How to make Intrusion Detection more reliable?

[michaelc]

Hi Everybody,

I've slowly been moving my older HikVision DS-2CD2342WD-I cameras over to Smart Events instead of Basic Motion Detection.

While it's mostly working well, there are some frustrating moments where I can't figure out why it's not detecting motion when there are clearly people in the detection area and they are moving! I am also not getting any joy with getting pre-record working on my older cameras either. It doesn't matter how long I set the Pre-Record time, the recording only starts just before the Smart Event is detected. I've got it set at 10 seconds, but I don't get 10 seconds recorded before the event. Post-Record time works fine... anyway, I digress back on topic.

I've uploaded a screen capture of my iVMS-4200 VS software playing back recent "Intrusion Detection" events to my YouTube channel. I got my LPG (Propane) cylinder swapped out yesterday while I was at work and I thought this would be a good test to see how Intrusion Detection works in real life.

As you can see in the video, there are several times where the camera is highlighting a box around the people in the video, but for some reason it is not staying red with the people moving in the frame. This gives me no confidence that I can reliably record people walking around my home.

Max Size is set to the entire video frame. Min Size is just larger than the size of a cat. Sensitivity is at 50. Threshold is at 0.

I've tried playing around with the Sensitivity, but I can't seem to find a sweet spot where it will reliably and continually record a person in the detection area.

The Basic Event Motion Detection was annoying in that bugs and dust particles would cause a LOT of activations at night... but at least I could be sure that anyone walking around my home would end up on the HDD.

Any ideas on how to make Motion Detection work better?

Regards,

Michael

 

[Dan]

Hi Michael

The first thing to say is that I think you may have got slightly confused as to how intrusion detection works, Intrusion Detection is designed only to trigger when people cross the intrusion area you have drawn and the recording will always stop shortly after someone has entered the area and will only continue if the object or person that has entered the area continues to move around a lot within the area.

Motion Detection is a blunt tool and there isn't much, beyond what you have already tried, you can do to improve the accuracy & sensitivity of that detection, another factor in this is that you are running Smart Events on an older generation camera which doesn't use as advanced software/algorithm for its Smart Events and so even with the best settings possible the accuracy is never going to be perfect.

For an older model like this and because you want to try and capture the activity in a larger time frame around the event we would probably recommend that you are better off recording continuously and only using Smart Events for notification & marking in playback, that way you capture everything even if the events do not trigger every time and you can still navigate in the playback to periods of time where there have been lots of triggers and view the footage before, between, and after those events.

 

[michaelc]

Hi Dan,

Thanks for the reply

I had a feeling that I would have to make the jump to continual recording and use events to point me to areas of interest on the time line. My Storage Server has 2TB of space.

What is the best way to set this up?

I've set up an All-Day Template in the Storage Schedule section of Maintenance and Management (iVMS-4200 VS) for my Patio cameras (for a test). This saves continuous video to the Storage Server, but I cannot see the events in the timeline when in the Remote Playback window. The continual video shows up as a light blue colour in the timeline , but I cannot see the events superimposed on top of this.

I can't seem to search for events in the Event Playback section of Remote Playback for some reason.

For instance, I select today's date (28/5), choose Line Crossing Detection in the VCA Detection drop down, press Search and I get an error message (see attached). I KNOW there are Line Crossing events (and Intrusion Detection events) from the Patio camera today, but I cannot seem to search for them. It doesn't matter what camera I select, it comes up with the same error.

How do others manage to search for events when using continual recording?

Regards,

Michael.

 

[Dan]

Hi @michaelc

I'm not sure why this is not working as we have a 7716 NVR running several cameras of a similar generation to yours that are also running smart events and we can search for them using iVMS-4200, we have never used the VS version of iVMS so it may potentially be an issue specific to that software.

Have you definitely set the arming schedule 24/7 for both events?

Are you running both events on the same camera? have you tried disabling one of the smart events because we have seen issues before that older generation models do not always support running multiple smart event notifications on the same camera.

