It’s always encouraging to see a big name like JVC on an IP camera, though it hardly counts as an endorsement of the technology. JVC has been involved since the earliest days but until fairly recently has maintained a relatively low profile in this sector of the market.
Probably not for much longer, though, thanks to a rapidly expanding range, and products like the VN-X35U, the subject of this Bench Test.
Straight away it’s obvious this is not going to be another run of the mill network camera, if there is such a thing. The unusually elaborate box tells you straight away that the headline feature is a 1.3 megapixel CCD.
High performance image sensors of this type are comparatively rare on analogue CCTV cameras, more so on IP cameras, where the limitations of network operation and digital compression can easily negate the extra detail.
Not so in this case where it is being used to good effect. One of the camera’s most impressive tricks is a digital PTZ facility, which makes use of the high resolution image, and a wide angle lens, to produce a useable image from a relatively small part of the picture, more about that in a moment.
The CCD is a progressive scan type and the maximum resolution is an impressive 1280 x 950, low light figures are also a cut above the average.
It’s an easy day/night camera and that, coupled with various processing tweaks, the AGC and other enhancements on, yields a minimum illumination figure of 0.24 lux.
The camera can output two simultaneous streams, using JPEG and MPEG4 compression and it has support for multicast operation, sending images to up to 20 workstations, without compromising frame rate, which can be up to 15fps.
It has a privacy mask feature, alarm coupled motion detector, which can also be used to upload, via ftp, pre and post alarm recordings and send email notifications. There’s a two-way audio facility, analogue video output, a built-in web server and it can be powered by a 24-volt AC source or power over Ethernet (PoE).
There’s plenty more but it’s time to get on with the guided tour and we’ll begin with the case. At first glance it doesn’t look significantly different from a typical analogue camera. It has a standard CS lens mount with a large thumbwheel just behind the front cover, for adjusting back-focus.
On the right side there’s a socket for an Auto Iris lens, an analogue monitor output selector switch (PAL/NTSC), a reset button and a status LED that shows power on and network connectivity. This can be disabled or made to flash from the setup menu.
An RJ45 socket near the middle of the back panel makes it obvious this is a network camera; a phono socket rather than the more usual BNC connector handles the analogue video output, which is slightly odd.
There’s also a 3.5mm stereo jack that carries audio input and output, a two-way screw terminal for the 24VAC supply and set of five spring terminals for the external alarm input and output.
The steel case is a two-part shell and this acts as an exoskeleton for the half dozen or so tightly packed PCBs inside.
Build quality appears to be up to JVCs usual very high standard and it looks as though it should be able to take the knocks, though no attempt has been made to weatherproof the case.
The bottom part of the case acts as a heat sink for several large chips and it does get surprisingly warm so some care needs to be taken to ensure it is located in a well-ventilated area.
Setup and operation
It takes only a few moments to get the camera up and running by connecting it to a network and a power supply, though actually seeing a picture on a PC screen may take a little longer…
We were briefly encouraged to discover that the X35 uses a standard web browser, rather than relying on bespoke viewer software, so in theory it should be readily accessible on any network connected PC.
The first hurdle is the camera’s default IP setting, which is 192.168.0.2, a very common setting that on many networks will already be spoken for. It can be changed but only after a link to the camera has been established.
Even if that is not a problem, its refusal to communicate with any browser, other than Microsoft Internet Explorer, may well be. The trouble is recent versions of IE are riddled with security settings that are almost guaranteed to block or slow down communications with the camera.
Logging on to the camera should be fairly straightforward but the first time it is connected it insists on installing a succession of Active X plug-ins. IE naturally objects so each installation has to be individually acknowledged and approved but if the browser’s pop-up stopper is also enabled, you may not see a warning message saying that it has to be disabled before installation can proceed.
To cut a very long story short it can take a while to set up. We didn’t dare to run it past IE8 (at the time of writing in the latter stages of beta testing, prior to public release), which is even fussier, and Firefox is a complete no-go with numerous display errors and no image.
The good news is that it can be done, and eventually you may see an image from the camera on the monitor screen. Unfortunately, the viewer window isn’t very well designed and not very easy to use. Some parts of it only worked intermittently, and this was using a range of Windows PCs (XP and Vista) and a variety of network configurations, so we’re fairly sure it wasn’t us.
In the field it may well be different, we certainly hope so, and assuming it can be made to work, the first area of interest is a strip of sub menus down the left side of the screen. These are for quick access to image settings (white balance mode, backlight compensation and day/night mode. The choice of options struck us as a little strange as they’re not settings that normally need to be tweaked very often.
