Lilin IPG1022ES CCTV Camera Review

HD has become one of the must-haves for video surveillance cameras. The confusion for those new to HD has revolved around terms such as 720p, 1,080p, and full HD — and, perhaps most importantly, their cost implications.

The Lilin IPG1022ES is a cost-effective IP camera that ticks all the HD boxes and includes an easy-to-use interface. It certainly looks like a camera that can be used in a variety of installations.

Multi-codec support
The camera supports the most common streams on the market: H.264 and M-JPEG. Both streams allow for full HD (1,080p) resolution and a real-time refresh rate (25fps).

Having multiple codecs adds to the camera’s flexibility by allowing it to be used in multiple scenarios. In an end-to-end Lilin solution, H.264 compression would be preferable, due to its lower bandwidth requirements than M-JPEG. For remote applications, installations containing third-party recording, and/or remote monitoring stations, M-JPEG would be preferable, since this is generally the codec used for third-party integration and external connections.

IR cut filter
Budgets are generally smaller these days, and customers are demanding lower-cost hardware. To help fit into these budgets, many static cameras are manufactured without an IR cut filter. The Lilin IPG1022ES has not omitted this feature, and the IR cut filter greatly enhances the camera’s adaptability, because it can be used in internal and external applications.

Full HD
The Lilin IPG1022ES features a 2.2MP sensor providing 1,080p-resolution (full HD) images. This resolution puts this camera in the upper echelons of the market, and it can compete in lower-specification and higher-specification applications.

Since it is a full HD camera, we have some excellent features, such as retrospective zooming into images (digital zoom) and a wider field of view.

H.264 and M-JPEG streams
Both streams work well. They allow us to stream at multiple resolutions, including VGA, SVGA, 720p, and 1,080p. We were also able to stream at any refresh rate we wanted at any resolution. At a constant bitrate, we could select any integer for our refresh rate — from 1fps all the way to 30fps.

e-PTZ
Being a static camera, there is no mechanism inside that allows the camera to spin around, nor does its lens provide any optical zoom. A useful feature of this camera is an electronic pan, tilt, and zoom (e-PTZ) function. The camera uses software to allow the operator to zoom in and move the picture left and right or up and down. We have seen very few cameras with this feature.

Once in live view, a simple check of a box allows us to pan, tilt, or zoom digitally. When the camera is mounted to view a street, we can bring cars on the periphery of the image into view more clearly. Likewise, the image can be blown up quite a lot to focus on people who are far away while maintaining detail in the image.

This feature could allow you to blow up images of an incident to see more of what happened. This could reduce costs, because we might be able to get away with using fewer cameras on a project.

Image quality
The image quality is good. Facial features such as eye pigment, wrinkles, and spots are all clearly visible. This ensures the quality is there for recognition applications. There is a small amount of noise apparent on the image — clearly more than brands such as Panasonic, Axis, and Samsung offer.

The camera was OK when dealing with variable lighting conditions. When we turned the lights off and on, the camera needed a second to adjust and refocus. Once it had, it continued to perform well. When looking at traffic or static areas, the camera performed well. However, it is worth noting that, during peak traffic conditions, the noise on the image made identifying faraway objects difficult.

When the camera was pointed straight at bright light, the image was distorted. The camera seemed a bit stuck — almost torn between day and night modes. This put a strange tint on the image.

Overall, the picture quality was good — better than many cameras on the market but not on par with the best-performing brands we have tested.

Web Interface
The interface is well laid out and simple to use. The menu is set to the left and is generally well labeled with intuitive menu titles.

There is a huge array of configurable areas on the camera. You can set up multiple users, configure all aspects of the network (IP address, HTTP/RTSP information, SMTP, FTP, and even UPnP), and customize video streams. You can schedule the IR cut filter to be active or passive at certain times, edit alarm inputs and outputs, and set up SD memory card recording.

Using a single ActiveX plugin for the video/audio, the interface is very good. Menu items load fast. The interface doesn’t hang, and it saves configurations quickly on the fly.

ONVIF compatibility
We added the Lilin camera to a copy of SeeTec Probox 5 VMS that we had running on our server. We added the camera as a generic ONVIF camera, purely to grab our H.264 stream. We had no problem at all getting the stream to come through and to record. The only problem with using the ONVIF driver was the loss of the e-PTZ function. Using this camera with third-party recording equipment is a straightforward process, assuming the recorder (or VMS) and the camera support the same iteration of the ONVIF standard.

The verdict
The overall quality of the camera is good. It seemed well made when we examined it, and it produces good quality images. The full HD resolution, e-PTZ, and excellent web interface are great pluses for this camera.

Ultimately, a camera needs to produce the best quality images. Despite the HD badge and the bells and whistles, there is a lot of inherent noise and grain on the picture when compared with leading market brands. Despite all the features, this is a major letdown, considering we are in a video market.

For budget applications, this camera would certainly be a very good option. However, for a higher-specification project, better image quality may be needed.