Grainy Face and license plate

I am learning optical zoom is a superior feature over digital zoom, when resolving face and license plate ID. My Wyze v3 is too grainy making it useless to ID faces or license plates. Is Wyze fixing this or should I get a new camera from Alibi?

You might experiment with camera placement and distance if possible. Here is a random car backing on to my driveway. I can read the black car license plate, but not the red car across the street. The picture below is from my Driveway Wyze Cam v3.

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Also, be mindful of the device you are using to zoom in. After posting the above picture, I went to view it on my Fire HD8 tablet and my 13 inch iPad Pro side-by-side. The above picture definitely looks better on the 13 inch iPad Pro.

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This isn’t something that can be “fixed”. Digital zoom is always going to reduce quality. The only optical zoom camera Wyze has is the OG Telephoto, which has a fixed 3x optical zoom. I use that one for reading license plates that drive by. Faces show up pretty well on all my cams depending on distance and movement.

Also note that when you are trying to make out details, pausing on the frame you want to see then clicking the “take picture” button will put a picture on your phone that is clearer than the video.

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Optical zoom is [more] expensive and can’t be added post-hoc [fixed]. Truth is that if the V3 had variable optical zoom, many of us probably wouldn’t have bought the V3 in the first place (I wouldn’t have) due to the higher price.

In a1080p resolution camera, face detection requires a certain number of pixels to maintain an appropriate confidence interval for accurate detection (I want to say 200-300 pixels) which means you usually have to be within around 3 meters (~10ft) to have a face detected with adequate accuracy. This same issue will be present with other camera brands. You can increase the distance with higher resolution. License plates also need a certain number of pixels to be read accurately which requires a certain distance based on resolution. Add to that other variables such as compression/bitrate. A V3 is not optimized for these things.

I’ve never heard of Alibi cameras but they will also be subject to the same variables:
Resolution, compression, distance, etc.

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