1080 60p Better for Reading Licence Plates?

[mealto]

I have not had time to test this yet but at 1440 30p, you can clearly read licence plates from videos when going slower than 20-30kmph. Anything faster, it's difficult to get the perfect condition to read on-coming licence plates.

If the camera has enough resolution to read licence plates at slower speeds, I wonder if anyone has tried using 1080 60p to see if licence plates are easier to read?

Going to try that now.

 

[lacibaci]

I have not had time to test this yet but at 1440 30p, you can clearly read licence plates from videos when going slower than 20-30kmph. Anything faster, it's difficult to get the perfect condition to read on-coming licence plates.

If the camera has enough resolution to read licence plates at slower speeds, I wonder if anyone has tried using 1080 60p to see if licence plates are easier to read?

Going to try that now.

It all depends. Most cameras that advertise 60fps will use 30fps when there is not enough light. In theory, yes, 60fps will be better than 30fps.

 

[mealto]

It all depends. Most cameras that advertise 60fps will use 30fps when there is not enough light. In theory, yes, 60fps will be better than 30fps.

I guess we are balancing between 1440 30p versus 1080 60p. Resolution versus frames / second. Let's see what the downloaded video looks like.

 

[mealto]

My non-expert opinion is that I will switch back to 1440 30p after seeing the 1080 60p videos. Again, no expert here but I do post process a pile of videos for work and although these files are marked up as containing 60 frames / sec, I don't believe it's true 60 fps. I am betting software doubles or interpolation is used to get smoother 60 fps from a 30fps system. I could be totally wrong but after viewing these videos, that is my guess. Back to 1440 30p!

 

[Arcas]

Please correct me if I'm wrong but I've always understood the 30fps vs 60fps argument to be rather moot. Just because the frame rate is 30fps does not mean that the shutter is open for 1/30 second. The camera adjusts its shutter time to match the sensor's sensitivity and the lighting conditions. So in bright daylight, the shutter might only be open for 1/400 second regardless of whether the firmware is writing 30 frames to disc per second or 60 frames per second. The only difference is the amount of time that elapses between the individual frames.

 

[mealto]

Please correct me if I'm wrong but I've always understood the 30fps vs 60fps argument to be rather moot. Just because the frame rate is 30fps does not mean that the shutter is open for 1/30 second. The camera adjusts its shutter time to match the sensor's sensitivity and the lighting conditions. So in bright daylight, the shutter might only be open for 1/400 second regardless of whether the firmware is writing 30 frames to disc per second or 60 frames per second. The only difference is the amount of time that elapses between the individual frames.

That may very well be but I did not look at the details of all the files that I have downloaded. For me, I see 1080 60p gives a lesser video image than 1440 30p. And now that I have a better unit, I can see more licence plates than the first (slightly blurry) unit.

 

[lacibaci]

Ideally, you would want control of both fps and shutter speed. IMHO, 30fps is enough if you could set shutter speed high (at least 1/1000 - 1/2000) Unfortunately, no camera I know of lets you do that.