Vista QP04 series User Manual download pdf (Page 11)

HD1080p Cameras

www.benchmarkmagazine.com

is pretty intuitive. The menus themselves are

clear and settings are straightforward. One little

touch that we liked is with numeric settings

such as compression, it can often take up time

using the extremes to work out which end of the

scale is the best and worst! Thankfully the initial

and final settings are named to give this

information!

The camera defaults to 3 megapixel mode;

switching to 2 megapixel mode allows the HD

settings to be achieved, and also introduces

further functionality. The first two streams

default to M-JPEG and H.264; a simple tick-box

allows you to select which is the default.

Viewing a H.264 image (High Profile), at 30fps

with a GOP setting of 15, using 15Mbps

bandwidth, the image is very good. Motion is

smooth, even fast motion, and colour fidelity is

good. Colours did have a level of vibrance that

gives them an artificial look, but a quick tweak

of the settings (which are, by default, all over

the place) soon eradicated that. Things look

natural if AGC is set to Low or Middle; High is a

touch too aggressive for our liking.

When adjusting the bandwidth, we found the

only irritation of the menu. It’s a very mild one,

but simple to fix! When changing the figures,

you can highlight the previous setting and type

in a new one. Instead you have to click in the

box, delete each figure, the re-enter the new

value. That it is the only thing that we could

fault about the GUI does speak volumes.

The image stays clean, detailed and balanced

as bandwidth falls, and at 5Mbps we did notice

slight rebuild artefacts after motion, but to be

honest you needed to be looking for them. As

most users will be watching the motion, it won’t

be a concern. At 4Mbps you do start to see

slight shimmer in some bland areas, along with

some edge distortion on moving objects, but the

image is still good enough for evidential

purposes.

At 2Mbps (the unit’s lowest setting for

constant bit rate) the compression is clearly

working overtime, and the image is restricted to

use in applications where general observation

only is required. It’s at this point the need for a

HD camera is questionable.

The camera has a quoted sensitivity of 1 lux

for a 50 IRE image. We looked for a good quality

colour image with minimal noise. At 3 lux the

first signs of noise crept in; the camera’s noise

reduction helps keep it at bay. At 3 lux the

image was usable, but noise was more evident.

The noise reduction function is very good, and

has a lot of flexibility, but caution must be

exercised to avoid over-processing!

The camera switched at 1.6 lux, which was a

tad too late in our opinion. Switching can be

controlled by an external input, which is what

we’d recommend!

Motion detection is basic, and allows

recording to SD card, images sent via FTP or

email, or triggering of the camera’s relay. The

Smart Codec feature split the vote, once we

worked it out. The manual doesn’t really explain

it too well.

The ROIs can be manually set or use face

detection. Essentially, it’s a bandwidth

management tool, with the selected area, or the

detected face, receiving a boost in quality. This

works if the camera is set for low bandwidths.

The opinions varied from positive to the

negative. The positive feedback was more for

the face detection than for a manually assigned

area. A few liked that a wider area could be

captured at low bandwidth, with a quality boost

of the facial area when a face was detected to

ensure people were identified. The latter

opinions were based on the argument that no

one wants to buy a HD camera to capture poor

quality images, then just highlight faces or

certain areas of the image. There’s probably a

bit of validity in both opinions!

Verdict

With the Abus Security TVIP52501, compression

was well implemented, and the GUI is clean and

easy to navigate too. However, the low light

performance needs attention, and motion

detection is basic and prone to false alarms!

Axis Communications’ P1347 is a capable

camera. Attention could be paid to day/night

switching; the options are fairly limited.

However, with regard to image quality, the

camera delivers all that is expected from it.

Hikvision’s DS2CD854F-E is let down by a very

poor manual and a lack of utilities. The camera

seems to struggle if bandwidth falls below

6Mbps.

Pelco’s IXE20DN was a pain to configure,

partly because it had the resources CD missing,

and partly because once downloaded, the utility

was a bit flakey. We got there in the end, and it

was worth it for the best image quality in this

part of the test!

Samsung’s SNB-7000P is probably a more

CCTV-centric camera than a few of the others,

and its flexibility is impressive. The Smart Codec

will be of interest to some, but not to everyone.

The downside is that the compression engine

struggles as bandwidth falls.

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Vista QP04 series User Manual Page 11

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