Camera & Image Settings

In this article we will go over all of the settings you can manipulate to get the experience you desire.

Disclaimer:

When either the camera or image settings are changed, the footage captured from that point on will now have those new attributes.

You can restore settings to default at any time by pressing the "Revert to defaults" at the bottom of each settings window

• Image Settings
  • Brightness
  • Contrast
  • Saturation
  • Sharpness
  • WDR
  • Shutter-speed
  • Max ISO
  • Exposure Level (on select models)
  • Exposure Metering (on select models)
• Camera Settings
  • Digital Zoom & Rotate
  • Activity Region
  • Privacy Region
  • LED Lights
  • IR LED
  • IR Filter
  • Resolution
  • Max Bitrate 
  • Motor Zoom (on select models)
  • Focus Region (on select models)
  • Motor Focus (on select models)
  • Motor P-Iris (on select models)

Image Settings

The image settings allow you to change the way the footage looks aesthetically. To view the Image Settings, go to Devices > Camera Name you want to adjust > Image icon in the right hand side. Below is a GIF of navigating to Image Settings from the console dashboard.

You'll see a menu that looks like this with the default image settings:

Brightness

This setting affects the brightness of the image after the image is collected by the image sensor. 

(low on the left and high on the right) 

Contrast

Contrast affects the color contrast in the images. This is the difference in the bright and dark areas of the image. If the contrast is high, the image looks lively; conversely, if the contrast is low, the image looks flat. 

(low on the left and high on the right) 

Saturation

Saturation affects the depth of the colors in the image. The higher the saturation, the more vivid the colors will be.

(low on the left and high on the right) 

Sharpness

Sharpness refers to the overall clarity of the image in terms of focus and contrast. A high contrast setting will appears clear and with greater detail. While a lower sharpness setting will make the image appear fuzzier. 

(low on the left and high on the right) 

WDR

Wide Dynamic Range refers to the high dynamic range imaging. This settings allows the camera to handle bright and dark conditions to see more detail in the black and the eliminate the wash out effect in the whites. It will also improve the quality of the freeze frame. When you play around with the setting, the effects of it may not be perceivable by the human eye in the camera player. 

(low on the left and high on the right) 

Shutter-speed

Shutter-speed will control the duration that light is collected by the image sensor. So the brighter the scene, the more light will be collected and the lighter the image will appear. While longer shutter-speeds increase light exposure, it can degrade the video quality as well.

Max ISO

ISO is a measure of how sensitive a piece of film or digital sensor is to light—the higher the ISO the more sensitive. With a low ISO you need to use a longer shutter-speed than if using a high ISO. 

Exposure Level

Exposure is the amount of light which reaches the camera sensor. Adjusting the exposure level can brighten or darken an image. Below is a GIF of changing the level from low to high:

Exposure Metering

Similar to exposure level, exposure metering allows you to focus the exposure level on a specific location of the video feed. In the below GIF, the exposure is set to the upper left corner and then changed to the lower right corner which causes the dark lower right to brighten up:

Types of exposure metering:

Camera Settings

Camera settings allow you to fine tune the hardware to get the best picture possible. Within the settings you are able to manage bandwidth consumption as well as maxbitrate, so if you are limited on bandwidth or storage, we have you covered. To view the Settings, Go to Devices > Camera Name you want to adjust > Camera icon in the right hand side. 

You'll see a menu that looks like this with the default camera settings:

Digital Zoom & Rotate

These settings will allow you to change the recording field of view by zooming in up to 75% of the image, or rotating the picture 0, 90, 180, and 270 degrees. As you rotate or zoom, the same aspect ratio and resolution will be retained. 

Zoom example

Rotate example

Activity Region

This feature is also known as geofencing. This allows you to draw one or more polygon on the recording view to include or exclude indexed motion events from the the field of view. An example of when this feature is useful, is when there is constant motion due to a freeway or street that you want excluded from triggering an event. There are two radio buttons for either triggering or not triggering alerts within the region.

To delete an activity region, just click on the region area and either press delete key on your keyboard, or hit the "clicking here" button below the image.

Privacy Region

This allows one or more partial regions to be completely excluded from recording and motion events. As you use this, you will see a black rectangle appear on the view. An example of when this feature is useful is to exclude computer monitors from being recorded. You can have up to 2304 (64x36 squares) privacy regions if you so choose. 

To delete a privacy region, just click on the created region.

LED Lights

This controls the LED lights that the camera emits while in operation. This will not interfere with recording. If you would like to learn more checkout our LED Lights article.

IR LED

This controls the IR LED which is turned on in night mode. The default is AUTO, which automatically turns on the LED when the filter threshold is reached. This is the recommended mode, unless the camera IR LED needs to always be turned on or off for your use case. 

IR Filter

The filter controls whether you want the filter to automatically turn on and off the IR LED when it gets dark enough. The default is AUTO. 

Resolution

The amount of detail that the camera can capture is called the resolution, and it is measured in pixels. The more pixels a camera has, the more detail it can capture and the larger pictures can be without becoming blurry or "grainy."

Max Bitrate

Note: Changing this setting will affect the total days of retention.  

A higher bitrate setting will affect the quality of the video and therefore affect the amount of video being stored. Additionally, higher motion and activity in the scene will increase the video segment size, so the max bit rate limits the maximum quality the video can achieve when there is a lot of activity. 

(hard to see but footage becomes very crisp when turned all the way up)

Focus Region

When auto-focus is enabled, the camera will automatically focus whenever the zoom or focus region is changed. You can select a region of the image to focus on via the “focus region” button. The auto-focus algorithm performs best with a focus region that has enough complexity and edges to focus on. By default, the focus region is a rectangle in the center of the camera view.

When in edit mode, you will be able to click and drag your cursor to select the area of interest. Once you are done select, click 'Save' and you will see the camera go through the focus cycle. This process may take up to 20 seconds for the camera to adjust the view depending on the size of focus region. During this time the controls will be grayed out and adjustments cannot be made until the camera is done adjusting.

Motor Zoom

The motorized zoom remote controls the lens inside the camera so that you can carefully focus the image. This feature should be used only if the software is having difficulties auto focusing to your desired region .This process may take between to 5-10 seconds for the camera to adjust the view. During this time the controls will be grayed out and adjustments cannot be made until the camera is done adjusting.

Motor Focus

If you have 'Auto Focus' disabled, you can control the focus manually. Although auto-focus is the simpler option, we wanted to give you complete control over the camera so for situation that require a manual focus this comes in handy. 

Motor P-Iris

Precise-Iris allows you to precisely control the positioning of the iris opening. In outdoor surveillance situations, you may want to control the amount of diffraction to adjust for blurring or get a clearer image for analytics. This process may take between to 5-10 seconds for the camera to adjust the view. During this time the controls will be grayed out and adjustments cannot be made until the camera is done adjusting.

If you have any further questions please reach out to our Rhombus Support at help@rhombus.com. If you would like to talk to a Rhombus Sales Representative please reach out to sales@rhombus.com.