Strange issue with Camera Live Stream - Distorted Colors after day/Night Transition

[Teejoo]

Hi,

I recently installed an additional camera, but I'm encountering an unusual issue with its live stream. The feed occasionally shows a distorted, colorful image with constantly flasing and shifting colors and pixels. This seems to happen specifically after the camera switches from day to night mode and vice versa. Restarting the camera resolves the issue temporarily, and everything runs smoothly until the next color/black-and-white switch.
Here are some details and observations:

• The issue only affects the live view through Blue Iris. I’m using V5.9.8.5
• The direct camera feed viewed in a browser is normal.
• Recordings are unaffected; they show a smooth transition between day and night with no artifacts.
• There are no error messages in the log.
• Restarting resolves the issue temporarily.
• The colorful distortion and flashing cause continuous motion triggers.
• All cameras are Dahua IPC-HDW3841EM-S-S2 models, though the other cameras don’t encounter this problem since they always have sufficient lighting and don’t switch to black-and-white.

Does anyone have suggestions on how to resolve this? Let me know if you need more info.

I attached screenshots from the distorted image, day and night. I blurred some of the picture.

Thanks!

[Teejoo]

In the meantime it's definitely the switch from night to day or the other way around and that it only affects the sub stream that is used to view the live feed in the BI interface. But it's stil unclear why this happens.

[Pogo]

Too much wall..., like all of it. The particular extreme shown could be confusing the camera.

Reposition the camera to view the actual scene for starters.

Also double check the encoding for a mismatch with Blue Iris. H264 or H265 plays nicest with BI. H264 is the most friendly, especially at higher resolutions (which obviously doesn't apply to sub streams). Still worth double checking.

SmartCodec, H264+/H265+ or Hplus or HSuper or Hanything other than conventional standard H264 or H265 should be avoided.

[Teejoo]

Too much wall..., like all of it. The particular extreme shown could be confusing the camera.

Reposition the camera to view the actual scene for starters.

Also double check the encoding for a mismatch with Blue Iris. H264 or H265 plays nicest with BI. H264 is the most friendly, especially at higher resolutions (which obviously doesn't apply to sub streams). Still worth double checking.

SmartCodec, H264+/H265+ or Hplus or HSuper or Hanything other than conventional standard H264 or H265 should be avoided.

Hi, I don't understand what the wall makes the substream/camera go nuts? And the main stream is perfect. You are of course correct it's not an optimal placement but I didn't want to cover too much from the neighbors house.

Encoding is already set to H264 because I use BI's GPU decoding.

[Pogo]

I don't understand what the wall makes the substream/camera go nuts? And the main stream is perfect. You are of course correct it's not an optimal placement but I didn't want to cover too much from the neighbors house.

Encoding is already set to H264 because I use BI's GPU decoding.

Cool on the encoding. You may want to back off a little on the frame rate and try CBR. Try 15fps and match the I-frame to that. You don't necessarily need super max quality of a sub stream.

On the wall thing, it presents an image that is almost like two distinct and extremely different images that the camera is expected to apply its capabilities to as a single image.
Transitioning from day to night or night to day when half the image may still appear to be one or the other could sramble what the sensor is trying to determine to affect the correct change in the firmware. There's also a distance/focal consideration that may be at play as well.

No specific technical explanation to substantiate the above, just an obvious observation(s) that may or may not apply to the situation.

Easy enough to find out.

[confusedtracker]

Too much wall..., like all of it. The particular extreme shown could be confusing the camera.

Reposition the camera to view the actual scene for starters.

Also double check the encoding for a mismatch with Blue Iris. H264 or H265 plays nicest with BI. H264 is the most friendly, especially at higher resolutions (which obviously doesn't apply to sub streams). Still worth double checking.

SmartCodec, H264+/H265+ or Hplus or HSuper or Hanything other than conventional standard H264 or H265 should be avoided.

Hi, I don't understand what the wall makes the substream/camera go nuts? And the main stream is perfect. You are of course correct it's not an optimal placement but I didn't want to cover too much from the neighbors house.

Encoding is already set to H264 because I use BI's GPU decoding.

I'm having the same issue on my cameras. They are not pointed at any walls. This is only happening to 2 new Dahua cameras I recently got. I have 4 older ones with no issues.

Any luck with a resolution?

[confusedtracker]

In case anyone sees this thread, I downgraded my camera's firmware and it resolved the issue

[Pogo]

Good to know.

It may be useful to notify 'Empire Andy' from IPCT. He is a pretty active source of info and support for Dahua stuff which he also sells under the Empire brand. I'm sure he'd move the issue to the right resources for resolution.

[mahirat]

Hi Teejoo,

I faced a similar issue with my Dahua cameras when transitioning between day and night modes. I noticed that adjusting the exposure settings helped a bit, as sometimes the camera struggles with lighting changes. You might want to try lowering the brightness or enabling automatic exposure adjustment if possible.