Tip for Hikvision IP camera settings
, by admin, 3 min reading time
With these handy and simple tips you will ensure that you get the best image from your Hikvision camera in every lighting situation.
All cameras are supplied by the manufacturer Hikvision in a standard setting that is sufficient for most situations. However, it may sometimes be desirable to change these settings in order to get the most optimal image from your Hikvision camera for that one difficult lighting situation. Because most people have no experience with this, here are some tips on what you can do and what you should not do.
We start with the basic settings that must be set in the camera and in the recorder for recording and live view. Below you see a 3 megapixel camera Full HD.You can make the settings for the main stream or substream stream type. The main stream is important because that is the video image used for the recordings and it must therefore be in the right position for sharp images.
The substream is used to stream the images to the APP and this may therefore be of lower quality, because there is not a good network range everywhere, but also because the screen of a smartphone is a lot smaller than that of your PC.
Below are the main stream settings as an example. Please note the following settings. Set the resolution to 1080 or 1536, bitrate type to variable, Video Quality to highest. Frame rate concerns the number of pictures recorded per second per camera. this can therefore be set to at least 20 or higher. Television Broadcasts take place at approximately 25 Fps does live images. Set the max. bit rate at max. 4000 kbps which is sufficient for a 3mp camera. This ensures that this camera does not stream more over the network than 4000kbps. Set the I frame interval to the same setting as the frame rate. (fps).
In the next screen you can adjust the picture settings. These settings can also be set per camera from the recorder, but they are fairly basic, such as brightness, contrast and color. Just like your TV at home, this is often personal preference.
If you log in directly to the camera (sometimes a PoE adapter is required), you can adjust a number of important settings in the image settings. A number of tips, the exposure settings, the shutter speed is standard at 1/25, suitable for walking people. If you set this to 1/50 (cyclists, or slow moving vehicles) or 1/100 (moving vehicles) the image when paused in the recording will be perfectly sharp, but the downside is that you will get a very dark image has in the night. So the best setting is 1/25 or 1/50. Do not necessarily set the gain high (this makes the image lighter and clearer), otherwise this will result in more noise in the image.
The day and night mode is set to automatic by default, which allows the camera to determine if it is too dark to switch to black and white images and to turn on the IR LEDs. If there is enough lighting at your camera location, you could try turning it on during the day, which will sometimes give you good color images instead of black and white images. It is best to test this because every lighting situation is different.
Back light compensation concerns backlight compensation whereby with WDR you can make objects that are dark in the picture in bright backlight brighten up more so that these dark areas become more visible.
White balance, leave as default and do not adjust.
Image Enhancement is image improvement such as Digital Noise reduction. You can turn this DNR on if you have a lot of noise at night. The disadvantage is that the higher the DNR setting, the more ghost effect (image lagging) you get with moving objects. So definitely don't set this setting too high. A brighter outdoor lamp works wonders!
Video Ajustment, this allows you to digitally mirror or rotate the image if this is necessary, for example because you have installed the camera in a certain way.