Also on this panel are two sub menus headed PTZ Settings and PTZ Control. Incidentally these buttons can be quite sluggish and on our test PC there could sometimes be a delay of several seconds between clicking a menu button and something happening.
PTZ Settings is used to record preset positions (up to 20), and PTZ Control has the on-screen joystick and zoom control. At this point it’s worth mentioning that the PTZ functions only work when the correct streaming mode and resolution settings have been selected, which is not obvious from the instruction leaflet or pdf manual on the supplied CD.
Along the top of the viewer screen there’s a row of buttons for hiding and showing the side menu, selecting Control or Viewer sub menus, Start/Stop recording, setting compression scheme, setting display size (Fixed or Variable) and Details, which opens a second browser window, displaying the full setup menu.
This is divided into two sections, covering basic viewer settings (network parameters, time date etc, resolution and JPEG & MPEG quality and bitrates), and Advanced Settings, which delves deeply into the camera’s inner workings. This section covers everything from setting the camera title, shutter speed and backlight compensation area, to the Privacy mask, motion detection, alarm setup and updating the firmware.
This part of the viewer isn’t too bad and is generally quite easy to use, though we did experience problems with the motion detector setup, which will display a blank screen instead of the 10 x 8 detection grid unless the correct display mode is selected. For obvious reasons, motion detection is disabled when the camera is in PTZ mode, though a general motion indicator can be made to blink a red border on the display
The Privacy Mask feature is simply bizarre. It involves manually creating a bitmap mask image on a PC that has to be uploaded to the camera. This flies in the face of current convention, where a mask is normally defined with a few simple mouse movements. But, apart from anything else, the instructions on how to do it are almost incomprehensible. If this feature is an important consideration prepare to spend some time fathoming it out.
Performance
Quirks in the viewer window aside, the camera goes some considerable way to redeeming itself with the quality of the image it delivers. In good natural light, in JPEG mode and at the highest resolution setting, the picture is crisp and detailed, good enough to bear the losses that occur when the image is zoomed to around x4 to x6 times, to make use of the electronic pan/tilt options.
Differences between the JPEG and MPEG4 streams are relatively small on a well-lit static scene; JPEG tends to blur more readily but captured stills do look sharper.
At lower light levels picture noise increases quite quickly with a very fine grain but once it gets to the day/night switchover point it sharpens up but the slow shutter and gain up systems will be engaged, which tends to blur movement. Unless there are problems with network bandwidth, there seems little point in reducing quality and resolution but needless to say there is a quite noticeable drop in picture performance when you do so.
Mechanical and electrical stability is very good and its encounter with the SI rubber mallet passed off without incident.
Overall assessment
It’s very clever but exactly how useful the PTZ feature will prove to be in the real world is open to debate. On a busy network the response time can be slow, making it difficult, if not impossible, to use it to follow a moving subject or object. On the other hand, the ability to set up a ‘patrol’, by sequencing preset positions has merit, though the actual area of coverage, an arc of just 30-40 degrees, depending on the lens, is very small, compared with a conventional PTZ setup.
We didn’t get on with the browser viewer and it looks and feels like it was put together in a hurry. The behind-the-scenes menus and setups are okay but the part an operator has to interact with isn’t user friendly. The PTZ controls are small and difficult to use and its non-intuitive position suggests that it may have been designed by a left-hander, not that we’ve got anything against south paws, it’s just that there’s more of us than them…
Menus and controls are slow; in fact the only good thing about the display is the picture quality, which is amongst the best we’ve ever seen on an IP camera. This camera deserves better and if JVC had put the same amount of effort into the viewer as they expended on the camera then it could be a real winner.
What the manufacturer says…
The VN-X35U was JVC’s first entry into the mega-pixel resolution camera market. It maintains a low light performance of 0.3 lux – always an important feature – and typifies the general attention to detail found within any JVC camera.
Sharing this technology is our very tough VN-X235VP IP66 mini dome, ideal for more ‘demanding’ environments. Both cameras use quad VGA resolution for the freely selectable “Partial Scan”. Up to twenty areas or preset positions can be clipped from within the mega-pixel camera’s image and displayed sequentially like an “Auto Patrol” function, similar to PTZ cameras.
Another feature of the VN-X35U camera is its ability for free shape privacy masking, which enables a captured scene to be modified, e.g. any shape such as a cash register or private window can be defined and masked out, then reloaded back into the camera’s memory to ensure complete transaction privacy. Many other features include 2-way audio, PoE, and 2-in and 2-out alarm terminals.
During the initial set up of any camera, focusing accuracy is most important with regards to fully utilising the resolution obtainable. JVC cameras provide a focus assist feature, which forces an auto iris lens open during the focusing process. The use of PAL or NTSC output is provided with real time video adjustments for pin-point accuracy.