IP8M-2899EW-AI-V2 4k PTZ

[ultimatecodewarrior]

Hi All,

Quick Review on the 4k PTZ (25x optical ) Amcrest camera. I'm in the early stages with this one.

Supports H264/265

Sometimes the H264 recording hiccups: [h264 @ 0x770e401d7d00] error while decoding MB 35 96, bytestream -5

-Very impressed by it's Zoom Feature, was able to snag a licence plate off moving vehicles with a dusty trail at least 350' away. I could probably push it more. Image is very clear during the day. I wish it was better at night or there was some way to adjust the contrast so I could snag a lighted licence plate without it washing out.

-Auto-Focus very fast and accurate

-Low light / IR performance great.

-Onboard Web App server -- Sufficient and I appreciate it being there. Loads something called xdg-open in your browser.

-No Auto Tracking, but I don't need it.

-Haven't tested mic/audio pickup yet

- A spotlight kicks on and off, haven't figured out how to turn that off yet, would rather just stick with ir illumination.

-Haven't played with any of the alarms/alerts

-Mobile App PTZ Control -- Absolute SHcrap. Like nothing I have ever seen before, just terrible/unusable.

The Reolink 4k PTZ with 5x optical zoom wasn't bad, H264 works, but nothing compared to the 25x optical zoom of the Amcrest.

The Sunba 36x AutoTracking PTZ worked ok during the day, but night performance looked like zooming in on an etch a sketch.

One to watch if they can get their H264 working: VIKYLIN 8MP IP POE PTZ Camera Outdoor 4K Full Color Security Camera,5X Optical Zoom. I could record H265 with pyav, but H264 didn't work. Most H265 doesn't work with the browser so this was a showstopper. Price point was good, and I could pick up a plate at about 75'. Color night vision was marginal. Price point was good, but the Amcrest beat it out for performance.

[Revo2Maxx]

In theory I am sure you can make changes to the camera so it will capture night plates as well. Only down side to doing this, Setting up a day profile and a night one is that at night it will be useless to do anything else and most times people don't buy a PTZ at any price just to make the picture un usable for general use to capture a few plates at night.. There are cheaper zoom bullet cameras for that.. Issue might be fixed in a Firmware update if using old FW might check to see if there was a release note on a FW update if there is one that says it corrects the issue?

[ultimatecodewarrior]

@Revo2Maxx

I don't understand why the default behavior isn't: Day mode:Load Day Profile. Night Mode, Load Night Profile. Or at least have a HTTP API call where you can do that yourself.

I do look at the center of an image and test for all grayscale to make certain that the camera has switch from night to day or back again. If I had that API call I could load the appropriate settings to adjust the contrast/threshold. Would be nice if they had some presets like "Night Plate" or "Day Plate" detection.

The reason for the zoom camera is so that you don't have to have it right on the Road where it can be vandalized, it can be a bit off the road, not so noticeable, up high, under a solar panel for shade but looking in some choke hold area where people have to slow down like on a turn or speed bump to catch a plate. Would like to know which vehicles are coming and going and who lives in the neighborhood and who doesn't. 99% of the time, the issues we have is when a vehicle that doesn't live here comes on in.

[Revo2Maxx]

So don't get me wrong you can setup your camera with day/night profiles. it comes out of the box with Day setup for full time in auto format for changing over to B/W at night but is on day format.. Now main issue with PTZ cameras is that settings you want setup at night seem to have issues staying in PTZ cameras. Not all of them just most of them so people don't use PTZ cameras to capture plates most times.. As you can see from my 2mp TVI 10x zoom camera that I have setup on my Amcrest Ai DVR also setup on my Amcrest Ai NVR using my Amcrest DVR as an IP camera.. Anyway I also have it connected to my Blue Iris and the main function is to get full color events and plates when I can.. In the pictures below you can see that the camera is also setup on a Manual Focus point . This is the point where I have set it so any plate that is within 22 frames there should be one that the camera can read that is 22 frames within 1 second aka 22fps..

Problem is with PTZ cameras settings to hold things are not as easy to do as it is on a static Zoom cameras.. Now you could maybe setup a day profile for your camera to work in auto, and the night profile to work with modified focus and shutter that would again need to be very dark and the camera would not be able to see anything other then plates.. That is because the camera would need to make it so dark that the lights reflecting off the plate only returns the plate number and not just a blurry plate area..

Anyway again with a Static Zoom camera you can send a command that puts the camera at a set point for focus and no longer in auto focus.. Main issue with PTZ camera is that it was designed to pan and tilt and make changes to the current settings be it day or night but normally that don't include to being setting to fast shutter of like 1/1500 that would be able to return a plate and reject the lights from brakes or headlights.. Plus the camera has to be able to capture cars going 30-50 and again why a static zoom camera is better choice..

Screenshot (144).png (2.53 MiB) Viewed 2885 times

Screenshot (145).png (1.41 MiB) Viewed 2885 times