Another horrible image from A129 Pro Duo, is it normal?

[JoePGM]

Hello Folks, this is Joe and come here to say hello. I just bought a set of Viofo A129 Pro duo dash cam. The image quality when light sufficient is really nice, but looks very noisy, boosting lots of brightness when in the low night environment. The night footage definitely not the same with you people showing. I'm wondering if the camera is defective !!??

1min footage, drving out from bright car park to 9pm nighttime UK these days. The noise goes crazy when the environment goes dark (but absolutely still fulls of street lights and bright sky). The dash cam comes in v1.3 firmware, recording at 2560x1440 front 60fps + 1920x1080 rear 30fps at "hight" bitrate with WDR turns on. EV are in "0". I did try with put the bitrate to Maximum and toggle WDR on/off but it doesn't improve any noise of it.

Any thoughts?

 

[Nigel]

We don't normally use 60fps at night, not sure how much difference that would make but it may increase the noise a bit, there does appear to be a bit more than I am used to.

WDR is not normally recommended, it doesn't help much and can produce some noise and unwelcome effects in the darker parts.

You are in the darkest part of the UK at 9:24PM, no camera is going to give a clear, noise free, motion blur free image at in that light, not even a far more expensive DSLR. Moving further north and west to brighter parts of the UK would improve things considerably!

Looks quite decent to me, but I prefer a bit of noise and less motion blur to perfectly clean but blurry.

 

[JoePGM]

Thanks Nigel. However the sky is still with twilight and the street are with sufficient illumination, the video looks quite horrible when compare to another member video like this, isn't it?

We don't normally use 60fps at night, not sure how much difference that would make but it may increase the noise a bit, there does appear to be a bit more than I am used to.

WDR is not normally recommended, it doesn't help much and can produce some noise and unwelcome effects in the darker parts.

You are in the darkest part of the UK at 9:24PM, no camera is going to give a clear, noise free, motion blur free image at in that light, not even a far more expensive DSLR. Moving further north and west to brighter parts of the UK would improve things considerably!

 

[Teflon490]

First try it at 4K and post your results. I think 2K recording on 4K sensor might be the root cause.

 

[Nigel]

By 10:30 PM it is getting dark even in Yorkshire, and that was August!

I can see from the headlights that it was dark enough for it to have to choose between noise and low motion blur, and by limiting it to 1/60th second exposure maximum you are ensuring it has to prioritise low motion blur over noise.

As in the post above, try it at 30fps.

It is also possible that the firmware has been updated since that video to increase the prioritisation of low motion blur over low noise, at that time it would probably have been firmware V1.0.

 

[JoePGM]

Ok here are the testing clips in 4k 30fps. What do you think about in quality wise?

 

[Nigel]

First impression is that you now have more motion blur and less noise.

If you set EV to -1/3 then it would look very similar to Tony's video.

Not sure if the difference to Tony's video is the firmware version, or settings, or amount of light pollution in the sky, or maybe just the amount of windscreen reflection superimposed on the sky.

I'm wondering if the camera is defective !!??

It looks normal to me, and you have some choices to make in the settings.

 

[JoePGM]

Thanks folks for such helpful reply, when considering it is 12 midnight here
Really happy in the overall quality and camera dimension of it

 

[TonyM]

I found that setting the EV to -1/3 or -2/3 really helps the night exposure. I always keep WDR off.

Thanks for reminding me how the Pro looked on early FW - maybe I'll go back to it!

I was driving rather slowly which does help the video to look better