Getting the best quality decompressed footage with DS-2DE5432IW-AE

[harel]

Hi,

I am quite new to the HIKVISION DS-2DE5432IW-AE series and I wanted to know how much of a decompressed image I can get.

I would love to reach the raw footage, even though it might weigh a lot, but I'm not sure if it is possible.

Do you know by any chance what is the best way to get the best uncompressed quality of this specific camera? What settings I should use?

The environment I capture is usually outdoors in the daytime but sometimes can be at night.

I don't mind paying in memory and FPS.


Thanks in advance

 

[Dan]

Hi @harel

As far as we are aware, it is not possible to access RAW footage from the cameras. All IP CCTV cameras apply some sort of compression at the point of capture because the RAW image files would just be too large to send over the network for live streaming and NVR recording.

If you want as little compression as possible, the main setting to adjust is the Compression/Encoding CODEC. Most CCTV users want to reduce the data/storage they use so go with the max. H.265+ CODEC, but if you want to keep compression to a minimum you will want to set the camera to the H.264 CODEC.

As well as this, you'll also want to set the Video Quality to Highest (this fine-tunes the compression), set the frame rate to the max. 20/25fps, and also make sure the Max. bitrate is set high (probably around 10,000Kbps) so that if the camera needs to use lots of data it has the space to do so and isn't being limited.

 

[harel]

Hi @harel

As far as we are aware, it is not possible to access RAW footage from the cameras. All IP CCTV cameras apply some sort of compression at the point of capture because the RAW image files would just be too large to send over the network for live streaming and NVR recording.

If you want as little compression as possible, the main setting to adjust is the Compression/Encoding CODEC. Most CCTV users want to reduce the data/storage they use so go with the max. H.265+ CODEC, but if you want to keep compression to a minimum you will want to set the camera to the H.264 CODEC.

As well as this, you'll also want to set the Video Quality to Highest (this fine-tunes the compression), set the frame rate to the max. 20/25fps, and also make sure the Max. bitrate is set high (probably around 10,000Kbps) so that if the camera needs to use lots of data it has the space to do so and isn't being limited.

Thank you for your quick answer!

How about H.264+ CODEC? Is it any different than the H.264? Because I see that my max bit rate is somewhere around 16Kbps and I think it is quite limiting.

Another thought, assuming I want to keep the high resolution, is it possible to send each frame in packages? (Like separating each frame into tiles, sending them all sequentially one after the other, and combining them later into a high-resolution frame). I don't mind paying in FPS (unless it gets less than 2-3 frames in one second).

Thanks again

 

[Dan]

Hi @harel

H.264+ will increase the compression so we would not recommend using that, H.264 is the lowest level of compression available on the Hikvision cameras.

Are you able to share a screenshot of the stream/video settings you have set for your camera? I want to see your bitrate because it is very unusual to get 16Kbps (that is less than 1Mbps), are you sure it's not 16,000Kbps?

Packaging frames is not something possible with Hikvision cameras, If you are happy to reduce the frame rate you could go down to something like 10-12fps and then also set the I-frame interval to something like 2 or 4. The I-frames are the full image frames that the camera captures and usually to save on data/storage the I-frame is set to double the frame rate (e.g. 25fps = I-frame interval - 50) which means you get a full-frame capture every 2 seconds and all the other frames in between are p-frames which are just the parts of the frame that have changed between each I-frames (for example, if your camera was covering your front garden and drive and a car comes onto the drive, the p-frames would capture all the activity on the drive while the areas where no activity is happening are captured using the I-frames).

If you set the frame rate to 12fps and then set the I-frame interval to 2 you should get 6 full I-frames every second and that will create larger image files with the possibility of more image detail (but the data/storage usage will increase which is why you have to also reduce the frame rate).

 

[harel]

Hi @harel

H.654+ will increase the compression so we would not recommend using that, H.264 is the lowest level of compression available on the Hikvision cameras.

Are you able to share a screenshot of the stream/video settings you have set for your camera? I want to see your bitrate because it is very unusual to get 16Kbps (that is less than 1Mbps), are you sure it's not 16,000Kbps?

Packaging frames is not something possible with Hikvision cameras, If you are happy to reduce the frame rate you could go down to something like 10-12fps and then also set the I-frame interval to something like 2 or 4. The I-frames are the full image frames that the camera captures and usually to save on data/storage the I-frame is set to double the frame rate (e.g. 25fps = I-frame interval - 50) which means you get a full-frame capture every 2 seconds and all the other frames in between are p-frames which are just the parts of the frame that have changed between each I-frames (for example, if your camera was covering your front garden and drive and a car comes onto the drive, the p-frames would capture all the activity on the drive while the areas where no activity is happening are captured using the I-frames).

If you set the frame rate to 12fps and then set the I-frame interval to 2 you should get 6 full I-frames every second and that will create larger image files with the possibility of more image detail (but the data/storage usage will increase which is why you have to also reduce the frame rate).

Yes, you are correct, I mistyped and meant 16,000kbps (the max value). Does it change some of your answers?

I just thought about it and maybe it is possible to receive only Black and White images? Might it help with the resolution and quality?

Thank you for the tips so far, I will put them to the test.