 

[fullboogie]

Are you looking for event markers in IVMS or on the web interface? If on the web, event markers have never worked.

 

[michaelc]

Hi @michaelc

I'm not sure why this is not working as we have a 7716 NVR running several cameras of a similar generation to yours that are also running smart events and we can search for them using iVMS-4200, we have never used the VS version of iVMS so it may potentially be an issue specific to that software.

Have you definitely set the arming schedule 24/7 for both events?

Are you running both events on the same camera? have you tried disabling one of the smart events because we have seen issues before that older generation models do not always support running multiple smart event notifications on the same camera.

Hi Dan,

I am not using a separate hardware NVR, I am using iVMS-4200 VS together with Storage Server on a PC as the NVR solution. All of my cameras are set for a 24/7 Arming Schedule.

I did try the same procedure with the "full" version of iVMS-4200 (non VS version) and I see the same behaviour.

When the Storage Server Schedule Template set to an All-Day Template, the video from the camera is recorded continually to the Storage Server (all good), but I cannot see any detected events (Motion Detection/Line Crossing/Basic Events) in the timeline at the bottom of the Remote Playback window.

When using an Event Template in the Storage Server config, you can see the individual detected events easily in the timeline and quickly scrub through the timeline and playback will start at the next event. This works very well.

Not being able to search for or see events easily in the timeline within a continuously recorded video stream is a deal breaker. I would have thought that superimposing any detected Events (light red) together with the light blue bar would have been the way to go... but it seems not.

Even when I use the Filter tool in the Remote Playback window to remove the light blue Time recording, I still cannot see any events even though I KNOW there were events occurring during that time.

I have attached three screen captures of what I am seeing. The first is during a time I was using an All-Day Template in Storage Server for a test (the light blue in the time line). You can see me creating a Line Crossing Event. I then deselect Time the Filter Tool... but in the same part of the timeline, the Line Crossing event is not there!

During the time of the All-Day Template testing was being used on the 28th, I must have created dozens of Line Crossing and Motion Detection events, none of which seem to have been recorded/saved on the Storage Server. Having days and days of recorded video and not being able to see the events in not good at all.

It is most frustrating

Michael.

 

[michaelc]

Are you looking for event markers in IVMS or on the web interface? If on the web, event markers have never worked.

I didn't think that the iVMS-4200 software had a web interface. I remember using the web interface in the long ago deprecated iVMS-4200 PCNVR software.

Michael.

 

[fullboogie]

It's two different things. Web interface. IVMS. Which are you using?

 

[michaelc]

It's two different things. Web interface. IVMS. Which are you using?

I am directly interacting with the iVMS-4200 VS software.

 

[michaelc]

The other strange thing I don't quite understand is that when I go to search for events (as above in Remote Playback Module/Event Playback Page) and click on the calendar to select the dates... the days have light blue triangles in them.

The iVMS-4200 VS manuals states that dates which has video files recorded by schedule will be marked with a light blue triangle, dates with video files recorded based on events will be marked with a red triangle. No mention is made of what you see if a day has video files with both Schedule based and Event based files in it.

Apart from the short testing I did a few days ago, ALL of my video files have been recorded based on Event Detection (Basic and Smart). Why don't I see any red triangles? Why are the detected events on my cameras not recorded as events?

Could it be that Schedule recording and Event recording are mutually exclusive? When I play back video in Remote Playback/Camera Playback, the timeline is littered with red Event recordings (not blue as you get with Continuous recording), but the calendar once again only shows blue triangles. Confusing indeed!

Michael.

 

[wesecureu]

I do know that iVMS4200 cannot query smart events directly from a camera. This has worked in the past but it has not been working in version 3 of iVMS4200. The rationale for this in unknown and it frustrates many users. A stock reply from Hikvision is to use a recorder. This is not helpful where you may have 1 or 2 IP cameras in play. I believe that Hikvision maybe looking into this with a view to adding the functionality back into iVMS4200.