@Pogo Agreed, definitely get the feeling that these cameras are somehow upscaled 4k from a 1080 sensor, or something is wrong with the sensor/device as a whole. You're right it doesn't look like it's native 4k with all the smoothing artifacts going on. Also if I drop the resolution on these cameras down to 1080p the resulting video looks like 480p. Perhaps the batch I was sent was built incorrectly?
Also, not trying to be adversarial here as I'm really appreciative of the insight you're providing. Please keep that in mind as I'm saying this. Trying to wrap my head around the argument that these are somehow the wrong camera to use for this application. They are outdoor PoE security cameras that have a wide FOV, in order to capture swaths of the area around my house. There are images on the sale pages for these cameras with them on houses in nearly the same situations as mine, so I'm quite confused about this take on things. If there is an alternative I should be using that's better suited I would be very interested in what that is, and also how a consumer would know to purchase that over these. It's true there are hundreds of models at every conceivable price point, so if there is a trick to navigating through the sludge to find the gems beyond just looking at reviews I would like to know that.
Once again, not being adversarial, I'm wondering about the logic behind that take. What gives the implication that these cameras weren't made for this purpose?
On the topic of bitrate, I made the changes you suggested and here's a video of the result. Once again directly off the SD card on the camera.
Halfway through this video i crank the brightness on those outdoor lights up to maximum. That's 25 bulbs that are 40w equivalent LED within a few feet of the camera. Should be more than enough light, but the graininess is still there and pulses with the iframe, and the rocks in the background are warbling around. Something seems very wrong with this sensor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWB9vJQWqEc
There doesn't seem to be a magic setting that removes the sensor noise, digital snow, graininess, etc if we also don't want ghosting on all the motion. Sure I can crank the noise reduction up to maximum and that will look stellar in a freezeframe, but anything moving will be ghosting around.
I've stopped testing with H265 as it doesn't appear this camera has the processing power to encode H265 properly. Regardless of bitrate or playback method it always looks far worse than the H264 video.
@Revo2Maxx Looking at your videos they also have the sensor noise, but it's noticeably less than mine.
And yes just like you I also found enabling smart codec only made things worse, not better, so glad we're agreed on that.
Also, keep in mind, 3d noise reduction makes the picture look great when it's static. You mentioned how great things looked after turning it on and yes that's true but only when things aren't moving. Unfortunately the main thing we're trying to capture with security cameras is moving objects/people. I noticed when you turned the noise reduction off that we could see motion in the leaves on trees near to the camera, but with noise reduction enabled everything was smoothed and made motionless.
I'm not sure what is preventing your version of chrome from viewing the H265 stream. I know H265 has licensing issues so the support on browsers when there aren't plugins or players embedded in pages can be lacking. I'm using firefox and VLC on this side to view the footage and at least for me the H265 has come through fine in the viewing page, but firefox won't play the video if you open a raw mp4 with H265 encoding it will only play the audio. Also have a license for Vegas Pro so for giggles I opened the footage in that and it's identical down to the graininess/noise so thankfully this isn't a viewing issue on my side.