout. We've gone from having one menu with every item available beneath sub headings, to splitting it into separate menus all over the place. For instance we've now got System Settings, Device Access and Event Centre. Previously these were all available from settings. Gone are the days I can tell someone to just click a simple path to a setting as it's now completely disjointed.
4. Smart Playback. To some extent Smart Playback has been merged with playback similar to GUI 4 EUI. Entering playback and clicking the Human or Vehicle icon populates all markers and immediately skips between those detection events. It's not quite the same as the 'skip normal videos' in the EUI GUI could be used as a toggle between continuous and event only playback, whereas here you just use the 'Human' button in the same manner. The issue there is that there's no 5 second lead in to the event.
5. Space Rule. Disaster. Previously you'd click Space Rule > Line > Click the start and end point of your line and the markers would update to show those events. While viewing them you could click between smart and normal for continuous playback following the event (though clicking back to smart reset the playback position to midnight - a change on all versions after I series 4.40.017). With GUI 5 you click space rule to give an option of region or line. To use either instead of just clicking the mouse a couple of times to define the polygon or line, you have to fanny around precisely hovering the mouse over the line end point to move it into position then click search. It gets worse, far worse...if you click back to normal playback it plays continuous as you'd want; however if you then click back to space rule, your previously drawn region or line is gone and you have to start again.

There's little hope of improvement other than genuine bugs to be fixed.

 

[Dan]

Thanks for your feedback so far, it is a shame to see quite a few issues being reported for new firmware.

We are going to go through the comments so far and check the issues on our own demo NVR, if we can also see these problems we will add them to an email to report to Hikvision support.

First off, going back to @rorton first comments about the live view pop-ups and PTZ controls:

When in live view, and you have all your cameras in a grid, when you mouse over any of the cameras, a pair of boxes come up over the camera with it's name, and then quick photo capture, mute zoom buttons etc. This never disappears - it used to time out and go to a clean live view, but there is always a pair of boxes over one of the cameras if that makes sense? If you double click on the camera with boxes on it to go full screen, and then double click to go back to the grid, the box does disappear.

PTZ - When double clicking a PTZ to go full screen, the PTZ controls used to appear and you could operate the camera. I don't see these at the moment, I open my PTZ and it's the same as any other camera. there are no buttons I can see either to active PTZ controls?

I can enable 3d positioning for the PTZ and move the camera that way, but no way of calling back your preset or manually moving.

We've checked the direct monitor live view on our DS-7608NI-M2/8P and when we hover over each live view image we get the pop-up and then it disappears as soon as we move to the next window, I was not able to replicate this issue on our NVR.

Also, with the PTZ controls I didn't have any issues accessing the PTZ controls when not in full-screen mode, but it does look like it is not possible to access the PTZ controls and presets whilst viewing a PTZ in full-screen mode. We'll pass this information on to Hikvision support.

 

[rorton]

@Dan, if it makes any different, im using a DS-7732NI-M4 without POE (POE happening on separate switched elsewhere in the network)

 

[rorton]

I probably should make a separate post, but this new GUI is so poorly designed, buggy and ill thought out, it's possible I'll have to move away from Hikvision.

At first glance, it's been modernised and the overall look is up to date but the positives end there:

1. The Hik-Connect playback is unusable. Obviously it's a bug and will have to be corrected but this should've been found before release.
2. Inverted use of mouse scroll wheel when using frame by frame in playback. A bug? Hikvision will probably say it's an intended change; are we really going to have to remember which direction to scroll dependant on which firmware the system we're using is on.
3. Menu layout. We've gone from having one menu with every item available beneath sub headings, to splitting it into separate menus all over the place. For instance we've now got System Settings, Device Access and Event Centre. Previously these were all available from settings. Gone are the days I can tell someone to just click a simple path to a setting as it's now completely disjointed.
4. Smart Playback. To some extent Smart Playback has been merged with playback similar to GUI 4 EUI. Entering playback and clicking the Human or Vehicle icon populates all markers and immediately skips between those detection events. It's not quite the same as the 'skip normal videos' in the EUI GUI could be used as a toggle between continuous and event only playback, whereas here you just use the 'Human' button in the same manner. The issue there is that there's no 5 second lead in to the event.
5. Space Rule. Disaster. Previously you'd click Space Rule > Line > Click the start and end point of your line and the markers would update to show those events. While viewing them you could click between smart and normal for continuous playback following the event (though clicking back to smart reset the playback position to midnight - a change on all versions after I series 4.40.017). With GUI 5 you click space rule to give an option of region or line. To use either instead of just clicking the mouse a couple of times to define the polygon or line, you have to fanny around precisely hovering the mouse over the line end point to move it into position then click search. It gets worse, far worse...if you click back to normal playback it plays continuous as you'd want; however if you then click back to space rule, your previously drawn region or line is gone and you have to start again.

