Attempting to get license plates on moving vehicles in driveway

[Will350]

I currently have an essential camera mounted next to my long driveway.  I am having trouble pulling the license plate numbers fromthe essential camera footage because its not fast enough to capture the plate.  when I attempt to enlarge the plate it blurrs.  Can anyone advise which arlo camera would be the best pick for a moving vehicle?

[StephenB]

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@Will350 wrote:

 Can anyone advise which arlo camera would be the best pick for a moving vehicle?

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Frankly, none of them are very good for that.

License capture is actually a pretty demanding application.  All Arlo cameras have a wide field of view, which gives them lower pixels per foot than cameras designed for license plate capture.  As you've found moving vehicles create motion blur, which makes it harder still.  Plus at night the headlight glare usually makes it impossible to see the license plate.

[TUKhS5Ays4Ez]

I've been trying to capture a license plate for 2 years, and have more than a dozen Ultra 2 and Pro 4 XL cameras outdoors.  I am now trying the following video settings: Best Video for Power Management, Full for Video Mode, and I have turned off Auto Zoom and Tracking.  Please let me know if you figure out how to do it.  The 4K resolution Ultra 2s are better than the 2k resolution Pro 4 XL cameras, so I actually swap the batteried with housing to have longer battery life for the higher resolution cameras.

[jguerdat]

First, you need to understand that these cameras are not ID cameras - they're extremely wide angle that each pixel has to cover a large enough area which is then affected by bitrate and compression. The only way you're going to get license plates is to move the camera closer to the area you want to monitor as well as use a camera that has a longer focal length/smaller FOV.

[StephenB]

The net here is that the cameras just aren't suited for this use.

1. You need about 100 pixels horizontally across the license plate to be able to read it.  You rarely can get that with an Arlo camera, the field of view is too wide.
2. Motion blur comes into play as well, cameras designed for license plate capture use a higher frame rate (as will as having a smaller field of view).
3. And at night, glare from the lights on the car can make it impossible to read the plates.

[TUKhS5Ays4Ez]

I currently have sets of 2 arlo cameras at different heights placed in the same area to try to capture vehicles with their license plate.  I just added a low height camera to try to capture the license plate and have more confidence in identifying make and model of vehicles.  How should the lower height camera be placed?  Should the camera be placed upside down to detect vehicular motion?  Is there a recommended height?  I am not concerned with that camera being stolen, but do have active trespassers that are not reliably captured by 12+ cameras.

[Zzzzzzzzzz]

I found the Lifehackster channel on Youtube. Lifehackster has many videos that I found really informative and helped me to understand what consumer cameras can and can't do.

This one is specifcally about license plates:

https://lifehackster.com/security-cameras-license-plates-glare-at-night-what-you-can-do/

This one shows how a 1080 p camera with a narrow field of view (FOV) can perform better than 4K cameras with a wide FOV when zoomed in.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PIu8k7OyHhQ

He has a couple other interesting videos that demonstrate how FOV and telephoto lenses can impact clarity. So while a wide FOV gives a nice broad view, it's probably not going to capture sufficient details zoomed in. It's a trade off, and we have to have different cameras for different primary purposes. Right now, I have a couple cameras covering the front of the house, with a new one that has an optical zoom and set to a very narrow FOV. Video quality is nice even zoomed in but narrow view. I don't think it would be able to capture license plate on a moving car though.