[FAQ] Hikvision 4MP Series Motion Blur at Night

[Kieran]

Blurry Night Image?
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Some of the biggest contributors to a video that suffers from motion blur and ghosting at night time are slow shutter speeds, high gain settings and high digital noise reduction (DNR) settings. One of our most popular camera series, the 3MP 2x32 cameras from Hikvision, had default shutter, gain and DNR settings out of the box that provided a very usable night image. Perhaps not optimal, but adequate, and very good after a bit of tinkering.

Now, having been superseded by the 4MP R6 versions of the same cameras, we've seen a fair few enquiries like the below:

Q:

Hi Kieran,

Very pleased with my DS-2CD2042WD-I, it gives an excellent image during the day but at night time I'm seeing heavy motion blur and some image trailing that wasn't present on my previous DS-2CD2032F-I.

Do you know why that is?
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This is because, seemingly, the default DNR value has been increased compared to previous models, although it doesn't appear to have been when viewing the camera's configuration in a web browser.

To elaborate - the previous 3MP cameras had a default DNR value set to 50, and this was fine for most cases. The new 4MP cameras also have a default DNR value of 50, but the actual level of DNR on these cameras seems to have been increased dramatically. What is now 50 performs like how 100 used to on the 3MP cameras, and this can cause heavy blur and ghosting.

Reducing the DNR of your camera should resolve the issue.

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I've found that dropping it by about half, from 50 to 25, is a good starting point - afterwards, it's just a case of optimising based on your own environment. It might also be worth increasing your shutter speed from the default value of 1/25, and decreasing the gain setting too. This will help with your motion blur, but it will cause the camera's sensor to receive less light and might provide an unusably dark image.

Your best bet is to try the above and have a test until you've managed to optimise a configuration for your camera's environment.

 

[peter]

just checked my configurations to adjust the DNR and found that the default setting for Gain is 100%!

 

[Prototype]

How do you access this setting from the NVR or iVMS-4200 Client? I can only find Brightness, Contrast & Saturation in the display settings?

 

[Phil]

You're not actually able to access ALL of the HikVision camera settings from your NVR or IVMS-4200.
You need to access the camera's 'Configuration' area directly - by accessing the camera from your browser (preferably Internet Explorer).

If your cameras are direct-connected to your NVR, then Virtual Host will help you access them directly:
https://forum.use-ip.co.uk/threads/tutorial-using-a-hikvision-nvrs-virtual-host-feature.610/

If your cameras are on your LAN, you should be able to just browse to their LAN IP address.

 

[Prototype]

Hello Phil, thank you I found the Virtual Host setting and logged into the cameras fine