There's little hope of improvement other than genuine bugs to be fixed.

Wholeheartedly agree with all these comments - shocking really. Hik need to sharpen their pencil and get fixing, but I cant seem them wanting to redesign the GUI again so fear we will be stuck with the disjointed menus.

After going back to 4.63 (which was a bit of a pain) the restore didn't add my user accounts and some custom changes I made to ports, fixed easily, but should not have to be fixed, should have restored exactly how it was

Out of interest, anyone else regressed back to 4.63.something?

 

[JB1970]

Wholeheartedly agree with all these comments - shocking really. Hik need to sharpen their pencil and get fixing, but I cant seem them wanting to redesign the GUI again so fear we will be stuck with the disjointed menus.

Agreed. I'm fine with 'change of use' but it's made the system more cumbersome to use. I quite like that the settings menu isn't directly accessible without going into applications; that makes it less likely for a customer to accidentally change something. The changes in playback though are ridiculous. They're a backward step and I'd not expect them [Hikvision] to alter the method of operation

Out of interest, anyone else regressed back to 4.63.something?

Not yet but I will at some point. I'll certainly not implement GUI 5 on any customers system.

 

[Dan]

@Dan, if it makes any different, im using a DS-7732NI-M4 without POE (POE happening on separate switched elsewhere in the network)

Thanks,

Our NVR is a PoE model but so far we've only added remote cameras to it since updating the firmware (no directly connected cameras).

My colleague @Kyle did format the HDD in our demo NVR this morning so that possibly could have resolved some of these smaller issues/glitches (we have seen strange behaviour before after firmware updates that have been fixed by formatting HDD and/or defaulting the NVR).

 

[Phil]

I probably should make a separate post, but this new GUI is so poorly designed, buggy and ill thought out, it's possible I'll have to move away from Hikvision.

It is extremely tedious that we are once again one step forward / two steps back
A massive 'own goal'.
The comms to begin to resolve these issues are painful for us!
We have to do a lot of testing.
And then have to type long form, crystal clear, cannot be misunderstood, explanations of what we are seeing and why that's not right!


Hikvision continue to offer THE best value hardware.

We continually assess alternatives, trust me we are hands-on with multiple brands (and others are knocking at our door all the time), and myself @Dan @Kyle and @Jake Hulks re-visit the topic pretty much every day!

We can find no (affordable) NVR that performs better

We frequently see NVR (and camera) GUIs that look YEARS out of date!!


Software is a good option, but most folks don't want to add another PC (feel that a dedicated NVR / linux box should work best - incl. POE too, of course).
Perhaps ironic, when you consider that most of us have a retired PC laying around that could probably be re-purposed to do the job.

Of course, electricity costs for a PC and a POE switch are also a consideration for home system owners nowadays.
BTW the tiny eco NUC PCs still seem expensive to buy.

Stick with us.
Share your thoughts.

If you have any suggestions or questions, may I invite all and sundry to add their current two penn'orth here please:
(it's not the first time this question has come to the fore)
Best alternative to HikVision?

Thanks

 

[Dan]

First bug found in playback:

Pause playback and use the mouse wheel for frame by frame. It's been reversed from what it's always been. Rolling the wheel forward would advance one frame and back would advance one I Frame. Now, rolling forward goes backward 1 I Frame and rolling backward advances one frame.

Yep,

We've confirmed this issue as well and will pass it on to Hikvision support, but as you say they will likely say it was an intentional decision to change this.

We will point out your reasoning about installers & site managers possibly having a mix of old & new NVRs that will require different scrolling and how this will quickly become very frustrating.

 

[johnfitzy]

My colleague @Kyle did format the HDD in our demo NVR this morning so that possibly could have resolved some of these smaller issues/glitches (we have seen strange behaviour before after firmware updates that have been fixed by formatting HDD and/or defaulting the NVR).

I think I will try reformatting HDDs and defaulting the NVR also...

 

[johnfitzy]

We've checked the direct monitor live view on our DS-7608NI-M2/8P and when we hover over each live view image we get the pop-up and then it disappears as soon as we move to the next window, I was not able to replicate this issue on our NVR.

Yes, but after you stop moving the mouse from image to image, the pop-up bars at the top and bottom of the last image do not time-out... previously they would time out in about 10-15 seconds and leave a cleaner view.

 

[johnfitzy]

In the Live View screen on the NVR... if you select "Display VCA Info" from the pop-up menu at the bottom of the screen only the first 4 windows (I have 3 x 3 on my default view) will show VCA lines/information... if you go to another individual window say 7 and from its pop-up menu select "More/Show VCA Info" the following message appears...

I'm certain this was not the case in the 4.0 GUI... I've never used an AcuSense series NVR, but this seems like a limitation it might have? Confused...