Subscriber Discussion

Hanwha Vs Hikvision Bit Rate

UI
Undisclosed Integrator #1
Oct 16, 2017

I have 2 cameras side by side.  A 4MP Hanwha and a 4MP Hikvision.  With scene being equal the bitrate as shown in Exacq is almost double on the Hanwha camera vs the Hikvision.  Hanwha also is using H.265 vs. H.264 on the Hikvision.  You would think it would be the opposite.  Why is there such a difference?  I can't see putting 50 cameras on a server and getting 1/2 the storage.  All things considered the picture quality is similar. 

 

Update:  Wisestream was off.  I enabled it.  There are 3 setting low, med, and high.  High reduced the bitrate by a large amount.  Not sure what it does or what the settings do but will have to find out.  

Avatar
Brian Rhodes
Oct 16, 2017
IPVMU Certified

Other items to check for an equal comparison:

  • Is framerate equal?
  • Equal Angle of View/ focal length?
  • Same Compression level/ is Smart CODEC being used? ie: is H.264+ vs H.265 being used?

Ethan and the camera guys can speak more to this, but comparing on resolution and CODEC alone might not give you the full picture.

UI
Undisclosed Integrator #1
Oct 16, 2017

equal except for the codec which should actually make the Samsung have a lower bitrate using h.265.  If I put both on h.264 the Hik bitrate is dramatically less.  It would be interesting to have a way to see the bitrates for cameras and be able to compare them to each other with all things the same.  That would be difficult to do I guess but with what I am seeing it isn't even close between the 2. 

UM
Undisclosed Manufacturer #2
Oct 16, 2017

The default for the 4Mp @ H.264 @ 20fps is 5120kbps.  However, this does not take the Quality into effect.  You can change the bitrate accordingly to adjust the quality.  I recommend 3072, which had an average bitrate of approx 2.4Mbps.

Some VMS automatically put in a bit rate.   Some are optomized, others are not.

Also you can enable the wisestream and DGOV settings to lower bitrate.

Avatar
Ethan Ace
Oct 16, 2017

We have a test of Wisestream H.265 here which explains what settings do, but the short version is:

  • Wisestream dynamically controls compression on the scene, so moving objects are less compressed and static/background areas are more compressed, which lowers bitrate overall. In our tests, the "high" setting cause a lot of artifacting on background objects, so be careful with it. That may have improved with new firmware versions.
  • Dynamic GOV varies the I-frame interval, so it will be short when there is activity in the scene and long (up to 160 frames, if I remember correctly), when there is no activity, which reduces bitrate.

All that aside, by nature you cannot make settings on the Wisenet Q and a Hikvision camera the same, because Hanwha does not use a true VBR implementation. They only set a maximum bitrate, then float average bitrate somewhere under that, like Undisclosed Manufacturer #2 mentions. But this results in both bitrate and compression/quantization varying. See Sony and Samsung Breaking VBR for more info on this.

Hikvision, by contrast, fixes compression and varies the bitrate to keep compression steady. So the max bitrate you set in a Hikvision camera is maximum, but bitrate will generally be much lower than that. 

So if you are comparing the two by setting both max bitrates to the same value, it won't be a fair comparison.

All that being said, when we've tested the two head to head and attempted to arrive at the same quantization level to make it as standard as possible, Hikvision has frequently been lower. But I'd hesitate to say always, depending on what camera model you're looking at, how close the fields of view are, and other settings.

What models are you testing side by side?

 

(2)
New discussion

Ask questions and get answers to your physical security questions from IPVM team members and fellow subscribers.

Newest discussions